COVID Incompetence...

 "According to Mark 11:12-13, God's messengers were not the only  ones who were incompetent. 'He [Jesus] was hungry. And on seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs'.

Imagine Jesus, the divine, holy, wisest of the wise not knowing that figs were out of season. Now allegedly Jesus could have performed a miracle and made figs magically appear, but preferred sour grapes, instead: Then he said to the tree 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again' (Mark 11:14)." --- G.M. Jackson, "The Jesus Delusion"

That quote is a wonderful description of life in what's left of New Yorkistan in the wake of the Great Sneeze of China.

In it, we discover Jesus is too lazy to even use some of that worthless miracle bullshit to feed himself and in a fit of high dudgeon decides the best thing to do is to curse the tree and render it incapable of ever being productive again.

Fuck the next guy who may need those figs to stay alive, right?

Because, you know, God is forgiving, omniscient and merciful that way.

It was already apparent to anyone not in a medically-induced coma and breathing with the aid of Cuomo Ventilator that gross negligence and stupidity have been the rules of the day for the last year, when we were originally asked to sacrifice two weeks of our freedoms in order to "flatten the curve", but it seems all we've accomplished is to flatten our lives.

If Governor Fuckface and his Rogue's Gallery of fake "Public" "Health" "Officials" were in front of me this morning, I'd flatten their fucking noses. Then I would make appointments to visit every other institution of local government these morons have tainted for the express purpose of becoming the General Motors of Bureaucratic Broken Noses.

It all began some months ago with a "speed camera" violation. The Overlord was caught traveling 3 MILES PER HOUR over the posted speed limit on a deserted road at 2:35 on a Sunday morning. For the life of me, I can't tell you what, exactly, I was doing out at that hour, but the photo enclosed with the "violation" is, in fact, my car, so I'm pretty sure I was in it. I did not receive the initial violation notification in the mail, so I did not pay the fine. I received a follow-up warning me that I owed this money a few months later.

So, I wrote a check and sent it off to the address listed in the notice. 

And then yesterday's mail saw another payment demand delivered. I have made an investigation: I have the cancelled check, so I know the Apparatchiks got the money. Somehow, they have failed to remove the violation. So, you call the handy 800 number included with the notice, only to discover that all the call centers are closed "due to the continuing COVID-19 crisis", but, the robotic voice helpfully explains, if you wish to clear this entire matter up, you can walk into any New York City Department of Finance center -- sure to be full with hundreds of people, including the types that originally brought COVID here, all in close proximity in violation of "Social Distancing" mandates -- and pay your fine in person.

This in a day and age where restaurants can't serve people a sit-down dinner, we can't have funerals, we can't go to church, schools are closed, etc, etc., because someone might get the sniffles.

And I could have dealt with that inconvenience easily, if not gracefully, had yesterday's mail not also delivered the news that my EZ-Pass account has been cancelled.

For those of you who don't know, EZ-Pass is an electronic toll-gathering system. One opens an account, stocks it with money, and instead of having to wait at toll booths or fish for change (change? This is New York; the bridge leading to my house costs $19 to cross), you are supplied with a little white box that has a radio transceiver and some microchips in it and you simply whoosh through the toll booth which has the required equipment to read your signal. Money is taken from the account every time you use the pass and the toll is paid.

Now, for reasons that are quite obvious, I do NOT give EZ-Pass (or any government agency) access to my personal bank accounts or credit cards whenever it can be avoided, a) because government workers are not very bright, otherwise they wouldn't be "government workers" and b) the opportunity for official fraud and mischief is too great. So, every few months I go to the local EZ-Pass payment center with cash and reload the account. It's not much because I don't travel all that often these days (even before COVID).

Other than a single trip to Manhattan (total toll cost: $16) to take Mrs. Overlord to her doctor, I have not used the EZ-Pass for a year. The receipt I have from the last visit I made to the payment center shows that I put $100 in the account (yes, I keep such things. I write off my business travel). Last June, EZ-Pass requested $46 from me by mail, claiming the account balance was sub-zero. Impossible! However, I sent the $46....and then I got another notice in September asking for another $46, and paid that. 

If you've attempted to call EZ-Pass at any time during the last year, you'll find no one available to take phone calls...because COVID. If you go to the EZ-Pass payment center, you will find it closed...because COVID.

I'm sure all of these "public employees" are still getting paid.

It's terrible enough to realize you live in a State where the "leadership" deliberately ran a months-long Power Point presentation that we now know was an exercise to hide the fact that government action killed 15,000 people, justified after-the-fact as a means of avoiding criminal prosecution, and necessary to "win" an election. But the "COVID excuse" has filtered down through all levels of local government and in consequence has revealed that the entire apparatus of government is rotten to it's roots, spoiled at it's core, and it's tentacles are dripping with a deadly poison of stupidity.

