Thursday, January 29, 2009

Grumpy Old Man Complaining About the Government

It makes me feel like a grumpy old man to note: Obama signed an order delcaring Kentucky and Arkansas Federal disaster areas due to ice storms.

Now, ice storms have been occurring in these places since before any of the folks there decided to live there, but in the last several years, the federal government has to have responsibility if they lose power - not the power company?

This is in order to 'rush federal aid to the needy citizens' of those areas.

So...the federal government extracts tax dollars from everyone in the country. All of us who live in places that don't get hit with natural disasters. All of us who can and have lived through ice storms, blizzards and the like, sometimes without power. And reallocates those dollars to pay for ice storms where there have always been ice storms.

Huh?

In another example, the same thing leads us all to subsidize those who choose to live in the sun and fun of Florida. Each time there is a hurricane, the federal government pays for evacuations and some repairs. As one highly mature resident told me, "if we can spend $85 Billion in Iraq, then my government owes it to me to come help me when there is a hurricane." They assume the risk, we assume the cost.

In 1958 there were 7 disasters declared by the federal government. In 2008 there where 75.

The limited government that we the people brought on this land was designed to enable us to pursue happiness, not provide it for us. This continuing abuse of the taxing authority of the federal government needs to be limited to disasters which cannot be expected and therefore funded by the locality involved. If it is something that happens every year or every couple of years - an ice storm in Kentucky - then it isn't the feds problem.

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