PrintJanuary 19, 2009
Playing the Treasury Department's Game
Our tax dollars are hard at play. The Department of the Treasury has a game (that's right a computer game) on its website called "The Bad Credit Hotel."
Apparently, the government has no sense of shame. The game teaches us, the hoi polloi, how to stay out of debt and manage our money. The game is brought to us courtesy of our own tax dollars by a government that is incapable of balancing its own budget and is tens of trillions of dollars in debt.
Take a look at this screen. It tells us how to use our "pot of gold" to pay off our credit card debts. Except millions of Americans don't have a pot to pee in -- let alone a pot of gold.
The website reeks of hypocrisy. In fact, the pompous lecturing and condescending nature of the content of the website (given that the site is promoted by a federal agency intent on giving away trillions of dollars to big business, big labor, and big banking) is nauseating.
The game begins with the clerk of the Bad Credit Hotel saying, "You look lost. Come to solve the great mystery of credit? Welcome!"
The U.S. government giving the U.S. taxpayer advice on solving the great mystery of credit? As those credit card commercials on TV say, "Priceless!" or, better put, "Shameless!"
Not only is the website in bad taste, the game is poorly written and executed. The commands are confusing, the game play crawls at a snail's space. Every clue ends up being a patronizing little lecture telling the player how to spend his or her own money.
Our government is literally drowning in debt. For the Treasury Department to waste money on a poorly written, boring, disdainful computer game is another tiny little indication of how far this great country has fallen.
Hat tip: Otis A. Glazebrook (IV!)