And should you spend the time and make the effort to rectify the results of all this incompetence, you discover that there is either no way to address your concern, or, doing so requires you break "emergency laws" enacted by the same State to do so. Of course, all of this has to do with the State collecting money; on the one hand, you can go to a payment center that violates every standing mandate regarding occupancy restrictions and risk getting ill rubbing elbows with the Proles (and then the State will deny you a vaccination because White Male is not "priority"), or you can give up in sheer frustration and keep writing checks that get cashed but not credited to your account(s).

In every way the State wins: the State treasury gets your money and even if they do so in error, you have no recourse because there is no one to complain to, the unionized fucktards who populate government offices get paid for not showing up and working, the ones who do show up to work will make your life a living hell of waiting on long lines of illegal immigrants and the denizens of the sketchier neighborhoods openly flouting mask requirements and sneezing and coughing to their hearts content, assuming you managed to dodge all the piles of human shit on the sidewalks outside the government building....

AND NO ONE IS HELD ACCOUNTABLE.

As we enter Year Two of the Szechuan Snotbubble, we have a year of the most-irrefutable evidence to examine and experiences to draw upon that shows that the current system DOES NOT WORK for anyone except those who are clients of the system, or those who run it.

Certainly not for the people who pay for it and who are oppressed and inconvenienced by it. Not to mention robbed by it.

Your newspaper or newscast today may make mention of the possibility that Governor Cuomo will be nailed to the proverbial wall. Take note that what he's being tied to the mast for is NOT the fact that a government apparatus was so grossly incompetent that people died due to it's actions, or that the crime was covered up, but that he may have made some very inappropriate and off-color remarks to a couple of people with tits (allegedly) who just...can't...deal.

I do not mean to make light of the "suffering" some broad may have undergone because she can't handle being propositioned by a troll...no, wait...fuck that. I am. In days gone by a woman in that situation would have either filed a lawsuit or just quit and found another job; now they all have to have a public execution in which they usually come off looking just as badly as the asshole who told them to "eat the whole sausage".

That the governor may have very clumsily propositioned you pales in comparison to the now established fact that his orders led to the deaths of thousands, that he did so knowing exactly what the consequences might be and that he did so for reasons both political and personal.

In the meantime, the real incompetence, the true lack of intelligence that guides the ruling apparatus -- and to a large extent, protects them -- becomes secondary to someone with a bruised ego and frothy vagina, despite a death toll sufficient to populate a small city. The fact that we're lorded over by gross incompetents, at our expense, that their dictates are contradictory, self-serving and ridiculous, and that all of it in some way has diminished our freedoms, or will contribute to future erosion of same, gets ignored.

As does the idea that such stupidity kills.

I seriously hope that Governor Andrew Cuomo gets what's coming to him. No one deserves it more. I also seriously hope that what finally sinks this sub-human shitbag is not the idea that he made crass remarks to some women, but that he's exposed as the leader of a quasi-police state that killed it's own citizens for no other reason than Public Relations.

The professional bureaucracy is very good at misleading the public into thinking it's malfunctions and outright complicity in crime is merely a matter of "mistakes" being made, the unexpected collision of "contradictory" regulation, "poor communications", etc. as a means of concealing it's obvious shortcomings -- which begin with the poor human capital selected either on the ability to pass an exam scientifically-structured to be passable by monkeys, or by political affiliation and personal relationship.

It also hides it's ineptitude behind the concept of Gigantism, i.e. that the apparatus of government is so big that the left hand does not always know what the right does.

So here I sit today, accused by the state of owing $50 for a traffic violation that I've already paid, and for having a toll account $46.55 underwater that I haven't used in months, unable to contact anyone in a position of authority to make inquiries or perhaps fix these issues, being threatened with loss of driver's license and having an account that I wasn't using outright cancelled.

All of it under the Sword of Damocles that is the threat of "collections" and I can't get a single person to answer a fucking telephone, but I'm certain they've all been vaccinated, paid over the last year for not working, and totally not responsible for any mishap, mix-up or shenanigans, all taking their cue for lack of responsibility, proper action, or even propriety, from a Governor avoiding murder charges by the media and legislature merely changing the subject to his poor taste regarding treatment of women.

Naturally, some or all of this is COVID's fault.

The Call Centers would be staffed, if not for COVID.

Your payments would be processed correctly, if not for COVID.

You would not have to enter a Government Payment Center to risk catching COVID, if not for COVID.

Andrew Cuomo would not be a murderer, if not for COVID.

A clutch of offended skirts would never have come forward with their stories, if not for COVID.

And the government response to it all is to curse the tree, i.e. punish the citizen. Because that's what people who think themselves Gods do when they find themselves out of magic tricks and better ideas.

COVID is not an excuse for anything, anymore. People may be waking up to this fact. The ones who are left here certainly are.