From 2005 to 2014, Congress will have spent nearly $1 billion of taxpayer money to help kids walk to school.
What has this money bought? Safety vests for crosswalk guards, “safety training” sessions, bicycle racks, flashing safety lights, new curbs and crosswalks, posters, and the like. For $1.1 million in 2010, Maryland counties got “an on-call team of engineers, planners, and bicycle/pedestrian experts” to make it easier for people to walk and bike to schools. For a similar amount the same year, Georgia got marketing materials and staff to promote student walking and biking activities.
Let’s hope those are really awesome marketing materials, because over the same period the federal deficit will have exploded and then settled at $667 billion, and the federal debt will have grown by $8 trillion.
It’s a good idea to create safety materials for kids. No one wants a child falling under a bus. That $1 billion works out to about $18 per schoolchild, so surely in itself it isn’t a huge addition to everyone’s federal tax returns.
Except that since 1987, an international nonprofit has done exactly the same thing as the federal Safe Routes to Schools program, with support from private companies such as Johnson and Johnson and FedEx, as well as from local volunteers across the country. They all give their time and money willingly, even exuberantly, to Safe Kids Walk This Way, unlike the way most of us pay our taxes. And none of it increases the national debt.
We could look at this as a prime example of a place where agreement could occur about the type of cuts the Federal government might be able to make in order to start getting their spending house in order. However our leftist friends cannot allow such discussions because of their very sound reasoning related to programs like this. Let us example that reasoning here.
Cuts are AUSTERITY! Any cut to any program anywhere, for any reason is just an attempt to harm the economy. The program need not have any validity or purpose. We have to do something and now that we did something and it didn't work (stimulus) we have to keep doing something or else everyone will go broke due to our refusal to stop borrowing money we don't have to pay for things we don't need.
Since AUSTERITY hurts the economy, we can also claim any and all agents are harmed by your actions and thus you hate them. You hate kids, crossing guards, schools, anyone who paints lines on roads and of course support the murder of all these people as well since lack of support is murder per leftist reasoning.
You can't even support having these actions undertaken by private organizations. That of course leads directly to anarchy. Lack of direct federal intervention into kids crossing streets means you don't even support the concept of streets being built or traffic laws, or anything else civilized. You of course want lawless mauraders to murder children both by running them down at whatever speed they felt like driving, but also wanted to see them murdered by angry mobs picking up pieces of the decaying and destroyed streets and pummeling and striking small children about the heads and shoulders with them.
You also can't support this action being undertaken at the district, city, county or state level because you didn't express enough concern before we were borrowing a trillion dollars a year and the only reason you are concerned now is because you hate having a black man for a president and want him, and the economy to fail.
The reason you don't want us to borrow a trillion dollars year, to have federal intervention into your child crossing the street or support private efforts to enlighten the youth about crossing the street, why because you are also an extremist. Moderates borrow 8-10% of GDP per year, want federal intervention into crossing streets and see no need for private charity or other private organizations. Extremists only want any efforts made in these areas.
So go ahead and just think about cutting one cent of these federal funds but don't get upset when people yell at you for wanting to murder children walking to school.
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." -George Orwell
