Local politicians that give tax dollars to the Yuba -Sutter Arts Council have incensed citizens. A notice for “Drag, Drinks and Dessert” on June 15 during the Plumas Street Stroll at the Sutter Theater was an attention-grabber.
“Drag comes to town for a Yuba-Sutter first! Yuba-Sutter Arts Council and Tri-County Diversity are collaborating to bring the art of Drag to Yuba-Sutter. Enjoy the bombastic dance stylings of the various Queens as they perform to popular and iconic tunes.”
This isn’t the first complaint with the arts group and its government donors. As Covid rules relaxed, the Arts Council announced an event but required a vax card and photo identification, or a negative PCR test, and a Council-approved mask for entrance. Many planning to attend and whose tax dollars were funding the Council were prohibited.
If a private business, like a bar wants to allow smoking or Drag Queen night or set special entrance rules, so be it. Individuals interested in that will become patrons. And other uninterested citizens are not required to pay for it. The evil of the government is that it forcefully extracts our public monies to support activities that the abused do not approve of.
The government is not commissioned by citizens to give their money to the preferred charity of the elected. The founding fathers believed that individuals and churches should attend to charity causes and not pillage the peoples’ coffers.
The problem is that arrogant officials believe tax revenues actually belong to them to spend as they wish. They no longer are loyal to “We the People.” Their misappropriated “charity gifts” buy votes of those who prefer that charity. Elected officials even serve on charity boards to allow easier access to the local treasury. It is another political scam.
Davey Crockett, was a war hero and three-term Congressman from Tennessee. He opposed in a House speech to pay the widow of a Naval officer $20,000 to assure her well-being and honor her husband.
“Mr. Speaker — I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.
“I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to so appropriate a dollar of the public money………”
“There is a woman in my neighborhood, the widow of as gallant a man as ever shouldered a musket. He fell in battle. She is as good in every respect as this lady, and is as poor. She is earning her daily bread by her daily labor; and if I were to introduce a bill to appropriate five or ten thousand dollars for her benefit, I should be laughed at, and my bill would not get five votes in this House. There are thousands of widows in the country just such as the one I have spoken of, but we never hear of any of these large debts to them…….”
“Sir, this is no debt. The government did not owe it to the deceased when he was alive; it could not contract it after he died. I do not wish to be rude, but I must be plain. Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity.
“Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”
Every citizen has a moral and spiritual obligation to address legitimate needs. However, people do not have the right to use government and the law, in the name of charity, to force the unwilling to do that which they would not do if the choice were theirs.
(The Drag event noted above has been cancelled.)
(Lou Binninger can be heard on No Hostages Radio podcast, live on KMYC 1410AM 10-1 Saturdays, read at Live with Lou on Facebook and at Nohostagesradio.com)
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