The Citizen reported it: Peachtree City may get a Tourism Product Development Grant to cover part of the cost of a “film tour trolley.”
A grant. Makes it sound as if someone else were paying for it, right?
Sorry, that’s not true. Any “grant” money we might get is just our own money, paid in taxes to some government agency, and returned to us minus a brokerage fee.
Not only are we paying the full cost of the trolley, but we’re also paying for the privilege of begging a bureaucrat to return our own money to us.
Federal funds? No such thing. The only money the federal government has is either our tax money, or borrowed money which we’re obligated to repay.
State funds? Stimulus funds? Grants? Ditto and ditto and ditto.
The purchase price of the trolley is just the beginning. There will be maintenance and operating costs; the salary and benefits (including a pension and medical coverage) for a driver; signs saying “Trolley Stop” to be installed; liability insurance to be purchased. And another trolley to buy when this one wears out. (You don’t really think the first trolley is the only trolley, do you?)
But the money for the trolley comes from taxes on motel rooms, right? From out of town people who visit, right?
Partly true. But, that doesn’t mean it’s free. It’s money that could be spent elsewhere and probably for nobler purposes than a trolley to show folks where a couple of television shows are filmed.
Language shapes our thoughts. As long as we think in terms of grants, of federal funds, state funds, stimulus money, and the like, we mask the true nature of the money.
We hide even from ourselves that it’s our money that government has taken from us and doles out at its whim.
H. L. Mencken said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” Certainly, our government seems to understand that. Do we?
We must take back our government.
Paul W. Lentz, Jr.
Peachtree City, Ga.
