Thursday, November 16, 2006

Your tax dollars -- and journalist's grammar -- at play

The Galesburg Register-Mail tells us that the Dept of Ag has been giving out money without proper procedure, involving incomplete paperwork and such other omissions. In the AP article's first paragraph, it says:
The Agriculture Department on Wednesday acknowledged making improper payments to farmers worth more than $2.8 billion last year.
What I want to know is, why would a farmer worth more than $2.8 billion need money from the gummint, anyway? Yer darn tootin' it's improper! The regular Joe-Bobs need it more!

Jeepers!


My pet peeve: the author of the article also used "loan" as a verb: "...the agency loaned $9 million over six years to farmers who shouldn't have gotten loans." Ew. The word you were looking for, friend, is "lent" -- like the Catholic season of sacrifice, but lower case and secular. They were Money Lenders, not loaners.

1 comment:

EclectEcon said...

Loan, lend. Thank you, thank you, thank you! The misuse of these two words has LONG been a pet peeve of mine, too!