"I want my money back"

I had so much fun today at the Louise Wisechild pile-on over at Spleenville, that I tried to google me some more Wisechild to wisecrack. On the way I was distracted by this item which was too good to pass up:

Robin "Roblimo" Miller of Bradenton, Florida writes President Bush to ask for his money back:

I don't mind paying taxes as long as I get good value for my money, but lately I'm starting to think the money I've been handing over to the U.S. government is as big a waste as making payments on a car that didn't run the day you went to pick it up at the used car lot and hasn't spent a full day out of the shop since.

We have this Federal Bureau of Investigation that's supposed to investigate crimes, right? It had agents who got suspicious about foreign flight students who seemed to be up to no good and might have ties to terrorist groups. But there was no investigation. What was the FBI doing if it wasn't investigating? I mean, if you have a Federal Bureau of Investigation and it doesn't investigate, why should I pay for it?

Now let's go to the CIA.

and he goes on to diss the CIA, the DoD, the SEC and HUD, and finally demands that George W.

Refund all the taxes I've paid over the last decade that went to the indefensible Defense Department, the unintelligent CIA, and the non-investigating FBI, along with the money HUD spent building $250,000 per unit welfare housing in Baltimore while I made do quite happily with a $15,000 house trailer, and all the rest of the money you and your predecessors took from me and wasted instead of giving me -- your customer -- a decent value.

Well, Robin "Roblimo" Miller, I feel sorry for you and all the money you've lost over the years. The sad reality is that governments suck. All of them. They always have and they always will. But at least our government sucks less than any other government that has ever extorted money from and badly served its subjects. The majesty of our American system is, that after fighting a revolution with the slogan "taxation without representation is tyranny", our taxation and mismanagement now comes with representation. That means that we get the satisfaction every two, four or six years to either throw the bums out or keep the bums right where they are. And when you go down to your neighborhood polling place in Bradenton you know your vote will count for something.

And yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that when you and the rest of the State of Florida and most of your fellow Americans went to the polls last November we weren't expecting to wind up with Elmer Gantry as Attorney General and a C average graduate of City College as Secretary of State and an aluminum foil salesman as Secretary of the Treasury. But don't worry, I can promise you that no underqualified former alcoholic from Midland, TX will ever accidentally inherit the Presidency again. Because the chuckleheaded bureaucrats who run the Florida elections department are not the same chuckleheaded bureaucrats who run the DoD and the FBI and the CIA and HUD and the SEC and all those other TLAs that don't work very well either. Trust me, it'll be different next time. They've got a committee working on it.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 24, 2002 10:33 PM