Local hypocrites beg Feds for money.  That might have been a better headline in a local newspaper.  The actual headline is, “Local Officials rallying for funds.”  This small Missouri community is very conservative – the joke around town is that we have too many churches and not enough strip joints (127 Churches, one strip joint).  This community loves guns, wars, and the torture of marriage – hates planned parenthood, federal intervention, homosexuality, Muslims, Global Warming, science, income taxes, and immigrants.  But these same people go begging every spring for federal money.

To quote from front page of the local morning paper:

“The springtime lobbying rite puts local elected officials, public employees and community leaders, 22 in all, in front of their congressional delegation.  Such a gathering, they believe, puts a human face on the community’s federal funding priorities.

As has been the case in recent years, the capital pilgrims take an agenda of local needs for the consideration of Senators Christopher Bond and Claire McCaskill, Representative Sam Graves and their respective staffs.”

The United States Federal Government is deeply in debt.  The classic example of wasteful spending these same local officials and aforementioned representatives like to cite is the “bridge to nowhere’ somewhere in Alaska.  One might reasonably say that the Iraq War is a bridge to nowhere.

Even more hypocritical is that these same local officials continually harped about the horrors of illegal immigration as they promoted a pig processing company that is known to recruit employees from Mexico.

But there they go – off to Washington to beg for Federal earmarks.  They get the money and then they tout their influence in Washington as a great virtue.  These are the same folks who vehemently criticize  Obama for earmarking funds for his States.

Again from the local paper:

The items on this year’s agenda:

• $1.2 Million … to link databases of local police, sheriff’s department, and university public safety officers.
• $5 million … for the Missouri Western University science and math buildings.
• $2.48 million … for a training laboratory that would enhance work force development in life-science industries.
• $5.2 million for improving the intersection of U.S. Highway 59, Alabama Street, and BNSF Railway crossings.
• $2 million … for storm water and waste water systems…
• $150,000 to study flash-flooding …
• $350,000 to continue feasibility study work on improving the Missouri River levee system …

Are these noble and worthy causes to be pursued by local officials?  Probably.  Are these causes the responsibility of the Federal Government.  No.  Why should the Federal Government pay for the worthy projects?

Here it is – The Federal Government is so massive and convoluted that the simple idea of taxes and spending is lost in the confusion.  The local officials return as victors, claiming to have retrieved funds that otherwise would have gone to the same projects in Iraq.  They act as if someone other than us had to pay for the projects.  Then they get to be reelected and keep their jobs.

Personally – this writer favors all of these projects – and we can either pay our local government or we can pay the federal government, and then pay for my local officials to go to Washington to beg to get our money back.

The problem is in the hypocrisy of the elected officials, from the locals to those representing us in Washington.  What are we teaching our children?  We are teaching that letting someone else pay is the way to go.  We are teaching that debt is good.  We are teaching that lying is proper.

The issue of federal ‘earmarks’ is being raised frequently in this Presidential election.  The local officials who make their annual pilgrimage to Washington will cry and moan about the waste of the Federal Government.   They will say that the Feds should stay out of local issues.  They will blame the Feds for the failure of our local schools, the crumbing of our streets and highways, the invasion of illegal immigrants, and the threat to our security by denying us assault rifles.

And by the way, when they secure the funds from the Federal Government, they will put the tab on our credit cards.