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ATTLEBORO - A 74-year-old blind woman has been told a lien will be put on her South Attleboro home if she doesn't come up with a penny she owes on an outstanding utility bill.
This is not a hoax, this happened the other day in MA. Instead of simply paying off this blind woman's .01 debt, the local governing board mailed her (read .42 stamp plus paying the employee) a letter telling her to pay up or else!
How many of us non-government people would have taken a penny out of our pocket, out of our ashtry, off the darn floor and taken care of this? Probably everyone reading this.
America is not what is used to be. The governement is for the people guy, huh? Try again.
If the government employee had simply paid the bill he or she would be subject to dismissal because they broke the rules and the Law. Governments are not allowed the option of being sensible.
I suspect if the bill was from a privately owned utility they would have attached her accounts by now or cut off her electricity. Private corporate industry is far more ruthless than government and is not constrained by sympathy or sense. If the utility was owned by a proprietor he could have simply canceled the charge or forwarded the penny onto next month's bill.
Let's not get so dramatic. You forgot to mention the critical part of the story that the billing was automated.
From: wbztv.com - Attleboro Overdue Penny Bill For Blind Elderly Woman Settled (http://wbztv.com/watercooler/overdue.attleboro.bill.2.867375.html - broken link)
"As City Collector Deb Marcoccio displayed those items today, she was also quick to insist that she's not the bad guy in all of this.
"When these notices go out, I don't know whether they owe one cent or a thousand dollars," Marcoccio told us. "I was just doing the job the way the law requires me to."
Her office sends out more than 100,000 similar notices each year. They are spat out and mailed by computer -- without the benefit of human eyes.
Marcoccio acknowledged that jumping through hoops to collect a penny doesn't make much sense from any standpoint, and said she would have intervened -- had she only known. In any event, Eileen Wilbur's outstanding bill is now settled."
As it turns out, in this particular case, dramatics weren't so warranted. However, with what the govt. has done recently would it really surprise anyone had they made such a fuss? Funny how they have a system set up that automatically sends these notices out when the govt. themselves owe how much? The newscast I heard from Wisconsin didn't have all the facts at the time, or didn't report them, but it's so hard to give government the benefit of the doubt these days.
Location: Everybody is going to hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for-B Marley
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TNKY
ATTLEBORO - A 74-year-old blind woman has been told a lien will be put on her South Attleboro home if she doesn't come up with a penny she owes on an outstanding utility bill.
This is not a hoax, this happened the other day in MA. Instead of simply paying off this blind woman's .01 debt, the local governing board mailed her (read .42 stamp plus paying the employee) a letter telling her to pay up or else!
How many of us non-government people would have taken a penny out of our pocket, out of our ashtry, off the darn floor and taken care of this? Probably everyone reading this.
America is not what is used to be. The governement is for the people guy, huh? Try again.
Not saying this is true or not but I heard the exact same story years ago about an elderly person in Fairbanks, Alaska who owed one cent in taxes.
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