Rodent Regatta

Dear Robbie and Chip:

I just don’t know how to thank you for the front-page story today singing the glories of the new state budget and increased funding for education and kindergarten. I think it’s great that the single moms quoted in your story will be getting more money. And thank God we no longer ask them penetrating questions about their personal circumstances. I mean, who are we to pass judgment on them just because they want our money? If they say they need my money, they need my money, no questions asked. After all, it takes a village, a village newspaper, village reporters and the village treasury to raise a family.

And thank goodness you didn’t call me or anyone like me for a pithy quote.

I might have said something about the average Arizona household already paying $190,000 in k-12 public education taxes over the adult lives of the heads of the household. Since the average household has two kids, that comes to $95,000 per kid, even when using the new math taught in government schools. Such a statement would have rained on your chirpy piece and upset your bedmate, the NEA. Or I might have said that I will spend an additional $65,000 to exercise my constitutional and natural right of religious freedom to send my kid to Catholic school. That comes to $255,000 for 12 years of education. What a deal! Am I a compassionate classical liberal, or what?

Worse, I might said that my wife and I already fork over half of our income to the government and then asked how much more you and your single moms think it would be fair for us to pay in taxes. Egad! That would have been mean-spirited and selfish, just like those troglodyte Republican legislators that your employer makes fun of all the time for sticking up for taxpayers instead of tax takers. Grr, I get angry just thinking about those meanies.

By the way, do you know the Italian, Spanish, French and German words for ”stinky unbalanced reporting”?

Regards,
Craig J. Cantoni
Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (HAALT)

The state is that great fiction by which everyone
tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

—Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)