Postcard mailed to Americans to boast of Trump’s role in stimulus checks cost $28 million

This reminds me so much of a scene from Pan’s Labyrinth where people are lined up to receive a free loaf of bread. All the while, some army officer is shouting a little speech over and over about how “This is our daily bread in Franco’s Spain!” and how “The reds lie when they say there’s hunger in Spain!” etc. This is also printed on every bag of bread.

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Spanish uses 'long scale" billions, so “$2.2 billones” is 2.2 million millions, while the same quantity in American English (which uses ‘short scale’ billions, i.e., 1 billion=1 thousand millions) would be “2.2 trillion.”

The Spanish translation of the letter is correct.

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My dad gets Trump reelection letters. I read them aloud to him. The’re FULL of grammatical errors. Usually tense, which IMO means they’re just cutting and pasting their info and never proofreading. I’d like to think it’s an inside job, but I fear it’s more of “the best people.”

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Could it be intentional code-switching to demonstrate that they ain’t no liberal educated elite?

They could also be weeding out people who can sniff out a scam. There’s a reason Nigerian scammers are so obvious in their emails

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It’s appalling. I’ve got friends who worked for in the Obama White House and I’ve got friends who worked in the George W Bush White House and all of them took a pay cut to be there and all of them had careers they could get right back to if things didn’t work out or there was some political Rubicon they didn’t care to cross. So many of these grifters in the Trump White House seem to see this as the best job they’ll ever get and their value when this is over is only going to be based on whether they kept favor with the Trumpistas.

That anyone could publish this illiterate shit with a President’s name on it (any President) is terrible. That anyone can keep their job after doing so is appalling.

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we have a criminal president that makes nixon look like a total amateur

extracting millions for every golf trip, extracting millions for election marketing, taking congressionally approved billions and awarding it to cronies without oversight

spent three years sitting on his thumbs and letting everyone whisper the most destructive policy ideas into his head, waking up in the fourth year to go into campaign mode 10+ months out

the thing is, he keeps ratcheting the crazy up another notch the closer it gets to November to keep the media moving on and not dwell on the previous brain-fart (they dutifully obey but not with “her emails” hmm)

so what’s october going to be like? CDC completely shutdown? no more stats published at all by executive order? oh more likely HIS hand edited stats published as official, that’s the most likely - he’ll lie and insist people are getting the vax in October and the press will treat that seriously, elevating it

imagine December if he wins when congress is out of town, hell imagine if he -loses- and has absolutely no reason to hold back at all

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I hate it when the press forwards critic’s claims the Trump somehow bungled to Covid response. He didn’t goof. He weaponized Covid to get the most meyhem possible. This little “fuck you” to the liberals is just another part of that strategy.

I really wish this would get more media coverage. I was really worried to receive an unexpected letter from the IRS, then incensed when I opened the letter and realized how much money must have been spent to massage a petty tyrant’s ego.

In my case, the IRS mailed a paper check to me in Europe despite having my direct deposit information on file. Then they mailed this stupid letter – again across an ocean – a couple of weeks later to tell me I was going to receive a stimulus check.

And since some folks might be confused as to why a check would be mailed to Europe: Yes, Americans overseas received stimulus checks, provided their AGI in 2018 or 2019 was low enough. And the standard deductible on foreign income is pretty high (I want to say it was $103,000 for 2019, though my memory may be off), so there are probably a lot of high-income Americans overseas who nevertheless received a full cut. For that matter, I know of people who spent a short time working in the US in 2018 and earned enough to have to file a tax return, and much to their surprise suddenly got a $1200 check (and presumably a Trump campaign letter). Some of them don’t even have a US bank account to cash it anymore.

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At 74 I feel a responsibility to continue caring for the planet where I hang out (Earth usually). I do agree that we need an upper age limit for legislators but not because we quit caring at 70. I don’t understand the concerns of the young inheritors of society as well as they do. There are days when I don’t feel like I could do justice to more than a handful of burning issues. Climate change scares the hell out of me, I want my kids, grandkids and great grandkids to see the earth in its grandeur. This spring I’ve planted about 20 native trees around the property, I like the idea that my grandkids may tell their grandkids about planting those trees. I’d like to live on in their thoughts. If it all sounds too much like a Hallmark Card, I don’t give a shit. However my age has nothing to do with my caring about climate change.

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Propping up the Failing Post Office!

It’s only money. Taxpayer money. There’s more where that came from. Until the taxpayers die. That’ll be a problem.

Y’know what I really miss? Tax-funded free love communes with alien crop circles and tachistoscope mindcontrols. And atomic helicopters. Why wasn’t the money spent on atomic skycars so we could reopen America fastest? I smell a plot.

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And look out for those Stimulus Debit Cards – they are rife with fees no matter which way you turn.

Enormous grift for the issuing bank to skim millions and millions of dollars from people who desperately needed the money.

Your bank, if you have a bank, might be able to transfer all the money from the card to your account, but you need to see a teller and - guess what - the lobby to your bank is closed till further notice.

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A lot of people who describe themselves as fiscally conservative are furious with this administration and this Congress, which are anything but.

Nitpicking slightly, but it looks like this is referring to the postcard with social distancing guidelines, which went out before the stimulus check program happened and was unrelated to it. I did get that postcard, and never got anything related to the stimulus checks.

Of course not! I’m pretty damn sure that the presidency has the same franking privileges that Congress does.

Actually, Nixon was a pro at it while Trump is just a bumbling buffoon.

I got one of these like a month or so ago a week after I got my payment.

Im suprised so many hadnt seen these till now, I figured him being him, he would have sent this steaming pile of bullshit first.

It infuriated me getting a letter from the asshole, because I knew he had wasted my taxes to send out his little congratulatory letter.

I’d like to send him a letter- a bill, for the postage and paper required to notify him of how much of my money he wasted and I demand he personally repay.

If millions of people did this, it would drice the point home into even his blockheaded skull

This post seems to be mixing up two things. There was the coronavirus postcard that looked something like this:
image

If it didn’t have Trump’s name on it, it would have been a non-partisan set of good practices to follow during the pandemic.

Then there was a letter about stimulus payments that went out that had Trump’s signature on it and was practically campaign literature:

Until I read the article I wasn’t sure which thing was being referred to here because they seemed to be getting conflated.

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For some Saudi prince looking to shmeer Trump while at Mar-a-lago… that’s one trip.

And it’s worth noting for the international boingers that (as was mentioned upthread) you get the propaganda letter as an official piece of mail from the IRS, which in any other situation is one of the things you never want to get.