Today on the Drudge Report

Dear Readers,

I like the Drudge Report. It’s where I get a lot of my news. It’s a news aggregator with a conservative agenda. (Sometimes I go to Google News and see what’s on there, too.)

(I’ve had a lot of free time lately, and it’s pretty cool. I’m taking one online class, a creative writing class, right now and it’s turning out to be pretty easy. Really easy. But in a few weeks I’ll be moving and starting my high school teaching career, so I’ll try to enjoy my lazy time while I have it by reading the news and news commentary.)

Sometimes I think I should stay away from the news, because the news makes me upset about things I can’t control. Other times I think that by reading the news I’m educating myself about world events and trying to be an informed citizen. But then other times I think that I’m only looking for news that reinforces my worldview and political ideas. Sometimes I think that if I want to be informed I should sit down and read a book, rather than browse news articles every day, but, uh… I like the news even though sometimes it makes me upset.

These four articles on the Drudge today report on many different ways that the government is spending money unwisely.

http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=48044

http://www07.grants.gov/search/search.do?&mode=VIEW&flag2006=false&oppId=48068

http://www.wxii12.com/health/19843503/detail.html

http://www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news/local_wpri_massachusetts_is_housing_homeless_in_motels20090624bcm


The first one is about a $1000,000 grant to breed toads in Wyoming. Is that really important enough to spend a hundred grand on? Haven’t toads been breeding well enough on their own? Do we need more toads?

The second article is about a grant to help Cambodian education- 10 million dollars worth of help. Uh… maybe we should spend that money to help America, not Cambodia.

The third article is about a tax-payer funded grant that pays girls ages 12-18 a dollar a day to not get pregnant. I’m sure that the people who wrote the grant and the people who approved the grant have great intentions, but that sounds more like something that should be done by parents if they choose to reward morality like that, and not by the government.

A problem with that grant to prevent teen pregnancy, as I see things, is that it turns the government into a parental type of figure. The government thinks, “smoking isn’t good for you, so we’ll tax it a bunch!” and “wearing your seatbelt is a good idea- so we’ll make a law that forces you to wear your seatbelt!” and “green energy is good for the planet, so we’ll give tax breaks to green energy but we’ll tax oil and coal companies even more!”

I think a lot of those parental types of laws should be done away with. The law about wearing seatbelts is a prime example of a well-intentioned, parental type of law, actually. Lots of libertarians don’t believe that wearing a seatbelt ought to be a law. One of my new favorite political guys is Sheriff Mack, who used to be the Sheriff of Graham County in Arizona. He brags that while he was Sheriff, neither he nor any of his underlings gave out tickets to people for not wearing seatbelts, because he didn’t like the law. Ha ha ha. Sheriff Mack is cool!

The fourth article is about how Massachusetts spends 2 million dollars a month buying motel rooms for homeless people. Yikes. The funny thing is, when Mitt Romney was Governer there, he did away with that. But now that he’s gone, they’re doing it again.

I hope you don’t think that I’m not compassionate. I am compassionate. It makes me sad to think that there are homeless people still around. But I don’t think that buying them motel rooms is the best idea. I think that private individuals and private organizations do a better job of caring for the poor than the governmnet does.

OK, well, see you later.

And keep an eye out for that TURTLE. He's out there somewhere.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa