Where are you Harry?

There is an old saying that warns "If you take the king's coin, you do the king's bidding."  In the U.S. today the king is the federal government who hands out millions of dollars each year to state and local police, prosecutors, judicial circuits, and others to spread their DWI message.  The problem is that money has to come from somewhere.  Either it is simply lost money that will not be repaid in some way, or they have to collect those monies back from people convicted for DWI. 

Traditionally, public money was spent on things to improve the economy - roads, railroads, schools, defense, etc.  That began changing in a big way after World War II.  The propaganda machine created by WWII was never fully disassembled after the war.  Some of those people went to work in the private sector, but some stayed working for the government shaping the public opinion championed by the bureaucratic machine that employed them.  Today, it seems that pork barrel projects are not just for Congress anymore.  Government bureaucracies have them too, and they sell Congressmen on the need for funding by using lies, damned lies, and statistics. 

When President Harry Truman had difficult spending decisions to make he famously spent the taxpayer dollars as if it were coming out of his own pocket.  This often led to heated debates with fellow Congressmen who wanted money for their pet projects and causes.  When asked if he feared that he was alienating some of these powerful Washington men he is quoted as saying, "America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand."

Perhaps now, more than ever, we need politicians to do the job at hand.  Instead of taxing our citizens through the criminal courts we should be finding ways to reduce the huge sums of money being spent on creating fear of the government.  In this election year us citizens should be looking for candidates who are courageous, have imagination, and Harry Truman's unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.