Locally Grown

We've heard so much talk about "fair share" from our President, I'd like to examine the subject once more, but from an entirely different perspective. Do local communities get their fair share of the tax dollars that flow into the federal government?

Is it fair that spending that affects local institutions—e.g., schools, emergency responders, social welfare programs) is controlled by a far away bureaucracy? Is it fair that local citizens and politicians, who have the best handle on the specific needs and requirements of a town or city, become slaves to the largess (or lack thereof) of a federal government that is thousands of miles away awith priorities that often do not match the priorities of a local community? Is it far that decision making is so far removed (culturally and economically) from the needs of the local community? Is it fair that national lobby groups have so much control over both legislation and spending that affects small towns and cities that have any political clout?

Maybe it's time for communities to tax and spend their fair share before those dollars are extracted from their citizens by the feds.

Over the past one hundred years, the distribution of government spending has changed dramatically.

Leo Linbeck illustrates with the following bar graph:

It's time for local communities to regain control of the dollars that flow out of them and into the cesspool that is Washington politics. Federal bureaucrats and politicians extract "vigorish" from every tax dollar they collect. They redistribute your money to their pet projects. They spend inefficiently. They waste money in mind-boggling ways before returning a small percentage of those dollars to your community.

The Left is fond of promoting "locally grown" food. Maybe it's time for them to stop their support of big government and promote locally grown spending for those priorities that are locally required. Tax locally, spend locally while at the same time shrinking federal spending by a commensurate amount. It will save money. It will allow communities to control their own destiny. It has a nice ring to it.