horatio bunce

Not Yours to Give: A little refresher training in who works for whom.  An excellent read, if you've never seen it before.

Comments

[cloudbuster]

This is very timely, with the current relief effort in Haiti underway. I'm kind of afraid to mention it in general company because I'll no doubt be denounced as evil and heartless, but our Constitution gives no authority to the Federal government to expend vast sums of money dispatching troops, ships, aircraft carriers and all other manner of aid -- millions and millions of taxpayer dollars -- on humanitarian missions. The money is not the President's or Congress's to spend.

Our Constitution doesn't have a footnote that exempts the federal government from its limits "if it's a really, really good cause."

[Scott]

Thanks for linking to this excellent essay -- it's message is very timely, even if not appreciated by many.

[J Green]

Very timely, in the UK the "people" donated 12 million dollars from their own pockets, the government feeling hard done as they had only donated 10 million then dug deeper into the "peoples" pockets and donated 20 million more.

When will it come to pass that it is widely understood that it is not down to the amount of money, as much as its down to how it is spent. I've read far too many news reports on large sums of money being spent and too many news reports on how it is making little headway in solving the problem - yet the solution is always to throw more money at it.

Apparently the airport is the bottleneck, yet there has been no temporary runways made/cleared or designated for lighter aircraft to take the strain. Apparently the US is landing more troops than aid meaning a large percentage of all this aid money will either never get in or will be spent hauling supplies from hundreds of miles away in other countries rather than on the aid itself.

Every time an international crisis occurs the effort seems to be directed at making a song and dance of the whole charade so that people can "feel" like they or their country are helping, rather than actually having the right people, doing whatever needs to be done to solve the problem.

The UN urges patience whilst the "effort" made haste with the notion that it would save more lives. They're both wrong, before applying either in any measure you MUST organize with the intention of maximizing your effectiveness. Such simple logic that is lost in the face of what to me seems like the most evil kind of selfishness, the desire to "feel" like you're doing a good thing. Where as in reality, doing good is not the intention of doing something heroic or righteous, it's enduring suffering for the sake of others. In this case people should have endured the suffering of knowing that not everyone could be saved from this disaster and gone about saving the maximum amount rather than trying to save everyone and sacrificing the many for the few they could - no doubt working hard and feeling adequately righteous for their efforts.

At the epicenter of the so called Aid effort, this is the scene, "The government is a joke. The UN is a joke," Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, said as she lay in the dust with dozens of dying elderly outside their destroyed nursing home. "We're a half a mile from the airport and we're going to die of hunger."

We live in a world with a very twisted perception of right and wrong, good and bad, justice and injustice.

[Jacquie]

Every politician should be forced to read this essay and hopefully the bulk of them would realize that it is the government's job to govern - not to provide, each individual has the responsibility to provide for themselves and their family - and to help care for those around them that can't, but the government has no right to force such donations!!!!