Not Yours to Give

[kandrathe]

Ridicilous, as is any extreme. Why have a police force, if people should be expected to be wholly responsible in keeping 'their own house' in order? I am not certain if the police benefit those rich enough to afford their own private army as equally as the rest of us. At least, if the words of certain posters here were taken at face value, some of us are supposed to hate their guts.

No matter what government 'service' that you think is 'necessary' that you name, I'm sure I can point out an example wherein it benefits some people more then others. A check for the fire victims is hardly unique in that respect. Yes, it benefits a much smaller group of people. Yes, you can argue about whether or not that specific bill was appropriate. However, it isn't an excuse to rule out the matter entirely.

As for your bus example, it isn't hard to find examples of tax money getting spent on stupid things. To draw the conclusion that taxes should be nigh-abolished from that would be jumping to extremes.

I'm thinking local for a minute, because the scale is more appropriate. I need roads, police, firefighters, sewer, water, and the public school to be funded by my local government. These need to be modest and adequate, not lavish and extreme. The tendency is for spending to be lavish and extreme when it comes to taking away the money from taxpayers. Your trolley example is perfect, though, because the money was taken from people to build it, and will continue to be taken every year to maintain it. If it was a good idea and fiscally sound, then the government would not have had to build it.

I think the trend scales exponentially when it gets to the State and Federal level, as the projects tend to be more of a drop in the bucket. We are at the place though where the boondoggle drops have accumulated to be nearly a full bucket and people point at the needed services for reductions.

Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding the founding of my State, "In 1855 a group of St. Paul businessmen became interested in promoting the town formed the Saint Peter Company, the town was renamed St. Peter. The president of the Company was Willis A. Gorman, Territorial Governor of Minnesota. In 1857 an attempt was made to move the capital from St. Paul to St. Peter. Gov. Gorman owned the land on which the bill's sponsors wanted to build the new capitol building, and at one point had been heard saying, "If the capitol remains in Saint Paul, the territory is worth millions and I have nothing." At the time, St. Peter - a city in the central region of the territory - was seen as more accessible to the far-flung territorial legislators than St. Paul, which was in the extreme eastern portion of the territory, on the east bank of the Mississippi River. A bill was passed in both houses of the Territorial Legislature and was awaiting Governor Gorman's signature. A member of the Territorial Council (Senate) Joseph J. Rolette of Pembina (now in North Dakota), the son of a Canadian fur trapper and chairman of the enrollment committee, took the bill and hid in a St. Paul Hotel, drinking and playing cards with some friends as the City Police looked fruitlessly for him, until the end of the legislative session, too late for the bill to be signed. Rolette came into the chamber just as the session ended. One might say that the bill was an attempt to "rob Paul to pay Peter"."

I feel that politics and politicians have not changed. They are not on our side, they are not noble equitable legislators, and hardly represent the people.