No-help desk
Published 8:52 pm Wednesday, January 14, 2015
For an interminable wait, press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9, followed by the pound sign: Because of budget cuts, only about half of the 100 million people expected to call the IRS with tax questions this year will get to talk to an actual person. But first they’ll have to wait on hold for at least 30 minutes. And IRS staffers will answer only simple questions.
In fact, it’s going to be so bad that afterward you’ll want to cheer yourself up by calling Brad in Bangalore for help on programming your DVR.
Dodd-Frank? We light our cigars with that: Twenty-nine Democrats (including Rep. Rick Larsen of Washington) joined with nearly every Republican in voting Wednesday to ease the law that reins in the sort of activities by banks and Wall Street that triggered the financial meltdown and the Great Recession.
The bill was carefully written with the twin goals of loosening regulations on financial firms, and really annoying Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.
At least it’s a true statement: The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office in Florida laid down a new rug at the entrance at its headquarters, only to notice, two months later, that the rug said “In Dog We Trust” instead of “In God We Trust.”
The manufacturer needs to make a custom rug for its headquarters that says, “In spell check you cannot trust.”
— Mark Carlson, Herald staff
