Master Caution

Current Balance: $600.00 $300.00

Well, it turns out my quest to document every last penny of the six hundred dollar tax incentive check the government sent me is going to be easier than I thought: I only got 300. The IRS did half the work for me! Thanks, Uncle Sam!

I don’t know what I read wrong or what changed, but I could have sworn I got a notification saying I was eligible for 600. Well, it’s just one more battle lost in the psychic war between me and pieces of paper with important numbers on them.

(P.S. Does anyone else find it awesome that George Bush is book-ending his presidency with $300 checks? What did you lose for six hundred dollars over the last 8 years?

a. Dignity

b. Self-Respect

c. Civic Pride

d. Your Job

e. Six Hundred Dollars)

I’m going to stick to my original plan: cash the check and document the money spent as I spend it, down to the penny. I’m betting it doesn’t last through the summer. Not because I’m hard up or I won’t be able to control my spending; I’m in a much better financial situation than I was when I started this column. I have a steady job, my rent’s up-to-date, and my bank account is in the black.

However, the national trend is in the other direction. Food and fuel prices are up while wages are down. The economy has ground to a near halt, posting only modest growth which most experts link to the incentive checks, according to a recent NY Times article. Jobs are down across the board — except in food service. Luckily for people like me, most Americans still don’t know how to make a sandwich.

I’m not sure what my government wants me to spend the money on to help stem the tide. I know I need a bike and a sleeping bag. I know my wireless and electric bills are past due by at least a month. I know I owe my friends and loved ones for everything they gave me when I was really hard up last month and the month before that. I know I want to lie naked on a beach with a rum drink in one hand and body parts in the other.

Even sandwich makers have dreams. Johnny, start the counter.

Take an hour and check this out while it’s still available.

Tim Russert died today of a heart attack while doing a voiceover.

To go along with its death-of-a-newsman coverage, the AP ran a series of reactions to the death of Tim Russert. All of these would be admirable if not given by many who probably wished Russert dead long before the unexpected took its course.

I apologize in advance to his family and friends, but he wasn’t the greatest journalist in the world or American history. I don’t say that in ironic understatement, the way you would say the Milwaukee Brewers aren’t necessarily the most successful of baseball clubs. I say it because of the deep insult and dishonor that has been done by those pretending to honor and laud the man.

Let’s go punch-for-punch from the AP reaction-piece:

“I think I can invoke personal privilege to say that this news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice. He’ll be missed as he was loved - greatly.” - Tom Brokaw, NBCNews anchor emeritus.

No quarrel here. A colleague saluting the fallen. I don’t know their personal history and it could be lip service, but I have a congenital difficulty disbelieving anything that comes out of Brokaw’s mouth.

“We have lost a beloved member of our NBC Universal family and the news world has lost one of its finest. The enormity of this loss cannot be overstated.” - NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker.

Bullshit. If the “NBC Universal family” name-drop wasn’t proof enough, the final sentence should clue you in that Zucker viewed the loss of Russert in parity with anyone else employed by him; he was a financially calculable asset lost to bad timing, not a person. It’s corporate boilerplate and no one deserves that on their headstone.

“Tim epitomized excellence in journalism and unflinching commitment to the craft. Our profession has lost a stellar journalist.” - Sylvia Smith, president of the National Press Club.

More boilerplate. I feel like if I’d ever worked a day at a professional publication she’d say the same thing about me, which is nice…ish, but it’s a sound bite. Even in your worst imaginations of Russert, even if you believe that he was a soulless careerist devoted to squeezing the lowest form of communication out of his interview subjects, not even a sound bite artist deserves a sound bite memorial from a fellow journalist.

“As the longest-serving host of the longest-running program in the history of television, he was an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. Tim was a tough and hardworking newsman. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews. And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.” - President Bush

Come on, dude. You’re a president that so notoriously hates journalists that you’ve changed the paradigm for White House reporting. Just shut the fuck up and let us honor our dead.

“There wasn’t a better interviewer in television. Not a more thoughtful analyst of our politics. And he was also one of the finest men I knew.” - Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Less genuine than Bush. Fuck that last sentence.

“He was truly a great American who loved his family, his friends, his Buffalo Bills, and everything about politics and America. He was just a terrific guy.” - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

I’m cool with this one. I don’t know from personal experience how “terrific” he was, but the rest at least sounds accurate to McCain’s mind.

