When will my economic stimulus check come: the 42 million dollar question....

Yesterday I got a notice in the mail from the IRS, labeled in big red letters: "ENCLOSED IS AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FROM THE IRS ON THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS ACT OF 2008.  DO NOT THROW AWAY!"  My first thought was twofold:  1) Apparently the IRS doesn't recognize that writing in all caps is poor form and is considered the print form of yelling and 2) The IRS assumes people routinely throw away correspondence from them.  While I frequently throw away junk mail without reading it, any unexpected letters from the IRS are typically read right away...

So I go to open this notice, and find that it isn't in an envelope -- it's actually one of those folded and sealed papers with the perforations on three sides that you have to tear parts off of to open, kind of like pay checks typically come in.  Okay...fine.  If they're so concerned about people throwing these things away without reading them, perhaps they'd make them simpler to open.  Some 40 seconds or so later, I'm able to read it, and discover exactly what they found so important:  a notice informing me that later this May, the government would be sending me a check. 

Now I've talked before about how worthless the Economic Stimulus Package is.  But this is almost worse.  Apparently, these stupid little notices cost the taxpayers almost 42 million dollars.  Yes, you read correctly.  According to NASA, a space shuttle costs about 1.7 billion dollars.  That means our government spent about 2.5% of the cost of a brand new space shuttle just sending out these notices.  The stimulus package itself is expected to cost around 145 billion dollars.  That's about 85 space shuttles. (From now on, I'm going to refer to all government spending in terms of space shuttles...)

So the IRS spent 42 million dollars simply to tell people that they'd be receiving a check in May.  Maybe.  From what I've read, this notice was sent out to thousands of taxpayers that don't even qualify for a check under the stimulus package because their income is so high.  So not only is the government wasting time and money sending out worthless notices, but some of the people who are getting them are simply getting reminded that the government likes to tax them far more than anyone else.  Bet they're glad they didn't throw those notices away...

To make matters worse, the notice ends with a statement reading "All individuals receiving payments will receive a notice and additional information shortly before the payment is made."  That's right...this notice's purpose was simply to inform people that sometime in the future, they'd be receiving another notice that would inform them that at yet another later date they'd be receiving a check.  Wow.

The next time a left-wing politician tells me they need to raise my taxes to support yet another worthless social program, I'm going to mail them a copy of this IRS notice, with a short note questioning how many poor people 42 million dollars could have fed.