You’ve heard it time and again. Some state or local official promotes a project or a legisaltive initiative because there’s a federal grant available. These sorts of “thinkers” will often implement long-term programs at great expense based on promises of “free money.” The Federal government is paying X percent of costs for Y number of years.
How can we pass that up?
We should, but they don’t, and there are consequences. Not the least of which is that they took it from someone somewhere.
Our readers understand that the government has no self-generated source of revenue. Someone else had to create value before the government could steal some under cover of law. If there were no jobs or incomes, there would be none for the government.
So, the ‘Free Money’ narrative is nothing more than carnival slight-of-hand. Steal it from those folks here, give some out over there. Some disappears along the way.
That fact does not deter the elected or appointed from invoking the idea as a way to convince you that you are getting something for nothing. A posture I find exceedingly annoying when taken by people claiming to be Republicans. Persons riding on the shoulders of ideas like personal liberty, low taxes, and local control.
And it is about local control. Pardon the broken record, but we elect you to protect our interests not imagine creative ways to tie them up in federal regulations we have little hope of untangling. You should be looking for ways to stop the plunder not how to write that next press releases about how free the money is when we get some of it back.
Given that there is little chance of this money-laundering scheme collapsing anytime soon, perhaps we need a new tack?
If it really is ‘Free Money’ why not make it all free?
If cash filtered down from the Feds to states and towns is free money why bother with state and local taxes, fees, or fines at all? If the Feds did all the revenue collection these local officials could claim it was all free.
The ‘free money’ machine in DC sends the checks to local department heads and their accountants.
Since everything is a federal tax or fee if you have an issue with how they take the free money ask your Congressman or Senator who, when they are not too busy with lobbyists and special interests, are working their tail off to make sure the well-heeled bureaucrats inside the Beltway don’t spend it all on processing and handling before someone at the state level sees a piece of the action.
It’s free money, right? How can we turn that down?
But what about local elected officials? What the hell would they be doing?
Answering questions about where the money went? Why is it going here and not there? Why it comes with all these rules that make using it more difficult or less productive?
The Federal Government is, in many cases, little more than a middleman, wasting billions annually to feed and clothe bureaucratic debits on the spreadsheet with taxpayer dollars. Revenue that, had it stayed where it was created, would have gone further, done more, and done it sooner, to address real needs, in real time, based on the priorities of the people who created that wealth.
Because it’s not free. And because it is not free more of it should stay as close to the people who earned it as possible. Even a liberal should be able to do that math.
So, your homework assignment is to find candidates for office who understand this.
Find them. Support them. Elect them.
We’re making some small progress. If we don’t do what we can to protect it we’ll never make any more. Which is exactly what will happen to our incomes if Democrats get back into power. We won’t make anymore because they have promised us they will be coming to take it back. More of it. More often. Because in their minds it doesn’t even belong to us. We didn’t build it. We didn’t earn it.
It belongs to them and their government and they want to spend it on what is important to them and them alone.
And there is nothing “free” about what they do to those who disagree.
