Robbing Peter to pay for Paul’s projects

Whoopee, hurrah, yeah, right on. Finally a column about the immorality of what our government and our representatives are so proud of. Froma Harrop hit it right on the head with her Feb. 11 column. When are we voters going to realize there is no free lunch, and that our government was not put in place so we could steal from others or have others steal from us?

Granted, there are many issues we have to work on together to keep commerce going, protect our borders, catch criminals, etc., but earmarks are just the symptom of our forgetting that anything we get from government comes out of all of our pockets. You pay the bill every time you buy something, pay your property tax, get a paycheck, go to an event or park your car.

I totally agree with Harrop that I should not have to pay for anything anywhere else besides my own community, unless that expenditure has been brought before all communities, who discussed it and decided that we should all chip in and help. Putting the source of financing so far from us has made us lazy and immoral.

The answer is more participation by us the voters and putting pressure on our reps to live within the income they get, and if they won’t, then we get rid of them and find people who will. Both messes are of our own making, because we didn’t do our job. We sent our representatives to Washington, D.C., to take care of things that only they can handle together, and if someone needs a road to nowhere (or somewhere for that matter) it’s not their job to steal from everybody to pay for something that those who want it are to lazy or unwilling to pay for themselves.

Robert Williams

Rolling Meadows