Cursed Tongue: Flush Fund

Posted by CursedTongue on February 14, 2007

Earlier this week, I installed Turbo Tax onto my computer. I gathered the paperwork and receipts for my tax file and went through my records to see if my numbers match W-2s and interest statements. Saving, filing, reading dry and convoluted tax instructions – these are things that I enjoy in the sick, sick part of my brain that likes order, neatness and numbers. I won’t pretend that I take pleasure in paying taxes, but I am proud to pay them.

It irks me when I hear about people deducting lavish entertainment for business, or conniving schemes to beat the evil IRS. I won’t tell you that the IRS isn’t evil, but if Congress passes a flat tax, imagine how many CPAs will be wandering the streets in three grimy coats, mumbling obsolete tax code to themselves.

I’m proud to know that my tax money goes to schools that don’t prepare students for the global market. To Medicare, which covers, to put it in terms of in insurance parlance, diddlysquat. To interest payments on the National Debt. (I’d think after one trillion dollars, that Visa would say enough is enough.)

I’m proud that my tax dollars go to defend our country from evil dictators with imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction. I’m delighted that they provide support for our troops, who allegedly lack basics, like bullets. Even though this is the third military action in the Middle East, and I really think the U. S. government should have its three-ring military circus together by now.

I’m overjoyed that my tax dollars are going to fund the war that was supposed to mysteriously “Pay for itself.” Anyone with more sense than a mentally challenged squirrel, knows that nothing pays for itself. (Certainly that hypothetical CPA pushing the shopping cart full of cans would know.) Where is the oil that was supposed to offset the cost of the war? We’re not even getting so much as an employee discount. Oil prices are higher then a young George W. Bush in the 70s.

I’m just as pleased as apple pie to learn that $43.8 million, earmarked for Iraq’s reconstruction, was paid to DynCorp International for building a residential camp for police trainers that was never used. I was even more thrilled to learn that the Iraqi Interior Ministry spent $4.2 million of that money on 20 VIP trailers and an Olympic-sized swimming pool, neither of which was approved by any bean counters at the State Department.

Another $36.4 million went for communications equipment, armored vehicles and body armor that have been billed and may or may not have been delivered. Meanwhile, there are soldiers outfitting vehicles with scrap metal, and charitable groups sending Kevlar vests, night vision goggles and communication equipment. And $18 million were allegedly billed by DynCorp International, in what may have been an act of premature appropriation.

Next week the Bush administration will probably reveal that the missing money was paid to Rodgers and Hammerstein for “A Hundred Million Miracles,” because that’s exactly how many they figured they’d need to get out of Iraq. Or maybe the money went to Superman, who the military paid to fly in orbit opposite the rotation of the Earth fast enough to turn back time, in order to keep the liberation of violent bloody civil war from ever occurring. According to the last Superman movie, Mr. Faster-Than-a-Speeding-Bullet has become a stalker, an absent father, and something less than “Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.” Which validates what my father once told me, “Never trust a man in tights.”

Compared to the overall cost of the war (currently around $362,963,184,814, according to the National Priorities Project) this mismanagement, this fraud constitutes impulse buys in the checkout line. But in terms of what $80 million USD could mean to supplying overworked troops that lack basic equipment so they might be safer and maybe even accomplish something despite impotent, delusional leadership. Or in terms of what it could do for Iraqis who were blasted into the Stone Age overnight, it could have provided impacted the reconstruction in a positive manner.

For all that they’re doing to “embolden” the terrorists, the State Department might as well have flushed Benjamins down the toilet along with pages of the Koran. But then their buddies at companies like DynCorp International and Halliburton wouldn’t be rolling in government fraud, waste and abuse. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside as I figure out how much of our hard-earned money we paid into the U.S. Treasury last year.

- Sarah Letnes

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Tags: humor, taxes

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