I try to stay away from politics. But sometimes I can’t, such as when its sanctimony is on display in adjoining headlines on two local front page stories in this morning’s local daily.
Headline 1: “Thousands protest federal spending”
Headline 2: “Water project reaps windfall”
That’s right. We held a tea party to haughtily throw tea boxes, including one labeled “Stimulus,” into Covell Lake. The same day we rejoiced in the fact the stimulus package provided a $56.5 million grant to speed completion of the Lewis & Clark Regional Water Project. The latter comes barely a week after the project received record funding in the federal budget.
Excuse me, but isn’t there a bit of a disconnect? Do the protesters, who also brought a pig wearing a “No More Pork” banner, want to ship the sides of ham for Lewis & Clark back to Washington? But then, I’m forgetting a cardinal rule of politics: if it’s yours, it’s pork; if it’s mine, it’s essential funding.
Of course, the organizers say the Covell Lake event “was not political” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Since this apolitical event focused on government spending and the federal debt, let me make an equally apolitical observation. Cost of the stimulus package: $152 billion. Cost of the Iraq War: Approaching $650 billion.
Even setting aside my understanding that construction projects and jobs generate tax revenue, rudimentary math tells me the latter plays a bigger role in the debt. But I suspect it wasn’t in any of the tea boxes at the party.
(Originally posted at KELOLand Blogs.)
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language“
