Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Meanwhile, in the Post-Dispatch Business Section

Standard "Republican Spending Restraint Kills Grandmas" template stuff in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Cuts may leave some out in the cold:

For Betty Jenkins and thousands of other Missourians, juggling grocery, utility and medical bills on a fixed income is a day-to-day struggle. The task becomes even more daunting when temperatures dip and home-heating bills reach triple digits, she said.

Jenkins, a retired social services worker in her 60s who lives on Social Security and disability insurance, said the cost of heating her six-room home in north St. Louis County can top $100 a month during winter. To get by, she turns down the temperature every afternoon and occasionally has relied on federal assistance to avoid disconnection of her gas service.

She and other Missourians who depend on home-heating aid may have fewer resources to draw from next winter because base funding for the country's biggest energy assistance program would be cut by $85 million, or 4.4 percent, under President George W. Bush's proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Missouri would see funding trimmed by $1.9 million; Illinois would get $4.9 million less. The amount of emergency aid available nationwide also would be reduced by a third, to $200 million from $297 million.

I expect these sorts of stories from the Post-Dispatch, which could appropriately be printed in actual red ink. But I don't understand why this is a Business story.

Also missing from the story: calls to private citizens and charities to help out. Because although the Post-Dispatch and its idealogical contemporaries pose as champions of the common man, but it's startling how little faith they have in us helping others without government coercion.

Government coercion where the government takes its vig off the top to pay for its own salaries and costs, and then splits the proceeds among sports facilities and their attendant highly-paid commissions, pay offs to corporations to pleasepleaseplease don't move away, and then, if there's anything left, to replace private charity and its warmth and benevolence with externally-imposed duty and bureaucracy.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:12 AM