Monday, June 05, 2006
Polytx/Gimmee!
When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton replied: "Because that's where the money is."
America is where the money is, and there are more mendicants here than in any other country in the world, beggars for everything from "a trip to Washington for my school class," to "... poor little Amelia in the barrios of Central America."
When I was five years old, at First Congregational in Fargo, North Dakota, mother had me bringing cans of beans and tomatoes to church to send along with our Christian evangelists, to Africa, and to the 'starving Armenians," in central Europe. With it came the admonishment: "Finish your cauliflower; there are poor little starving Chinese children who would love to have your cauliflower and rutabaga."
Here it is nearly a hundred years later, and we are still sending canned goods, beans and rice and wheat by the shipload (of course in foreign bottoms), medicines and the gamut of U.S. industry to Darfur, and India, all over the 'dark continent,' and the world. Doesn't this give an inkling that there is some thing to be said for the Bell Curve? Or, does it just say that our good church samaritans going out by the ship and plane load all over the world, were stupid, inept people?
When does "charity," the valid name for giveaways to beggars become too convoluted? Today we call it "entitlement" and "foreign aid," and every taxpayer shells out millions of dollars every
single year to pay for the Agency for International Development (read State Department 'diplomacy') , and about 5 billion dollars a year, each, to Israel and Egypt and other countrries, and for the Peace Corps, makework people who want to ride the government's gravy train and get special treatment for government jobs when they return from their stint abroad making illegal aliens envious, and instead of wanting to improve their own countries, wanting in on the free action on your dime, where illegals get subsistence and schooling and money FREE from your Congress and Supreme Court.
Today, charity is a business, and many of the people you see on TV from porcine evangelists rolling in money, to 'giving, compassionate' people roaming the squalid back streets of Central and South America and Africa for a photo op with "...little Amerlia," may well be driving Mercedes Benz when they return to their homes and their foundations where the compassion envelopes are sliced by razor sharp electric machinery, and sent to the bank (unless the envelope contains cash?).
Presidents and Congress have been so compassionate they've even allowed domestic companies to move their companies overseas to save on taxes and labor and jobs.
"Charity begins at home," but 'after the ball is over, ' Congress has nothing left for our own citizens.
***
America is where the money is, and there are more mendicants here than in any other country in the world, beggars for everything from "a trip to Washington for my school class," to "... poor little Amelia in the barrios of Central America."
When I was five years old, at First Congregational in Fargo, North Dakota, mother had me bringing cans of beans and tomatoes to church to send along with our Christian evangelists, to Africa, and to the 'starving Armenians," in central Europe. With it came the admonishment: "Finish your cauliflower; there are poor little starving Chinese children who would love to have your cauliflower and rutabaga."
Here it is nearly a hundred years later, and we are still sending canned goods, beans and rice and wheat by the shipload (of course in foreign bottoms), medicines and the gamut of U.S. industry to Darfur, and India, all over the 'dark continent,' and the world. Doesn't this give an inkling that there is some thing to be said for the Bell Curve? Or, does it just say that our good church samaritans going out by the ship and plane load all over the world, were stupid, inept people?
When does "charity," the valid name for giveaways to beggars become too convoluted? Today we call it "entitlement" and "foreign aid," and every taxpayer shells out millions of dollars every
single year to pay for the Agency for International Development (read State Department 'diplomacy') , and about 5 billion dollars a year, each, to Israel and Egypt and other countrries, and for the Peace Corps, makework people who want to ride the government's gravy train and get special treatment for government jobs when they return from their stint abroad making illegal aliens envious, and instead of wanting to improve their own countries, wanting in on the free action on your dime, where illegals get subsistence and schooling and money FREE from your Congress and Supreme Court.
Today, charity is a business, and many of the people you see on TV from porcine evangelists rolling in money, to 'giving, compassionate' people roaming the squalid back streets of Central and South America and Africa for a photo op with "...little Amerlia," may well be driving Mercedes Benz when they return to their homes and their foundations where the compassion envelopes are sliced by razor sharp electric machinery, and sent to the bank (unless the envelope contains cash?).
Presidents and Congress have been so compassionate they've even allowed domestic companies to move their companies overseas to save on taxes and labor and jobs.
"Charity begins at home," but 'after the ball is over, ' Congress has nothing left for our own citizens.
***
