Not So Fast, Ron

Much of what Ron Paul says makes sense.

"Legalize, control, and tax drugs." Forty years into The War on Drugs and all we have are overflowing prisons, incredible wealth to the criminal underclass both here and abroad, and no real decrease in drug consumption. On the other hand, we have some great movies like "Scarface" and "Winter's Bone",

"Avoid foreign military adventures." Four thousand Americans died in Iraq. Five times that many suffer wounds from that conflict. One trillion dollars were spent, and for what? Saddam didn't have Weapons of Mass Destruction after all which is exactly what the UN Inspectors told us before we went in. At least, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney got big book contracts out of the deal.

"Abolish FEMA. Let the people re-build after storm damage. It worked in Galveston back in 1903." Not so fast, Ron.

Hurricanes Connie and Diane flooded "The Flats" alongside Scranton's Lackawanna River back in 1955. I had friends who lived in "The Flats" and their houses were either swept away in the floods or damaged so severely that they had to be torn down. I lived four blocks away (fortunately uphill) and I remember the stench of mold and decay after the waters receded. There were rumors of "rats the size of small dogs" foraging in the debris. We kids eagerly anticipated hunting them with our BB guns.

FEMA's 1955 equivalent spoiled our fun by essentially levelling all structures on "The Flats". The Corps of Engineers then built flood control structures along the river. "The people" simply could not have done this on their own. They were trying to re-construct their lives from FEMA-supplied house trailers. Once "The Flats" were habitable again, our Capitalist System swept in and built a shopping center that stands to this day.

Ron Paul might look at that shopping center and say, "See how private enterprise resurrected this disaster area." Not without the government clearing it first, Ron.

Taxes are the price we pay to accomplish things as a society that we can't do alone. Even if all those folks from "The Flats" chipped in $1,000 from their insurance claims (assuming they had insurance), by the time the claims were paid and a contractor hired, those rats would have been the size of Dobermans and hauling off small children for brunch.

When Hurricane Agnes swept through in 1972, the 1955 flood control structures held. The South Side Shopping Center remained dry and ready for the hordes of panic-driven shoppers stocking up on milk, bread, and toilet paper. Another triumph for Capitalism though one that would not have been possible without "our hard-earned tax dollars".