More mess, disappointing but not surprising

Yesterday I headed back to the local Wells Fargo branch to try to get another wrinkle in my mom’s estate ironed out.  In the last week I received two refund checks in my mom’s name.  One was for her auto insurance policy and the other was from her Medicare supplement, neither check was for a large amount of money.  My hope was since my mom’s bank accounts, which are now closed, were housed at Wells Fargo, that they could possibly still cash the checks for me.  Well I was there for quite a long time but the short answer is no, they could not help me.

I then decided to appeal to the companies that issued the checks instead.  I contacted each of them and asked if the checks could be reissued in my and my siblings name with an OR in between the names so any of us could cash them.  Surprisingly both companies agreed to do so if I jump through some additional hoops.  Of course until I have the checks in hand I am holding my breath.

There are also other large gaps in the settlement of my mom’s estate still open.  The stock certificates she owned have been turned over to Todd who in turn has a personal friend in Wells Fargo trying to get them converted into our ownership so they can be liquidated.  Mom’s IRA account has to be handled uniquely as well.  My naive thinking going in was it could be liquidated in a manner similar to her bank accounts.  Instead the IRA can only be distributed by establishing beneficiary IRA’s for each of us.  Only after these accounts are created can the funds be split among them.  After that it is up to us if we want to leave the money in there or pull it but if we pull it, it gets taxed as regular income.  At this point I am hoping everything is settled by the end of the year but who knows…

So last night Cindy and I watched a lot of election coverage, splitting the time between CNN, Fox News and NBC.  It was interesting seeing the contrast in coverage style between the three networks.  Interesting would not be the adjective I would use to describe the end result of the elections, both in Florida and nationally.   For that I would use words like depressing or disappointing, but certainly not surprising.

Rick Scott secured a second slimy term as governor with a one point victory over Charlie Crist.  To add insult to injury, the amendment to legalize widespread medical marijuana had a majority of voters support it but not the 60% required to make it stick.  On a national level, the trend continued with Republicans gaining a majority in the senate to ensure that outside of executive orders by the president, nothing meaningful is going to happen in Washington for the next two years.  Obviously I am not happy with any of these outcomes but lets analyze them anyway.

In Florida I think the two biggest forces behind the governor vote outcome were money and apathy.  Rick Scott dumped something like $20 million of his personal fortune (after vowing to not use personal funds in this election) into negative advertising during the last two weeks of the campaign.  He flooded every possible media outlet with his awkward, shining cranium slinging two fisted mud non-stop.    Hell my blog had a Rick Scott Google ad running on it yesterday for cripes sake.

Voter apathy on the democratic side was the other culprit in this sad outcome.  Voter turn out in some major democratic areas was reported to be in the 40% range.  Or from a wider angle, Florida’s population is around 19 million people, only 6 million of them cared enough to vote.   Surely better turn out would have resulted in a different outcome.

The medical marijuana defeat is another testament to the power of money to mold the minds of the general public like play doh.  At one point, support of medical marijuana in the past 6 months was polling in the 80%+ area.  Basically everyone thought it made sense.  All it took was 10’s of millions of dollars of carefully targeted and crafted advertising by those that have little moral/social concerns with MM but instead had large financial stakes in defeating it, to derail the movement.

In the big picture, my life does not change significantly no matter who is sitting in the governors office.  For “me firsters”, that is all the further their concern typically extends.  However I have this flaw that causes me to care about the bigger picture, caring about stuff like the environment, equal rights, wealth distribution, and caring for those less fortunate than I am.  I also admire honesty, likability, and composure in a political candidate. Anyone that watched any of the Crist/Scott debates should have seen there was a glaring bald black hole on one side of the stage in those regards.

I am very disappointed in the election results and would categorize it in the same realm as how I felt in 2004, when the worst president in my lifetime somehow managed to get reelected.  However perhaps that experience is what has somewhat dulled my senses with this outcome.  Florida residents have the governor they deserve.