I wonder how long Asheville Mayor Terry Bellamy would last in office if she ran the munici- pal government the way Washington, D.C., is run? She is constricted to a budget. Just like those of us who live in Asheville and Western North Carolina, we must live within our means. Why does that not apply to the federal government?
The power in Washington, D.C., nickel and dimes those who pay federal taxes to death with the slow kill. And billions spent are senseless, reckless: $140,000 to study pig feces in China? $100,000 on a video game about aliens saving planets from climate change? $88,000 to send the comedy show, Make Chai, Not War to India? $55,000 on a study to find the link between immaturity and heavy drinking in your 30s?
[What’s next? Will] Mayor Bellamy give a $500,000 tax break to a company moving here that will be opening an experimental sky diving school that will use no parachutes. Well … how far off would that be from the federal govern- ment’s actions? Mayor Bellamy would be the laughing stock on run out of town.
And we Americans wonder how we are $16.5 trillion in debt.
— Fuller Moore
Mountain Home
