From this week's KOFFEE 'N' KOSH

They don't have a website, or even an email address, so I'll have to type this in manually. It's from their lead story in their 04-09-04 issue, Koshkonong City Government Changes With A Landslide.

"Doyle Langley says he would like to thank everyone for their support and vote of confidence, and he is looking forward to helping the residents in any way he can and also with hopefully getting some grants into the Koshkonong area. He and George Hunt have already got the ball rolling toward the May 15th grant. Langley says we don't have much time left to get the grant submitted, but will need everyone working together to make it possible."

The bolded part is my emphasis, not the paper's. I don't know what improvements these people are seeking (a later comment in the article references "improving homes and streets for our residents"), but whatever they are, I have to wonder -- if the people of Koshkonong don't want these improvements enough to pay for them themselves, what makes it the responsibility of someone in, say, Excelsior Springs Missouri or even Provo Utah (if it's a federal grant they're looking for) to help pay for them?

My beef isn't with people who get the grants. It's awfully tempting to accept the mindset of "If WE don't get them, someone else will." My beef is with the people who made these grants possible in the first place. If you want your roof fixed, you pay for it. If Kosh wants better streets, Kosh should pay for it. Not someone in Branson or Tulsa Oklahoma.

In a fable that sounds like it could have been typed up by Communist Party headquarters, Langley goes on to lecture us that one plus one does not equal two.

"Langley tells the story of a man with ponies who liked to watch them pull. One pony pulled 1200 pounds; he put another pony with the one and together they pulled 3600 pounds. If you notice one pony could only pull so much, but with just one more pony they could pull, not twice as much but triple. That's TEAMWORK! The same goes for our community, one person can't pull the whole load, but with TEAMWORK, we will see great things happen for our little town."

I'll skip the argument that people are not beasts of burden, and neither are tax dollars. But I will point out that what this story leaves out is that the second pony by himself can pull 3500 pounds, and that if you have them pull individually, they can pull 4700 pounds, but if you put them together, the first pony lets the second do most of the work, so they can only pull 3600 pounds.

A is A. One plus one equals two. There is no free lunch, not even by sucking at the teat of the government mule.