I received an email from Townhall Spotlight today. Like all fiscal conservative groups, Townhall is all for smaller government except when it comes to defense spending. Then the sky is the limit. Never mind the DoD cannot account more than $1 trillion in inventory, let’s feed them more taxpayer money. I’m sure they will handle it right this time. So I trotted over to their latest project to cut government size by spending $12 billion on the F-22 fighter. I read a little bit of what they wanted and decided that I didn’t want to lump a $12 billion fighter plane project in with my monthly bills. Maybe I’ll spend the money in March. Who Knows? Then I went over to the White House web site to get the President’s email address. I got a support form. Go take a look at it. I starts with these words:
President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below:
Wow. That sounds great, but actions are louder than words. Try using Google AutoFill to fill in the form. It’s completely screwed up because the form designers used form field names with a prefix of ctl05$txt. So, the last name field is named ctl05$txtLastName which fools the Google Autofill feature. So I have to fill the form in by hand. Next I get down to the box to add my comment.
Message Please limit your entry to 500 characters.
500 Characters! Holy Crap, I’d better be succinct. So much for “creating the most open and accessible administration” blah blah blah. Don’t listen to politicians. Watch them. Actions always speak louder than words. Here’s what I sent:
I just received an email from Townhall Spotlight about saving the F-22 Raptor project. It seems it is up to the President to fund the project. Apparently the project employs 95,000 and costs at least $12 billion dollars. That’s a pretty steep price for jobs. Before you spend taxpayer money please do what taxpayers do. Think about whether there is any better use for that money. Can I pay the rent? Can I pay down some debt? Do I have enough money for groceries? Can I buy a jet fighter?
For those wishing not to do the math, taxes generally cost about 20% in compliance cost and 8% in collection costs. So, a dollar in government spending required somebody to spend $1.30 ( ( $1 + $0.20 ) / ( $1 – $0.08 ) ). A $12 biilion project requires people in the private sector to spend more than $15.6 billion dollars on taxes. $15.6 billion divided by 95,000 jobs equals $164,211 per job. That’s a pretty steep price for jobs.
Digg!