To the editor,
Several articles in the Alexandria Times of February 26 – March 4, 2009, prompt me to respond.
1) ACPS Receives Stimulus Funds. Great to see a little of my Federal tax money coming back home. With this new found money in hand why doesnt ACPS use it to reduce spending the money taken out of our pockets locally, instead of spending more additional dollars? ACPS already has the highest spending per pupil in the country.
2) OUR VIEW asks questions about the new Houston wreck center. Of course it cost more, is late delivering and misses the mark as to what is needed. The city planned and built it. Very little that government does city, state or federal works properly or efficiently, or in the best interest of the ordinary, hard-working, tax-paying, legal, honest citizens and residents that pay their salary and pay the bill.
3) State of the City. You would not print my word for it. The city budget and the school budget miss the mark. We are in a depression that will last for years. Alexandria is slightly behind the curve so it is later coming here but it will hit hard right now is a piece of cake. Both the city and the school budgets need to be reduced by cutting more people especially paper pushers and those who do not directly impact city services and teach children. Wages need to be cut, not frozen. Unions need to back off. So for a few years we suffer. What needs to be cut is all the waste that grew up during fat city times. Residential real estate assessments are still artificially high. We need the policeman to fight crime, the fireman to put out fires, the teacher to teach, the trash man to collect. We dont need studies, PR flacks, administrators. We dont need capital expenditures that can be put off, we dont need the touchy-feely-squishy free services that have cropped up. We are at our best when things are tough. Dont waste our money. We need it to survive.
4) Denise Dunbar MY VIEW. The Feds are taking trillions of our dollars, picking our pockets clean, for payoffs and waste. Ms. Dunbar holds out hope that it might work. I dont. It wont. You cant spend your way out of this mess. FDR couldnt. Japan couldnt.
We wont. All this does is grow a massive government bureaucracy and delay the inevitable crash that will come. If the government had kept its nose out in the beginning we would have the marketplace making the adjustments and we would be farther along to recovery right now. Yes, of course there would have been pain. There is pain now, and much more to come. The difference is if the marketplace handles it, the greedy and crooked people responsible pay. With the Feds doing it, the honest, innocent people pay. You dont reward bad and punish good, but that is exactly what is happening. Worse than the tens of trillions of dollars that ultimately will be wasted is the loss of our freedom, our right to decide.
This is the greatest country in the world. It does not need to be destroyed, torn down and made over. God Bless America.
