No Check Till I’m Dead – Maybe?

I told my wife the other night that I would have to be dead before I accepted a stimulus check from the Government. We lived through 14 years in the Navy and we could have received food stamps for 9 of those years but we refused. We were determined to make it on our own.

Today, we have a comfortable life and I would be one who would more likely have to pay for someone else’s stimulus check rather than get one myself. It irritates me that others will accept this money, some never having paid taxes in their lives, and not think twice about it. But look out, like anything else the federal government gets their hands in, the system is screwed up.

Recently, a New York woman, expecting a stimulus check of her own, opened the envelope only to find a stimulus check for her father, Romolo Romonini. Now I know, sometimes things get delivered to the wrong person, but this ladies father was dead. Yes, apparently he had made the same pledge I made to my wife – well, not really. It seems Mr. Romonini died some 34 years ago…in Italy.

The Social Security Administration is sending out the checks and I will give them this, at least this gentleman was a U. S. citizen. The problem is, he left for Italy in 1933 as a U. S. Citizen and only came back once afterwards for a seven month visit in 1969. He was a citizen, but never registered for social security and was never on their rolls.

So how did he get a check, well brace yourself. According to the Social Security Administration he is not alone. Of the 52 million checks sent out, between 8,000 to 10,000 will go to dead people because there is no record of their death. That is rather humorous since not only did they not have a record of Mr. Romonini’s death, but they had no record of him ever registering for social security in the first place.

I guess, looking back at that promise to my wife, I better be careful. If a check shows up in my mailbox I will be looking over my shoulder because the grim reaper can’t be too far behind.

The checks in the mail,
Bill