Tentacles

[jhetley]

Item in the paper this morning about how the State of Maine is intercepting federal "stimulus" checks, both mail and electronic transfers, several thousand so far.  Projected take of over a million bucks.  While the end is moderately laudable, snagging assets for delinquent child-support and such, it's another flag on how deep Big Brother has sunk his claws into all of us. 

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Yep: this has been going on for a good long while. I discovered this to my detriment back in 1999, when my income tax refund check disappeared at a time when I desperately needed it for an expected sudden move. It turns out that my now-ex-wife had defaulted on her student loan (as she explained after the IRS told me why I didn't get a refund, "The collectors stopped calling, so I figured that I didn't owe it any more"), and the IRS was then authorized to garnishee refund checks to pay the existing debt. She went through 1998 working 20 hours a week for minimum wage at a used bookstore, so the added withholdings I put toward my taxes went into paying off her loan, and I didn't get a full check again until after I'd divorced her. (Interestingly, defaulting on a student loan is now grounds to keep an individual out of a government job, so she's going to have an interesting time of it when her current bookstore job turns back into pumpkins and mice. As you said, I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning.)