Spend and Spend, Then Cry for Help

This AP story http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D94EQHOG0&show_article=1 today informs us that several cities, including Phoenix, where I live, are bellying up to the taxpayer feed trough for handouts:

Three big city mayors asked the federal government Friday to use a portion of the $700 billion financial bailout to assist struggling cities.

The mayors sought help with their pension costs, infrastructure investment and cash-flow problems stemming from the global financial crisis.

The mayors—Michael Nutter of Philadelphia, Shirley Franklin of Atlanta and Phil Gordon of Phoenix—made their request in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

[Emphasis added.]

Perhaps if these cities restricted themselves to their only legitimate role, that of securing our rights from violation, they wouldn't need any bailouts. Instead, they pay hordes of public bus drivers $20+ per hour, and here in Phoenix, build a shiny new Light Rail system, for a cool $1.4 billion - so far. There are extensions planned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/METRO_Light_Rail_(Phoenix) That's why they've gone begging to Uncle Sam, who will gladly steal it from the taxpayers across the country to pay for Phoenix's unjustified extravagances.

The solution is a return to a legitimate form of government, which has no role beyond the protection of individual rights. Not more bailouts and stealing from taxpayers.

Once Upon a Time in America

With a population of some three million, colonial America produced more Statesmen than modern America can produce with her 300 million. How can that be, when we have the advantage of public education?

America still produces brilliant and ambitious men. But none of them yearn to be part of our Government, as they did in our Revolutionary days. Those were days of ferment when great things were being accomplished in government, namely the enshrinement of man's inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and the establishment of a Republic - a nation of laws, and not of men.

What is government doing today? The long train of abuses and usurpations one could list would put those of King George III to shame. Nobody with any honor or self-respect would agree to be part of such a government, except with the express purpose of annihilating the work of the last century of misgovernment.

There are no such Statesmen today, anywhere upon the landscape.