The Administration's Sixth Sense

by Russ Roberts on May 15, 2009

in Stimulus

Well this (HT: Drudge) is a really pioneering effort by the President to stimulate the unstimulatable:

This week, thousands of people are getting stimulus checks in the
mail. The problem is that a lot of them are dead. A Long Island woman
was shocked when she checked the mail and received a letter from the
U.S. Treasury — but it wasn't for her.

Antoniette
Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But
when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to
her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He'd been
a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the
United Stated for a seven-month visit in 1969.

The Santopadres are not alone. The Social Security Administration,
which sent out 52 million checks, says that some of those checks
mistakenly went to dead people because the agency had no record of
their death. That amounts to between 8,000 and 10,000 checks for
millions of dollars.

Perhaps the President doesn't realize that outside of Chicago, this is not a crucial voting bloc.

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  • indianajim

    M. Farmer wrote:"They'll soon be sending checks out to the unborn to secure future votes."


    Yes; since they are sending checks to the dead they have lots of checks to send: to the aborted.

  • Ray Gardner

    I tend to distrust the state for more nefarious reasons, but this is a good example of why we shouldn't trust the government.

  • Larry Sheldon

    Will ACORN get thrown under the bus for not telling him which of the people who voted for him were known to be dead at the time?

  • True_Liberal

    TrUmPiT:


    You won.


    We lost.


    Now shut up!


    8-P

  • S Andrews

    Politicians can't think beyond the next election cycle. The unborn are least of their concerns.

  • dg lesvic

    Ryan Fuller,


    I'm afraid your delicious wit has been lost on our own deadheads here.


    You wrote:


    "If zombies movies are accurate, and I believe they are, then the dead have a higher marginal propensity to consume than anyone."


    And to vote Democratic.


    "A zombie has no will of his own. You see them sometimes walking around blindly with dead eyes, following orders, not knowing what they do, not caring."


    "You mean like Democrats?"


    Bob Hope, Ghost Breakers, 1940

  • Randy

    Interesting point, there Martin. Along the lines of "no taxation without representation". If we're borrowing their future wages, they should have the right to vote.

  • ZING!

  • Bob D

    Sort of gives the expression "Dumping money down a hole" (assuming Mr. Santopadres is buried) a new meaning. You could also use Keynes' method of digging holes and filling them up for the purpose of delivering the stimulus and employ people in the process. The Economists that are advising Obama are clearly brilliant in recognizing this pioneering process. They could deliver it in form of one dollar bills. Maggots and other insects would devour the greenbacks and fertilize the soil and soon after green shoots would appear. These green shoots are what everybody is looking for and would surely cause widespread jubilation and associated economic expansion by restoring confidence to the world. Socialism in action! I guess that is why I hear of so many people talking about burying their money in the backyard!

  • Morgan

    "They can be stopped, but not until people are ready to risk pain, loss, and possibly death in order to get it done."


    Given the country's financial situation, there might be another option. Purchased recognition of secession.

  • Methinks

    The last line cracked me up. Thanks!


    Unsurprising this, considering that they send checks to dead companies as well. Forget nation building, it's zombie building time.

  • vidyohs

    As fun as it is to think of this as revealing of our new administration, t'ain't so, this stuff has been going on since God invented dirt, or at least since 1789.


    It's what governments do. The bigger the government, the largest the bureaucracies, the more certain waste through stupidity is going to happen.


    The truth, what Russ mentions above, is just a teeny tip of the humongus iceberg of waste. Waste in ways, quantities, and regularity that simply overwhelm you with sickness when you know of it.


    It is why I take the attitude that I do.


    Everyone of those dollars wasted, require one of us to labor to produce it.


    I can think of nothing more eloquent to say about it than that.


    There are those fools who say, "well, in order to get the dollars that do good, we have to accept that there are going to be dollars that are wasted."


    No, we don't.


    Even in the coming close to doing good, such as roads, the government still manages to squander in waste, and graft, enormous sums of money.


    I saw on Yahoo the headline "Economists see end of recession by the end of the year", as I came to the Cafe. 53 top economists say it'll be over by the end of the year.


    Would these 53 be some of the same ones that talked down the economy for the last 8 years and can now safely talk it back up now that the socialist have total control of our government? I imagine so.


    There is no need for the socialist to take us to utter poverty and degradation in standard of living, they have control in an unstoppable way now, which is the purpose of the whole exercise of destroying a people to create fear and to cry out for government salvation.


    They can be stopped, but not until people are ready to risk pain, loss, and possibly death in order to get it done.

  • John

    http://www.nikkicraft.com/images/iseestupidpeople.jpg

  • Martin Brock

    They'll soon be sending checks out to the unborn to secure future votes.

    If the unborn could vote, even if the post-born could vote for the first 18 years, Social Security might be less of a problem. If we extend the franchise to children and entitle their parents to cast the votes, just as parents are entitled to make countless other decisions for their children, that might help.

  • Maybe it's a payback to many of the same people who voted for him? ;-)

  • Andrew C. I think you mean that Zombies have a high propensity to consume anyone...


    I don't think the type of consumption that people do matters in the Keynesian model either, otherwise, we would have to make a distinction between spending and stimulus, which would put a serious wrench in the gears of our current administration's "mandate"...

  • They'll soon be sending checks out to the unborn to secure future votes.

  • vidyohs

    Russ,


    "Perhaps the President doesn't realize that outside of Chicago, this is not a crucial voting bloc."


    You obviously haven't heard much about Guadelupe County, Texas. The dead are a very crucial voting block, they delivered Lyndon Johnson his first Senate seat.


    Ain't no shucks in a Texan's bed, we are way out in front.

  • Babinich

    Who'd have thunk it? The best and the brightest; the stewards of our tax dollars making such a mistake.


    The Tabula Rasa's boast of fighting the "culture of corruption" is laughable; they ARE the culture of corruption.

  • Crusader

    TrUmPiT - ESAD. I'm sure you know what that means.

  • TrUmPiT

    It's actually a felony for someone to cash a dead persons check by forging their name or by some other way. Mail that check back, Russ; you have a pulse. It may even be against the law for a zombie to try to cash his own deceased self's check. I have a book on zombie law written by a real zombie to fact check that point of law. I think most law books are written by zombie lawyers anyway. In fact, I think President Obama should appoint a liberal zombie to counteract the right-wing zombies that currently sit on the Supreme Ct. They were responsible for our first zombie president ever, and the rest of us getting the shaft. You know who that gruesome ghoul was, without needing so much as a hint.

  • Gil

    But doesn't the U.S. have some sort of estate tax?

  • Ryan Fuller

    "The multiplier effect still applies when you're dead!"


    If zombies movies are accurate, and I believe they are, then the dead have a higher marginal propensity to consume than anyone.

  • Andrew C

    Although, ask any Keynesian, and they'll tell you that it doesn't matter who the money goes to, just that it's out there. The multiplier effect still applies when you're dead!

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