BCT Editorial – 10/3/04

This page was last updated on October 3, 2004.

Tough luck; Editorial; Beaver County Times; October 3, 2004.

A more appropriate title for this editorial may have been “Where’s my cut?” It’s all about saying the federal government has money for this socialist program, but not another. It views the government as a charitable organization whose role is to supply financial help to disaster victims.

The editorial says it won’t go the “we could have spent the Iraq $200 billion on us” route. The editorial says this twice. It’s like the guy who keeps saying, “I won’t say I told you so.” It’s just a tad insincere. In any case, the Democrat National Committee made up the $200 billion figure and the Times did its fellow travelers a favor in repeating it. I have no doubt the war financial cost will eventually exceed $200 billion, but it has not yet. By the end of September 2004, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that both military and reconstruction expenditures would reach approximately $120 billion. In it’s editorial entitled “True lies,” the Times said to check FactCheck.org regarding the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads. Oddly, this editorial did not make the same recommendation about its bogus $200 billion claim. I’m sure it was an honest oversight – not.

In addition to the money spent in Iraq for our national security, the Times feels the tax cuts are also to blame. It even has the guts to say the “tax cuts that … cost $146 billion.” Cost whom? Tax dollars belong to the people who earn them, not the government. Ignoring that niggling fact, isn’t the Times the paper that keeps whining about the deficit – most recently in “Stealing the future” – and how we are stealing from future generations? Even if you accept the editorial’s premise that the tax cuts “cost the government,” the tax cut money could not have been given to disaster victims because it would have increased the deficit, right editorial board? I mean, if you believe deficits are evil, you shouldn’t deficit spend for anything, right? Apparently, as long as you “steal the future” for causes the Times likes, it’s OK.

The editorial is inconsistent in another area. In one paragraph it opposes income redistribution in the form of the Medicare prescription drug program, but other paragraphs support redistribution for disaster victims. Why? This is what happens when your intent is to bash the Bush administration and you don’t care about using consistent logic.

To the editorial, low interest loans to victims are not good enough. The government needs to give grants.

While I completely support a government role in providing short-term emergency services and coordination activities, I’m not in favor of the government giving low interest loans or grants. It’s the responsibility of us individuals and businesses – both large and small – to make sure we have the appropriate insurance or other financial protection. If we don’t, providing financial disaster relief should be done by the private sector. It’s not fair to force those persons who prepare adequately to bail out those persons who don’t. I feel we should volunteer to help our neighbors, but we should not be forced to do so via government taxation.