J and D's Corner

From the Letters Archive

Don't 'ya just love those folks who advocate great things...that they expect someone else to pay for?
 

To:  AV Press

Date: 09/2006

Re:  Freedom Is...

I’m a great fan of free enterprise (subject to reasonable check-and-balance oversight, of course). It can be applied to accurately put a value on anything, for instance advocacy.

I was reading a letter to the Press advocating support of a bill that, essentially, would outlaw the use of horses from Kentucky and New York as food. It would also require that the government pay owners who dispose of horses the amount they would have received had the animals been sold to food processors, to the tune of around $233,000,000 in taxpayer funds over the next five years.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if those who advocate these neat things also had to pay for them? Have you ever noticed that people who say things like "cost should not be a consideration…" are also people who don’t expect to pay any significant portion of that cost?

I suggest our government establish "free enterprise advocacy consortiums" to finance major advocacy items like preserving death row criminals forever, requiring animal control to house & feed stray animals for life, etc. Passionate advocates could sign on to as many causes as they desire. When enough ‘subscribers’ signed up, the program would be enacted and its supporters would thereafter be billed quarterly for their proportionate cost. If payments dropped below requirements, the program would terminate.

Do that and "cost is no object" might become MY viewpoint.