Worst of Times

On the Saturday Today Show, Amy Robach declared that critics were upset that First Lady Michelle Obama had spent "her money" on a beach trip abroad rather than down to a beach at the oil spill battered Gulf of Mexico. I do not think most people have any particular concern what the President's wife does on her own dime, but many may take umbrage at how lavishly the Obama's are celebrating with our money. These leisure days are not paid for out of the Obama family purse exclusively but almost entirely with funds seized from the taxpayer. The Obama's are partying like it is 1788, on the continent then too, not at the billionaires' Costa del Sol which had not yet been developed then, but at the Court of Louis XVI and his blushing "let them eat cake" Austrian bride. We have great but finite patience in America, charity and forbearance, but do not like being played for fools or suckers. A story ran in Nashville this week which is in perfect concord with our new noblesse oblige of our new "screw you taxpayer" royals. We had a millennial flood here that wrought real devastation. This local TV story chronicled how those homeless in Nashville, including those at "tent city", were being given $1400 each for two months of "expense money" by the Federal government (read as taxpayer). Our Federally-enforced generosity has, I have no doubt, fueled some wonderful crack or crank parties and the Thunderbird fortified wine flowed copiously. And what did these indigent "Nashvillians" have to show to prove they were flood-afflicted. No rent receipts, no proof of paying down a mortgage, no utility receipts- they did not even have to vouch for each other; just make a claim and they are in high cotton. Maybe they were off in Mayfield, Kentucky buying meth during the flood, maybe they had never even been here but jumped on the dog for a $45 bus ride from Cleveland when they heard $700 a month awaited them in sunny Tennessee, but with no way to verify a person was the oxymoron of a "homeless resident", they are just giving our hard earned money away. One more note on this Nashville report: a non-homeless Nashvillian who suffered loss in hard hit Bellevue was asked his opinion of this outreach to the homeless and said he thought it was great that we were helping folks that were hit too, even if they had already been camped in (my word here- idyllic) "tent city". The flood victim in Bellevue is mighty generous with other peoples' money, and I would wager that he does not remit a quarterly check in the thousands of dollars to the IRS but that his only contribution as the Democrats euphemistically call our tax confiscated earnings is withholding. There was a time in America where a camp would spring up to deface a town where the leading citizens with the deputies and the police would rally to burn them out over and over until they got the message that they were not welcome as parasites and could only stay if they found gainful employment and actually contributed something. Now we are far too civilized to countenance that and prefer to send them just enough aid to feed their addictions, cross-addictions, and mental illnesses rather than doing what is necessary to either give them the treatment and skills to succeed in life or re-institutionalize them for their own good (and ours). Is it not wonderful how much Obama and his minions are enjoying squandering our money and more importantly- our liberty?