“He delighted in scooping me and I felt the same way when I scooped him. When you slipped one past ol’ Russert, you felt as though you had hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league.” - Bob Schieffer, host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

Ol’ Russert. Home run off the best pitcher in the league. I don’t know what to think about this one, except to ask, when in the last five years has either of these guys scooped the other on something worth scooping/being scooped by?

“Today, broadcast journalism lost one of its giants, who will be remembered along with names like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. The city of Buffalo has also lost its favorite son, who loved his city and its hometown team, the Bills.” - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

I wish I could somehow see how long after the news of Russert’s death reached Pelosi’s office it took her interns to Google “Tim Russert,” “Buffalo,” and “Journalism.”

I don’t want to keep going. The other quotes are as preening and full-of-shit as you could ask for. What a terrible way to send a journalist off: lying. And not even a good, hard lie someone could call out, but fake sentiment. It’s easy to befriend a dead man; he’s not there to tell people what you really think.

I never particularly sought out Russert for truth, but I enjoyed the Buffalo connection and I enjoyed watching him more than others on his network and in his medium. But I can honestly say I didn’t know much or anything about the soul of the man, where his ethics or credentials came from. And neither did many of the politicians that submitted sound bites to this article. They did it because they know Russert has a base of fans that they want to impress or enlist, and so they spoke, venally, to his honor, regardless of their actual thoughts of the man or his profession.

In other circles, we merely raise our glasses, toast the game, and go to work.

Make Wealth History has an eye-opening post on the conflicts that arise over access to fresh water as populations increase and sources deplete for a variety of reasons from global warming to simple human waste.

Some highlights (with my own, independently discovered sources in parentheses):

-In the past 50 years, there have been 37 armed military conflicts over freshwater access (PDF - Pacific Institute)

-For more than 200 days of the year, China’s Yellow River dries up before reaching the sea (Earth Policy Institute)

-Farming uses 80% of America’s water supply and the government subsidizes agriculture’s water use to the tune of $3 billion per year (I got smaller numbers from the USGS here and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development [OECD] on page 2 of a PDF here)

-”If you flushed a toilet today, you used more water in that one flush that 1 in 5 of the world’s people use in a whole day.” (Not sure where this is from or how to verify it - help?)

Read the full story at Make Wealth History here.

The U.S. government will be sending out economic stimulus checks on a timed schedule based on the last two digits of the taxpayer’s Social Security number. According to the IRS website, my bracket of paper checks will be mailed “no later than” June 27.

Which means, of course, more months of barely scraping by, bouncing checks and saving money until I receive my check some time in July. By then, what with all that scraping and saving going on, I won’t need the money like I need it now.

Things have been tight, to say the least. I moved back to Buffalo from Boston with no job on April 1, and I finally got a steady job a week and a half ago. I haven’t gotten my first check. I’ve been buying food at gas stations with outdated credit card software because I know the transaction will go through and I’ll be able to walk out with something, even though I know it will be sinking my checking account further into the red and creating more overdraft charges for when I actually get some money in the bank. Things like cable Internet service or staying current on my cell phone bill that were previously just expenses now seem more like long term goals, something to start a change jar for like a trip to Six Flags or a new bike.

Now this. This idiotic Band-Aid solution to the nation’s financial problems. As a matter of policy, I don’t even want the check. The idea is to give everyone $600 and hope for the best. Hope they spend it in ways that stimulate a flagging economy. Hope they don’t save it or use it to pay off some debt like they should. It’s not a government assistance program, it’s not really government at all. We are being handed a modest sum and told to fend for ourselves. It’s individualistic and it misses the root of the problem: the people who need this money the most aren’t getting by on $600 checks. Between rent and the groceries and transportation costs and utilities– the money’s gone before we get it in the bank.

And so I disagree with the program. But, of course, I need the money. And there was constant noise about how May, May would be the month when we’d start to see this small, irresponsible brand of relief. Now I have to wait two more months.

It’s a good thing I listed my father’s address on my tax return. I’d done it because I was moving at the time and didn’t have an apartment yet in Buffalo. As it stands, my check will be even more delayed because my father will have to forward it from Albany. Let’s hope that after these next two months I’m not evicted, with the bank holding everything I own, forced to move back to my father’s to receive my check on time.