Getting It Right - Nation Prepares for “Porkfest” 1/15/09

National feeding frenzy about to begin
This column presents a conservative viewpoint about items of interest in our community and our lives. Focus is on items impacting your pocket book, your personal freedoms, and your rights. I hope you will read the column regularly and it occasionally influences your opinions and actions. Now, on to the subject of the week:
"Washington is about to host a huge feast….and the main entre’ will be PORK!"
On Thursday, just as this issue hits the streets, the Jackson County Development Council (J.C.D.C.) led by Director Bill Stanton, is hosting a meeting at Jim’s Buffet and Grill, for representatives of local municipal governments, our county government, and many bureaucratic departments within local governments. The purpose of this meeting is to assure Jackson County gets "it’s fair share" of all of the monies that are about to be shoveled out of Washington as part of the Obama "economic stimulus" effort.
Does this form of reasoning sound familiar? It is the same old "grab all you can and spend it before someone else gets it" philosophy which has led to billions in government waste and has helped lead our economy into the cesspool.
Glenn Beck on talk radio recently told of a town in North Alabama located near Anniston which had submitted stimulus requests for their community. Their "wish list" totaled $320,000,000 and included switching all of the city lights to solar, putting a solar power system in city hall, and many, many other energy justified requests. The only problem, the total population of the community is 194. That results in federal expenditures of over 1.6 million dollars per citizen. This is just an initial example of the type of bureaucratic thinking which will go into the national "grab bag" funding we are about to experience.
For our local group of hungry "crats", I would recommend consideration of some of the following requests for Jackson County to make to our new leadership in Washington D.C.:
♦ None of the high schools in Jackson County have swimming pools. We certainly need to have swimming teams at all of our schools, so we should request pools for every high school and middle school. (Heated of course.)
♦ Only Marianna High has a $350,000 lighted girls softball field with nice dugouts. We need similar fields for all other schools in the county.
♦ Chipola needs a new tennis and racquet ball complex.
♦ All of the sports arenas in the county need new stadium seating, preferably padded with back rests.
♦ The Caverns Golf Course needs nine more holes, preferably easy ones.
♦ All city and county buildings need to convert to solar energy. Stained glass windows would also be nice.
♦ All city and county owned vehicles should be converted into more expensive hybrid electric-gas vehicles. Sun roofs and mud flaps should be considered.
♦ In Marianna we need sidewalks from downtown to Wal-Mart along Highway 71. We also need to connect the sidewalk from the new High School to the existing one which ends at Citizens Lodge. (I think this is already planned.) Also needed is a new sidewalk along Penn Ave to Middle School. In Graceville we need a sidewalk from downtown to the Outlet Mall. Dellwood desperately needs sidewalks leading to Kelly’s Store.
♦ The Chamber needs to buy at least two more "incubator" business start-up houses on Russ Street.
♦ This looks like a great opportunity to get our new $18,000,000 County Administration Building built at no cost. We might want to add a couple of floors.
♦ Jacob desperately needs an airport.
♦ Museums seem to be popular in the stimulus packages, Las Vegas is asking for a gangster museum. In our county we need an Indian relic museum in Marianna, a Peanut Processing museum in Greenwood, and a Faye Dunaway museum in Bascom.
♦ This is the ideal time to remodel the ugly Jackson County Court House. "White columns over Lafayette" would be a nice theme.
♦ Two Egg needs a lot of downtown redevelopment.
♦ We can restart the River Port at Sneads, even though the river is about dry.
♦ Now is the time to get the water slide and other items to create a water amusement park at Blue Springs Park.
♦ Several of our towns need new City Hall facilities, with solar power systems and employee cafeterias.
♦ Cottondale and Malone need Civic Centers. Marianna can now proceed with the unjustified civic center it is planning for all of our conventions and wrestling matches. Then they can do away with the ridiculous 4% Bed Tax we have which is hurting all area lodging businesses.
♦ We need to expand our county and municipal code enforcement staffing, and they should each be equipped with fast cars and guns.
♦ We need an Emergency Operations Center in Graceville, just in case something happens in that end of the county sometime this century.
♦ We need at least four additional deputies at the court house to guard our judges and "crats".
I hope this list helps those that are preparing our local stimulus package requests which will be submitted to the Federal-Crats. I hope I had a few ideas they had not thought of.
The local architectural and engineering firms must be licking their lips in anticipation of the lucrative fees these projects will bring their firms.
Folks, this type of wasteful, ridiculous thinking is occurring all across our nation as local governments prepare for the "Porkfest" which is about to occur. The jobs which will be created will be temporary in nature, and many of the projects will do nothing to provide long term employment, improvement of our international competitive position, or to make meaningful improvements in our infrastructure.
I can tell you one thing for sure…Filtering project money through all of the inefficient, wasteful bureaucracies is not the right approach to solving the problems within our economic systems.
Instead of spewing money out across the nation on wasteful pork items they should consider rebuilding the national rail system to accommodate a high speed transportation system to give the traveling public relief from a broken, over burdened, and ineffective air transportation system. We should build more nuclear energy plants. They should develop all known oil reserves and seek discovery of more. They should build a national delivery system for our vast reserves of natural gas. They should help Pickens build his wind farms. Our national power grid needs rebuilding….these are all lasting projects that permanently improve our country and help our industries.
At the same time we should begin to charge tariffs on products coming into our markets from countries which will not allow all of our products free access to their population. If countries engage in government subsidies to aid their industries and thus give their producers an advantage over ours, or if they use forced labor and poor ecological controls, we should charge tariffs. Free trade should only exist in instances of "fair" trade. These steps would aid many of our struggling industries and would boost our economy.
This type of thinking and planning is what is needed at this time….not soliciting a "wish list" of "pulled pork" plates for every community in the country. If our astute leadership will only turn in this direction…they will be "Getting It Right".
Rudiments: Odds and Ends Worth Mentioning-
♦ Our hard working, underpaid Washington congressmen just gave themselves a $4700 per year raise. That is your tax money at work.
♦ Florida Public Utilities added another 11% increase to power rates, effective in your January bill. Be prepared. The Marianna City Commission will meet on discussions on the renewal of their franchise at their January 21 meeting at 5:00. I plan to be there, I hope you will also come.
♦ Quote by Jean Rousseau: A country can not subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue". (Quote provided by Dave Nicholson)
♦ Happy New Year!! (Let’s hope it is a good one.)
Note: The opinions stated in this column are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Hatcher Publications.