Gummit is like a road kill possum

It’s not because the income tax deadline is approaching that I say this:
The federal gummit is one stupid road kill possum.

Gummit, by the very nature of the beast, is not an effective organization; it is like a mama cat with eight teats and 12 kittens. Good freakin’ luck doing what it is you need to do.

The gummit tax code is a gazillion-page document that was written by wonks and wordjerks in a language somewhere between Jingoism and Malaprops. The Internal Revenue Service rulebook is bigger than that of New York City has as many foreign elements in it. The U.S. Postal Service can’t figure out how to make a profit.

Not only that, but gummit members of Congress exempt themselves from laws they don’t like (participation in Social Security, for example) and pass out tax dollars like it belongs to them.

And don’t get me started on the Census Bureau!

I sorta understand why it’s important to know statistical thingies like number of people in a household. But when the bureaucrats start thinking it’s important to know how much money a citizen makes or how many bathrooms are in a residence or how many mushroom and spinach pizzas a family consumes in a year, it’s time to draw the line.

If you are alive, you have already received information about the upcoming census. You’ve seen ads on TV or in a newspaper or have received a warning in the mail.

This is where I go sidewonkers with the IRS: I received an official mailed notification from the Census Bureau that I would soon be receiving a census form; the form came five days later. Two days after that I received a note from the Census Bureau to remind me that I was supposed to have already received a form and urged me to mail it back.

The form I had received was the short form and is absolutely no fun at all. I filled it in for the family and got it in the mail the same day I received it. Whoa! What a thrill.

What I really wanted to receive was the long form, which I understand, they don’t send out anymore. That is a certified downer.

I (or it could have been a close friend) received the long form in 2000. According to the information I (or a close friend) sent back, my house had six bathrooms and 11 exits to the home’s exterior.

To make sure the Census Bureau didn’t make a mistake and leave me off the receive-long-form list, I went to the gummit website: http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

I thought I wanted to peruse the site in English, but just to be sure, I clicked on the “select a language” icon. It was tough deciding between plain on American English and Shqip/Armenian, Cebuano, Dinka, Haitian Creole, Gujarati, llocano, Tamil or Urdu.

Being an adventurous soul, I clicked Dinka. Couldn’t read a single word. A couple of words looked like in order to pronounce them you had to make a popping noise by sticking your tongue in one nostril and flipping it downward.

I’m not ridiculing the census in general, because I understand the need for having factual data in regard to doling out federal dollars.

What I am ridiculing is the eighth-grade way the gummit attempts to do a post-graduate exercise.

For example, why are the forms not available online? The gummit has an answer, for sure, but whatever it is, it’s not a good one. Look at the money an online survey would save; look at the savings in manpower alone.

It’s a mess, as is most things mandated by the gummit of the people, by the people and for the people.

Wonder what the Census Bureau will do when they get a form mailed back … in Dinka?

Oh, forgot, it’s the gummit. They probably have a legion of Dinkaites waiting to translate the durn thing.

After all, it’s not their money they’re spending.