So that is my check that is on the full story webpage of this piece (and I was on the air briefly at the top of yesterday's second broadcast hour). I was truly shocked that my family received a rebate check, let alone one for $1.00. I would imagine, like me, that most Americans thought that they would get either $1200 (+ extra for dependents)/$600/$300 or nothing at all, depending on their financial circumstances. Instead, it turns out that the IRS used some odd algorithm where, depending on your adjusted gross income (AGI), some people would get between $300 and $1 for their rebate. Some people received $2, $5, $10, $20, etc. At a particular AGI, you would get nothing.

Personally, I find the notion of a rebate of anything less than $20 ridiculous, largely because of the higher costs to process rebates at these levels. (In addition to the $1 check, we also received a letter from the IRS a month prior, stating that we would soon be receiving $1.00. Oy.)

I wish that, instead, the government would have pooled the funds given to me and the thousands of others who received $20 or less for their rebate and allocated these funds to lower income households where any extra dollars in their rebate would really help.

This morning, my fourteen-year-old daughter received an interesting lesson on how the press can intentionally or inadvertently filter and control the information that it passes along to the rest of us. We both found it amusing that after you both let the cat out of the bag about how much you (don't) make (obviously, I have no idea how high your salaries are, I just have a guess at how low they aren't). At the request of one listener, you alluded to, but refused to pass along the figure at which the government begins to cutoff the stimulus rebate. Although this response struck us as funny, it also showed us how easy it is for a reporter to control and obfuscate the information that flows to the rest of us. I'm sure many of your listeners would have benefited from learning that the rebate check begins to drop at $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples.

My stimulus check (aka money-that-belongs-to-us-taxpayers-anyway -- thanks for nothing, Mr. B.) was headed for my savings acct. until my car was "stimulated" by a tune-up that led to $1280 in work. How does Life always manage that kind of timing?!