Column on tax dollars left out important ingredient

I just couldn’t let it go (“Where your tax dollars go,” in Monday’s Post). It was a wonderful “educational” piece.

I admire people who can dig down deep and bring out the numbers. However, I suspect the real deep down reason for Mr. Gray’s work appearing as an opinion is not just a presentation of facts but a plan to evoke feelings. He does “research” for a foundation that spent $77 million in 2013 to advance conservative causes.

His real purpose for bringing this article to the media is to scare me. Caring, compassionate concerns in our culture are killing a robust, healthy budget. The foundation’s stated “vision is to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.”

This article wants me to feel that I will be much better off if we can just have less of programs that help the elderly, the sick, the working poor, the uneducated that are draining the lifeblood from those who have the wherewithal to “make it” independently in America.

I like the foundation’s vision but would add: to build an America whose budget “shows a love for one another.” I know. The foundation can say it is more loving to let everyone be free to pursue opportunity, prosperity, and civility without a specific plan to help the least. Never has worked. There will always be some who need help. No society has ever been so good that there wasn’t.

Jesus observes: “You will always have the poor with you” —  poor in spirit, in health, in abilities, in education, in sophistication, in knowledge about how to “make it” in society. He didn’t assign fault. And Jesus could have added, there will always be those willing to “make it” on the backs of the lesser so that they can have the more.

— Kay Overcash

China Grove

Protesting is easy

We are but simple folk here in Rowan County, not nearly as sophisticated as them city slickers from New York what come down here last week to protest a local bidness, but even we bumpkins know stuff-stirring when we see it.

Whilst we appreciate you all spending somebody’s money locally, me and Jethro and Clem wondered if maybe instead of makin’ a fuss about the way a feller runs his bidness, that money might be better spent openin’ your own bidness to, you know, put the bad folks out of work.

That way, you could make your own rules and pay folks whut you been tellin’ ‘em they deserve all these years. Just a thought.

Another thing, it just don’t seem right to quote Jesus, what with unions being supported by Communists all this time and all.

One more thing: I ain’t no lawyer or nuthin’ but it sure seemed like a lot of forms of the word “allege” (seven) were used in the article, as well as cases dismissed by the NLRB. When those goomers dismiss a case, it’s cuz you ain’t got nuthin.

Hope you enjoyed your stay at the Shady Rest Hotel and, oh yeah, ya’ll come back now, ya hear?

— Bruce La Rue

Mt. Ulla