“A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy”
Disraeli
Two headlines in this morning’s [New Hampshire] Union Leader bring into clear focus both the boldfaced hypocrisy as well as a lack of priorities of set by our governmental institutions.
In the first instance, we were fed yet another episode in the continuing saga of VIDEOGATE … the Manchester police’s latest efforts to protect its citizens, ostensibly living in a free society, from themselves. One wonders how much public money has, and will be spent on this high-profile operation?
Unfortunately, this well-publicized enterprise is simply another example of the “state” attempting to regulate the personal behavior of its citizens … while as an institution being able to act in direct contradiction to those rules. Why shouldn’t people be allowed spend, wager or fritter away their own funds as they see fit, and with whom they desire … particularly while the state spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to seduce that same public on the virtues of buying an assortment of weekly lottery/sweepstakes tickets, in the hopes they too can “be rich”?
Predictably, social “do-gooders” … those ever-present activists who claim to know what’s best for everyone else … will relate endless “horror stories” about the evils of betting, parents gambling away family rent of food monies, and the social need to prevent others from “wasting” their personal assets. Yet they’re strangely silent when their pet projects are subsidized from sweepstakes revenue distributions.
Concurrently, shouting in bold print from the same front page, we read the capital infrastructure of the state’s largest school district is in the process of disintegration … for lack of funds.
In a period of economic disruption, funding for public projects will remain dear. Therefore, it’s a reasonable, even logical, approach to examine each and every expenditure, as well as the rules and regulations which necessitate such funding requirements.
Perhaps, without reaching deeper into the taxpayer’s already nearly empty pockets, our elected (state and local) officials might seriously consider summarily eliminating the endless rules regulating personal behavior in all instances where such actions do not directly infringe on the rights of others, and simultaneously eliminate all associated spending. With the funds saved, perhaps infrastructure and other pressing problems could then be addressed in responsible, timely and cost-effective manner.
