A couple of months ago, someone forwarded an e-mail to me; you know, one of those redneck screeds blaming the "liberal" politicians and their never-ending taxes for the entire decline of Western civilization. Here's an excerpt:
This is too true to be very funny. The next time you hear a politician use the word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about whether you want the 'politicians' spending your tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu, is presently asking the Congress for $250 billion to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number, what does it mean? Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528. Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787. Or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington, D.C. HELLO!!! ... Are all your calculators broken??
While this is interesting information simply from the perspective of what the number "billion" means, the implication of how the money is actually spent is incorrect, the value of the spending is ignored, and there is an underlying philosophy to the message that is selfish, mean, and unpatriotic.
The author wrongly implies that the residents of Louisiana are going to be handed a suitcase full of cash; in reality, the money will be spent on vital infrastructure necessary to keep the state a productive part of the union.
The value of this spending is incalculable. 1) The purpose of the federal government is to provide a stable platform for the nation, without regard to regionality 2) Our strength as a nation is the ability to do as a whole the important things that benefit us as a society which we could not do as individual states 3) A productive, healthy and educated people form a strong, stable nation that is sustainable, competitive economically, and easier to defend against aggression from within or from outside 4) Our taxes are much lower than many, if not most western industrialized countries. 5) Because we now recognize the need to support and include all groups within our society, we have managed to avoid the social/economic based riots of the 1960's and the kidnap for ransom crimes so prevalent in other parts of the world where the underprivileged are ignored 6) We claim to be a "Christian Nation"; where is the spirit of compassion and sacrifice in this message?
Doug Clark (who writes the superb blog "The Itenerant Pedant",) comments:
As for all those taxes he lists at the end, they became necessary when the South proved, TWICE, that "States Rights" is semantically equivalent to saying "Doing reprehensible shit while somehow maintaining moral superiority about your RIGHT to do reprehensible shit." All the taxes Thomas Paine there listed are FEDERAL taxes. Prior to that the STATES fucking collected the taxes and forwarded a cut to the Feds. When South Carolina in 1861 showed why maybe, just maybe, that having strong state governments run by fucking LOONS responsible for funding the Federal Government wasn't exactly a recipe for stability, Federal taxes became necessary.
After WWI they became mandatory, and by the end of WWII it was ESSENTIAL to have taxes to protect us from the Soviets. Who is this guy anyway? A fucking COMMIE? Oh wait, no. Just someone who lives in one of the plushest fucking country clubs in the group of nations, but somehow thinks he PERSONALLY built the fucking clubhouse and thus should get to enjoy it for free. Ante up your membership dues, you selfish asshole.
I would suggest that to spend the tax money to re-build Louisiana into a strong, productive member of our country is a patriotic thing to do, something we can be proud of as a nation. And here are some quick questions to ask: How many billions of dollars have we spent destroying and rebuilding Iraq? Have we achieved our goals there? How many more billions are we willing to spend? Have we gotten our money's worth? Would we have been better off spending that money in the United States?
Your Pal, and Doin’ the Left Thing
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