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Where oh where do our tax dollars go? (Part II) TRACKSIDE © by John D’Aloia Jr. October 1, 2002 Where, oh where do my tax dollars go! I couldn’t help it. The information in a state senator’s e-mail cried out for use of the refrain again. Remember Ad Astra, the 4,400 pound bronze and stainless steel Indian statue to be placed atop the capitol dome? Taxpayers are shelling out $750,000 to reinforce the dome to hold the weight; Governor Graves refused to stop the work in the face of the state’s on-going fiscal problems. (Really, his take on governance is not much different than Marie Antoinette’s - let them eat cake.) As one might suspect, the Ad Astra expenditures did not stop when $750,000 was rung up. The senator relayed the State Architect’s report: the crane to be used to give Ad Astra his ride to the top rents out at $225 per hour or $1800 per day - and the total cost of the crane, including operator, mobilization, and demobilization - please sit down - will be approximately $150,000. Ad Astra had better be well grounded. After spending almost a million dollars to get him to his perch, I would hate to see the dome splattered with bronze after a hum-dinger lightning storm. Ad Astra will be an apropos explanation mark on a capitol building leaking money from every seam. (No snide remarks now about the seemingly endless supply of water in the $15 million hole that is to become an underground parking garage.) Official data lags reality but it offers evidence as to the magnitude of the wild spending that has been going on by those who work under the dome. The U.S. Census Bureau has published state expenditure data for the year 2000. (The data does not include federal and local spending.) The data bestowed upon Kansas dubious honors. Kansas expended $1,381.31 per capita on education; the U.S. average was $1,234.79. This was higher per capita spending than in Oklahoma, Missouri, Colorado, or Nebraska. In 1999, Kansas lead the nation by spending the highest percentage of its budget on education. In 2000, Kansas was seventh. What did this high spending get us? Demands by the educrats and their political puppets that Kansans pour even more money into the education black hole. It certainly did not produce excellence, not when there are schools in which the 2002 state assessment tests showed that 41 percent of 11th-grade students scored unsatisfactory or basic in reading, and 43 percent of 10th-grade students scored unsat or basic in mathematics. Will more money magically eliminate the sorry achievement results? No way. Unless there are systemic changes in the system, it will be more of the same. Highway expenditures are a gigantic pot hole. In 2000, Kansas spent 14.85% of its budget on highways; the national average is 6.84%. Kansas spent $504.06 per person on roads; the national average is $264.10 per person. The closest "competitor" in the region for transferring your resources to the contracting industry was Oklahoma, which spent 11.53% of its budget on highways which equated to $355.00 per person. Do you like powdered milk? Your federal government has a deal for you. In June, the Associated Press reported that the feds have stored around the country enough powdered milk to make about 1.3 billion gallons of skim milk - and 20 million pounds arrive each week. The storage costs approximate $20 million per year; the stored powdered milk is carried on the books at $1 billion. Why? Because in our subsidy driven agricultural market, the feds have been buying it to keep milk prices above a given level and thus support diary farmers’ revenues. We could make sweet milk out of it - under another price support program, the feds have 250,000 tons of sugar stashed away. Every time we let government spend our tax dollars for programs and projects that have no basis in the Constitution or in the principles of freedom in the Declaration of Independence, we are letting it amass more power unto itself, and in so doing, we are letting it morph our constitutional republic into a socialistic state. Lyn Nofziger, an astute commentator on the national scene has his explanation for the degradation of freedom. He said: "The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men."
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