Steve’s Say . . .

Fight for Freedom: Don’t Take the Money!

A new and blatantly transparent effort now underway by the Obama administration promises cities lots and lots of funding - huge amounts - in return for these cities implementing policies which will put them on a “smart growth” path for the future. Smart growth, of course,means all those wonderful policies liberal urban planners and leftist ideologues designed to increase traffic congestion, decrease living space per person, and transfer as much property and decision-making to the public sector as possible. These symptoms of “smart growth” we see immediately. The ultimate goal of “smart growth” envisions complete depopulation of rural areas with everyone using only mass transit. In other words, the true goal sees everyone living in a unibox in the city while making sure cars are replaced by trains. And of course all things are powered by windmills spinning blissfully over fields of corn about to be processed into ethanol.

Boy, what a vision for a FREE WORLD!

It’s all about money. How much is your freedom worth? What is your price for enslavement? For many, the answer is not very much. For the residents of Milwaukee, the feds think they can enslave the whole thing for $250 million. For some individuals, just a small amount of perceived security will do it.

DON’T TAKE THE MONEY!

Money enslaves. How did all of the states become so subservient to the great Federal master? Money. How did cities and towns become subjects of Madison bureaucrats? Money. Current Milwaukee County Executive and Gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker provides all of us in Wisconsin and the world with a superb example of why you don’t take the money. His piece in the Wall Street Journal written in the spring of 2009 covered this subject so completely and succinctly that it should be the centerpiece of all Republican campaigns this year and for years to come. All “free money” - as the stimulus dollars discussed by Walker in his piece were touted - has strings. These strings are designed to look innocent but will ultimately wrap the money-taker in a tangle so tight that he or she can’t do anything. The ongoing costs of paying for the “free money” eventually eat up all the resources of the receiver, who then has no choice but to go back to the money shark for more and more. Until the shark devours the poor fools. California may become the first federally devoured state, though competition is fierce, including from Wisconsin. Don’t ever count out Jim Doyle in any game involving free money and a race to the bottom.

The trick of free money has been around forever. Remember when the Feds promised to build highways with the states, kicking in a huge portion of the building costs? But lo and behold, in the 1980’s a new string attached itself to the money. Any state that did not have a 21 year old drinking age would not receive anymore Federal highway funds. It didn’t take long for every state, even Wisconsin, to fall in line, even though this societal determination is completely outside any federal power provided by the Constitution. Money made it happen.

Whenever we take money from a government entity, we are trading freedom. I have to admit, it was rather amusing to see the MPS teachers and their union kin squawk when the state cut its funding allocation. Luckily, their good ol’ boy Obama found more federal funny money to close the hole for now and keep all those union teacher’s from feeling the pain all the rest of us are feeling in these wonderful economic times. These teachers have traded their freedom long ago for the money. We are in the process of witnessing the day of reckoning for these poor souls with the demon to which they had sworn their freedom.

Cities, Villages and Towns: don’t take state or federal money for ANYTHING. It will lead to disaster. Keep your budgets small and your regulations simple. The surest and best way to attract business and development is to keep taxes low and zoning approvals consistent. Keep away from all subsidized entities. And for goodness sake don’t become a real estate investment trust as Menomonee Falls has become. Municipalities need not finance business development. Any business venture requiring such subsidies will never pay off for that municipality. Sooner or later, the taxpayers will be stuck with a big tab. It happens every time.

States: get rid of all federal funding. This renouncement will do more to restore federalism and states rights than all of the sovereignty amendments being considered, important as they may be. When states no longer look to the federal government for their allowance, they can move out of the slavehouse and go out to seek their own fortune in the world. But you can’t take the money.

So we see the sordid game over and over: governments tax the people of their jurisdictions to use this money to buy the freedom of as many souls as possible. Taking the money commits you to a miserable life of servitude to the provider which is very hard to break. When we don’t take the money, we are left to fend for ourselves. As free people. Isn’t that what America is all about?