Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The sorry state of the Union

I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night. That means one down, three to go. The thing about the SOU is that you really know what the president is going to say beforehand especially in this day and age of 24-hour news and the internet. And quite frankly President Obama has nothing to say that I want to hear. The only reason anybody wants to see it is to bask in the warm glow of the Dem chosen one.

Today I was watching CNBC and I saw Rep. Spencer Bacchus from my state, Alabama. He said something that is going to become a battle cry for Conservatives for the next four years.
"The government never solved anything by throwing more money at it."
We have known this for years. Look at the government school system. Every time we get a liberal president and congress we see the budget for government education explode. And every time it's like throwing money down a bottomless hole. It makes liberals think good about themselves and it placates some voters. But when everything is said and done it's just a useless waste of time. It always will be as long as teacher's unions are allowed to set policy.

Another example is the nation's infrastructure. When tax money goes to states and local communities, ostensibly to improve roads, bridges and levees, politicians, conservative and liberal alike, spend that money on pet projects. There was the instance in New Orleans where the local government spent infrastructure money meant for the levees on a fountain. A few years later Hurricane Katrina slammed into NO and the rest is history.

Just a few years ago there was the bridge collapse that was caused by stress fatigue and age. The money that should have been spent repairing that preexisting bridge was instead spent on building new structures just so politicians could get their names placed on them. And again people died.

In other words you have to change what you are doing to improve, not just throw money at it.

2 comments:

bint alshamsa said...

Actually, it was the Corps of Engineers who were responsible for the maintaining of the levees. The levee failure occurred because the Corps. ignored the warnings. It wasn't that they didn't have the money to work with. They did.

bint alshamsa said...

By the way, this wasn't technically a State of the Union address.