Letter to the Editor Submission 4/16/09

In response to the Hoot on 4/15/09, “ I wonder what Phil Miller is doing during National Library Week?”. Well actually I was at… the library. I was working at the Volunteer Fair that nite. If I had not been there I would have been at the Tax Day Tea Party in Indy. I do have to admit that I love it when people pay Attention. Now we have to work on the Understanding part of the equation.

There was an article a few weeks ago in the Reporter about how usage was up at the Library because of economic conditions. I followed with a letter to the editor expressing my unhappiness about using taxpayer money for novels, CD’s and DVD’s when, here in Greenfield, we’ve had locally owned bookstores and video rental business’s disappear as the tax payer funded library get’s bigger and more elaborate.

You should know that I’m not a library hater and this isn’t only about only the library. We are talking about all the different ways that big government gets into our pockets for the advantage of others. I don’t hate the schools or the parks or kids going to Japan or even professional sports (well, maybe I do intensely dislike the Colts and their new Big Mac funded stadium). They all do good things. But do you realize that there are good things that aren’t the right thing to do?

Giving money to the poor is a good thing to do. Taking that money from someone that doesn’t want to participate in giving to that person is not the right thing to do. (see the Miriam Webster dictionary - Stealing: to take the property of another wrongfully and especially as a habitual or regular practice).

I challenge you to count the number of times that some politician has decided that his pet project is more important than your bank account. I also challenge you to accept the responsibility for it. You may have been heartily in favor of the library or the new colts stadium but when you gave them the right to step outside of the constitution to do that, you also gave them the right to spend your tax money on a complete range of birth control, welfare and giving bonus’s to all those bankers across the country. Your silence, your cheers and your votes were tacit agreement with every decision made.

By the way, are you surprised that I would step inside the library? Come now, would you expect me to invest all of that money into it and not use it at all?

While I have the microphone, I’d like to throw in my less than 2 cents about doings at the County level. Linda Grass and I are about as far apart as two folks can get in terms of politics but I would like to say that she knows the rules and she always did her level best to make sure that we (especially me) followed them. I’m betting that in the end, Linda will be found guilty of nothing more than a series of poor decisions.