Monday Musing: Food for Thought

So just the other day as I was wasting a few moments surfing the internet trying to keep up with the day’s headlines (which seems to be a lesson in futility) at best I came across an article that said over 100 million people are now getting food aid from the federal government. At first I could not believe it so I used the Old Russian Proverb of “doveryai, no proveryhai” which is “trust but verify” so I looked it up at the USDA and sure enough it is true.

Now, it is a government program so there is some overlap and 100 million people is probably a little high in the number of people survived, but that is still too many. I am not saying that there aren’t people out there that need some help, but if close to 100 million people need it then I would say the United States is in a lot more trouble than what is reported and it makes it doubly strange why 90+% of incumbents were reelected 2012. Unless you buy into the notion that the majority of people vote for those that will give them the most.

I wonder what the people of today would think about having Grover Cleveland as president, in 1887 he vetoed a bill that appropriated $10,000 for Texas farmers that were struggling through drought conditions. Cleveland wrote:

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.”

This idea that the government should give out things to people led Cleveland to veto many bills, over 500 of them. Compare that to our last two presidents who seemed to want to spend as much as possible in order to give lots of things away. Of course the last two presidents were not the only ones to do it, but overtime thanks to the great leadership we have had it seems as a nation we have gone from “ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” to “what can my country do for me so I can have a chance to succeed.“

I am not going to lie, it becomes increasingly difficult to do the right thing and say no to government handouts. When I personally know people that drive high priced SUVs and are on food stamps or get a contracting job and make 20,000 dollars for a couple of weeks’ worth of work go on a high priced vacation and come back and sign up their child for one of the free college-tuition programs. Though it is increasingly hard to fight the temptation to give in to the “dark side” my family will continue the good fight because that is how we were raised and there seem to be less and less of us willing to say no to governement handouts out there.

On a side note, for those that were feeling just terrible about that heartless Glover Cleveland not helping out those poor American farmers, the friendliness and charity of Americans came through and those Texas farmers received in private aid more than 10 times what the vetoed bill would have provided, furthermore no bridges to nowhere, research on why pigs smell, and robo squirrels had to be paid for with taxpayer’s money either.

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