Thank You, One and All

After a long day and night I think this Facebook post from my niece's Mom says it all:

"Caitlin's father spent the night with Caitlin in the ICU. She
looks good and had a good night. Dr. Baird did some pretty
extensive work on her yesterday. He reworked her tricuspid valve
and tightened it with a ring, put in a titanium mitral valve,
replaced a patch covering the hole in the septum, trimmed off some...
scar tissue, adjusted a small group of heart muscles, and performed
an ablation to the right side of her heart. In ICU now and they are
keeping her asleep for a little while longer."

That's a hell of a lot for a fourteen-year-old to go through (and not for the first time) but her Dad reports that the oxygen tubes are out and she's breathing on her own although still drowsy from the sedatives. The use of an artificial valve this time means she should not have to ever do this again.

In a previous century she never would have made it this far, and I am extremely grateful to not just the superb surgeons who have the skill and talent to perform such work, but also to all the people over the years who developed the techniques and trained the doctors, who invented and manufactured the tools and replacement parts and those who built and maintain the organizations that could bring them all together to accomplish something so extraordinary. And to my fellow citizens, who help to pay for it all through your taxes and insurance premiums. This is the definition of civilization and, today, my niece and her/my family are the beneficiaries.

Thank you. May it all be there for you when you need it.

Financial Wheeling and Dealing, Tax Division

The deadline for renewing my car's registration is here . . . so I bought a couple bottles of wine.

It's not that the re-registration process is something that could drive someone to drink. I have mentioned before that it's actually very quick, simple and relatively painless. Bring the registration notice to the county building, pick up a number, stand in the shortest imaginable line (there was one couple ahead of me), hand the notice to the clerk, pay the fee, receive the sticker and off you go. Fifteen minutes, including travel time (we live pretty near the county building).

No, the wine, or at least some purchase (I also bought dates, figs, tomatoes, onions, a wedge of brie and a pomegranate), is necessary because the county insists on tacking on a surcharge to all payments made with debit/credit cards and, since I still use my bank back in Salt Lake City, meaning all ATMs out here are out-of-market and charge fees for extracting cash, therefor getting said money requires going to the grocery store and adding on the cash-back option to my purchase.

Theoretically, I could just buy a pack of gum and still get the $60 cash back but that seems lame and Thanksgiving is here so we're going to indulge anyway.

And the car's legal for another year.

We're Bombing in New Haven

In American theater, there are several degrees of importance. There is, of course, "Broadway." Major venues that are not literally on Broadway but still within the theater district are, logically enough, "Off Broadway." Those even further out but still in Manhattan (or at least New York City), and frequently experimental, are "Off Off-Broadway." And then there is "Off Off-Off-Broadway, sometimes also known as "New Haven."

We have the same thing with elections. We have elections around here every year for something or other. The big ones, of course, are the even-numbered year quadrennial presidential elections when we enjoy months of vicious mudslinging advertisements, day-long lines in the hot sun, eight-page ballots crammed with ridiculous proposed constitutional amendments the legislature was too craven to pass on their own, hanging chads, miscounts, recounts and court challenges. And the unrelenting attention of the national news media. This is our political "Broadway."

Two years later, in the intervening even years, we have our off-year elections when the federal House of Representatives, the state legislature, governor and the rest of the elected state officials, and the occasional U.S. Senator all stand for office. Fewer people show up for this one than the presidential elections but the governorship is important enough to attract a fairly decent turnout most years.

Then there are the off off-year elections. The odd-numbered year elections. The local races for mayor and city council and county commission and other even more obscure positions. The offices that generate the largest volume of most passionate, florid, ill-considered, barely literate and unintentionally hilarious letters to the editor of the local newspaper. This year.

Today.

And no one shows. I voted today. I went to my precinct just before noon. I thought I saw someone leaving as I entered but it could easily have been a poll worker taking some air. I was the only voter there during the time it took me to cast my ballot. There was a "guard" at the door, three people at the table where I showed my ID and received my number, another to trade me my number for a blank ballot, still one more to stand by and instruct me how to insert the completed ballot into the machine if I didn't know how or had forgotten since last time and two sitting attentively at another table watching the whole process. And that doesn't count the three people at the refreshment table on the way out offering to reward me with coffee and pastries.

I was outnumbered eleven-to-one.

People will bitch and moan about the president and blame him for things over which he has no control and are the Congress' responsibility. But they don't bother to vote for representative or senator. They complain about the governor but never vote against their state legislator. And for the politicians and offices that have the most effect on their taxes and day-to-day lives, the people who determine the property tax rates and manage the police and fire services, who run the sewer and water department and repair the roads? They don't even bother to vote.

But the letters will still be in the paper tomorrow.

In Which I Respond to the Bureaucracy

I have received, collated and sent off to the State of Utah, with my attached explanation of why I do not owe any taxes to the State of Utah, the income records I requested from my former employer.

I will now sit back and expect to hear nothing from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division regarding the information I have just sent them. On the assumption that, at least when dealing with government tax authorities, no news is good news, this silence will be a welcome thing.

Best wishes to them and may our paths never cross again.

Bureaucracy Blues

A couple of months ago I received from the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department a very polite letter claiming they had no information regarding an old state income tax filing of mine and suggesting that I probably owed them money because, hey, they had no evidence that I didn't and, by the way, they had destroyed all the old documents going back including from the year they were now interested in.

Unfortunately, because half my paperwork was left behind when I moved to Florida, I also had no evidence that I didn't. And I don't.

I contacted my former employer back in Utah and, after some searching around, they were kind enough* to send a copy of my W2 from the relevant year with which I was able to cobble together an ersatz return I hoped would complete the records held by the state that they could then destroy since they were beyond the official "keep until" date. As long as they made themselves happy first.

Unfortunately, I never noticed (because I didn't think such a thing was even possible) the replacement W2 the old employer sent me, although having the right year on it, had the (substantially different) income numbers from the previous year. How is that possible? They swear they simply pulled it from my file**.

The State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Department has now contacted me a second time to inform me that the numbers I submitted with my ersatz return don't even come close to the numbers on my Federal return. They want to adjust the numbers up to match, which is reasonable. And they're still being extraordinarily polite.

Unfortunately, the Federal return doesn't show the amount of tax withheld by the state and adjusting the income numbers up without also adjusting the state withholding will result in a very large (and not at all reasonable) tax liability for me.

I have now requested my former employer to send me copies of all my W2s so I can figure out what happened and how to build an argument acceptable to the State of Utah, Tax Commission, Audit Division. Politely, of course.

*Technically, they're legally obligated to provide it but they were very nice about it all considering it's not really their problem.
** O.K., now it is at least partially their problem.