Tax Dollars Are Your Dollars

I put this up, then took it down a few weeks ago. I've decided to put it back up. The point is a good one.

How should tax dollars be spent? That is the question for most government issues, no.

A simple test should be this: the politician wanting to spend your tax dollars on his "pet project" should be required to explain to the taxpayer why the money would be better spent on his project than on your health care, feeding your family, paying your bills, giving to your church or saving for your retirement. Why? Because when he takes your money to spend on stupid projects, he is keeping people from spending their own money on their choices.

While I continue to get e-mails begging me to fight the attack on public broadcasting (and just why can't Big Bird and Elmo be supported privately? I pay just as much for those DVDs as I do Dora the Explorer) and the NEA, all I can think is that someone is going to have work longer and earn more to pay for retirement.

In Colorodo, the taxpayers just spent $5,000 on "art." The display is called sex toys on hooks. I only found this one small picture.

"Obviously, this is offensive and in extremely poor taste," said Governor Owens. Governor Owens questions the use of state money. "It serves as an important reminder that whenever tax dollars are involved, government must be cautious and prudent," he said in a prepared statement sent to 9News Wednesday morning.

That is a start. And this grant is apparently no longer available. But why, when state and Federal budgets are stretched, do we still give tax dollars to entertainers who, like the rest of us, should supporets themselves selling their products in the private sector? And why is it that a panel of artists always choose the worst "art" to approve for funding? While I understand that art can be subjective, most of normal people know unimaginative crap when they see it.

This isn't like the ugly art governments buy to put in front of their buidings. At least then the government is buying and using that ugly sculpture. This is a simple grant to the artist who then gets to keep (and maybe sell) his art.

It is a crime. I wonder how the politician would explain to a tax payer that $5,000 was better spent on hanging sex toys than the taxpayers' child's educational expenses.