| | The smaller point: So, having earned a salary supported by taxes, the mayor has no right to use that money how he or she sees fit? He has no right to avoid the kind of criticism that's been offered here. If you find the mayor's actions moral, you'll need a better argument than mere rationalization: "He earned it, so he can do what he wants with it."
Are you saying that anyone who works for the government, or works for a business that has government contracts, or works for a business that does business with any government worker can't make certain transactions? The US Government is the biggest employer in the world, yet it produces exactly nothing to pay those wages. Taking from Peter to pay Paul is not an action immune from scrutiny.
As pointed out by Machan:
There have always been ample numbers of voluntary agencies stepping up where genuine support was justified—I noted this in my book, Generosity (1998). But that historical fact doesn’t seem to impress the cheerleaders of expanded state power. They keep bringing up the poor, sick, and orphaned so as to induce in the rest of us support for their dream society, the all powerful welfare state.
The story about the plastic saxophone illustrates very nicely, though, just how readily those in government abandon a commitment to confining their activism to helping those in dire straits.
Charlie Parker is dead. There's no helping the man now. If the mayor paid almost $100,000 to help businesses destroyed by Katrina last year, I'd have no quarrel with the man.
I am opposed to full time government with departments of every stripe, paying employees of every bend, full time pay and benefits for work that produces nothing but headaches for non-government employees, usually at a rate far far better than those in the private sector, at the expense of real production, that facilitates real benefits for real live citizens, not dead ones.
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