SUCKERS
Hurricane victims perished because they relied on government for their personal safety
BY MARK WARDEN

Congress is considering a bill to allocate some $50 billion in taxpayer money to those affected by Hurricane Katrina. What’s more is Clark County and other Nevada communities opened their doors to the Gulf Coast evacuees.

How many millions of taxpayer dollars will be spent by your elected officials here in Nevada to help so-called “victims” of the disaster? Forget about Nevada’s needy. Let’s divert money to Mississippi and Louisiana’s needy.

Many Nevada employers, both large and small, stepped up and gave money for the relief effort. While private-sector giving is better than governmental charity, that is money that could have gone to employee compensation and benefits or to shareholders who invested in those companies.  That kind of charity is not exactly voluntary, even though it may make for good PR.

If you donated money to one of the relief-effort organizations, such as the Salvation Army, you should feel like a sucker.  According to the Salvation Army’s website, it annually receives more than $300 million from the government. That is money forcibly extracted from your paycheck. What if you preferred your tax dollars go to the Red Cross, or Catholic Charities, or a local group like Shade Tree? 

Too bad. It’s not really your money after all. The government has first and last rights on your earnings. You get what’s left over.

Congressmen and women, in blatant posturing to win future votes for their re-elections are spending your tax dollars after Katrina at a break-neck pace. The federal government is racing (or crawling, as some would say) to the aid of those displaced by flooding and wind damage. 

Who is the federal government? It’s made up of agencies, bureaucrats, and political operatives who depend on tax dollars for their jobs. They love disasters like this to further justify their existence.

I’ve always believed that charity should be personal and voluntary. What makes you think that some far-off bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. is more generous or compassionate than you? You as a private donor know that the money is being used with your stipulations, not those of some bureaucrat with his own agenda.

At times like these, I often wonder what the founding fathers of our great nation thought about such matters. According to James Madison, “Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

These sages believed strongly in charity, but knew that it should be at a personal level, not via Washington, D.C.

We saw in New Orleans last month just what happens when people who have been have been spoon-fed by the government their whole lives, and in some cases entire families over generations, are suddenly found in a predicament where they need to take care of themselves: they fail miserably. Hundreds of people in New Orleans perished because they didn’t take personal responsibility for their own safety. They “expected” someone else (i.e., the government) to take care of them, to save them, to feed and house them.

The real tragedy in the aftermath of Katrina is not just the loss of lives, homes, and businesses, but America’s obvious downward spiral of dependence and the government’s increasing socialistic, paternalistic pervasiveness in our culture. LW

Mark Warden is active with Nevadans for Sound Government, the Libertarian Party of Clark County and the Nevada Republican Liberty Caucus. Reach him at markwarden@cox.net.