July 25, 2024
Thursday Open Comments
For those thinking of fleeing, here are some details worth considering.
Karen seems to be having fun. More power to ya, Karen!
Aside from dealing with obnoxious French bureaucracy, she has discovered she’s got to deal with complications dreamed up by obnoxious US politicians.
The bank account business she mentions is one of the reasons I came to detest Chuck Schumer back when I was an American expat living in Germany. He was among the loudest of congressional loudmouths when it came to attempting to punish American expats with the US tax code. This was sometime in the late 1990s. The attitude appeared to be that, uniquely in the world, no American should ever be able to escape the federal government’s tax reach while living abroad, no matter how law abiding you otherwise may be—even though you don’t live in the US or burden the US government in any way. Prior to that, the US said to its expats what most other countries say to their citizens: “Just abide by the local tax laws while you live abroad; what you do there for a living is not our business, at least until you repatriate that income and savings.”
Schumer’s name stuck with me because of his outspoken hate-mongering for expats and his presumption that they/we were all greedy hogs, making illicit sums from which he wasn’t getting his cut, and thus they/we must be treated as financial criminals for failing to file IRS forms—even to be double-taxed.
The law was then written in a way that the US government could go hold overseas banks liable for having US expatriate account holders and failing to file US federal tax information on those individuals. Needless to say, US expatriates became toxic overnight once the law was enacted. Foreign banks would make themselves eligible for punitive action by the US government for failing to open their books to the IRS, hiring US accountants and tax attorneys. I’m sure those interests paid him well for bringing them business created out of thin air by force of law that previously didn’t exist. Meanwhile, if you were an expat, you had to scramble to find a local bank that would dare to do business with you for fear of getting on the wrong side of the US federal government.
In sum: the authoritarian streak among American politicians isn’t something new, and it’s certainly not something the GOP dreamed up under Trump. No, Schumer is just another of the American mini-Mussolinis in public office, eager to write laws to make your livelihood illegal unless you pay him or his financial backers what amounts to protection money for the privilege. End of rant.
Thank you. Don't like Schumer, myself.
Good morning. In my latest effort to enter the modern world, I set up a Gmail account for the new Envirothon corporation and linked it to the corporate bank account (achieved Tuesday), so that we can send and receive payments using Zelle, which I am reliably informed is not actually called Zelda.
Then, I got my phone to show emails to the new account in the same inbox as my regular email. However, Vlad the Son (E) and I bogged down in getting this to work on my PC, because I can't remember the password for my regular Gmail account, because passwords are stupid.
I have to wait for my husband to get home from running so he can help break me in to my account again. Maybe I need one of those password notebooks like they sell for old people, so that when you lose it, someone can get into every single account you have.
Well, I have my new office mostly setup. Long story short, the university needs to cut costs so they are hiring more adminisitrators. 🤦♂️If you want to know if UD is hiring, just look for "belt tightening" emails from the VP of Finance...When I pointed that out correlation in Academic Senate he was not amused.
Anyway our Dean needs more Dean office space. They decided not to backfill my secretary's position, so I don't need a secretary's office (officially a budget cut, but since they hired 4 other people...). So I moved back to my former office.
I did do something both beautiful and sneaky. My office is slightly larger than the standard faculty office, but it also has an anteroom about 7' x 13' (a little larger than that). Connie (my now deceased secretary) was crammed into that space; it was the justification for the move. So I converted the anteroom to a prayer chapel. Katie made a stained glass window quilt, we hung it on the wall. We put the prayer box in there, plus some iconic displays/symbols/etc.
When the Dean asked me to move, he inquired if I wanted to move back up into the tower, I said that'd be fine, but we'd need a 2nd office for the center's materials. He got the hint. The Dean would like my office as well for his next round of hires, but good luck eliminating the prayer room! 😉