Greedy government has forgotten its purpose

I’m proud of Sandpoint for having our own “tea party” April 15, even though I couldn’t attend.

When people accuse George Bush’s administration of raising the national debt, their short- term memory kicks out and they conveniently forget that 9/11 cost us a trillion dollars, there was a few billion for Katrina and then the massive flooding in the Midwest. If George Bush was the cause of all these events, he’s a lot more powerful than any other human who ever lived.

A few years ago Dr. D. James Kennedy said, “We have a Congress spending money like a drunken sailor — that’s probably an insult to a drunken sailor.”

But it’s getting much worse. President Obama has already spent far more than President Bush, and Obama’s just getting warmed up.

An old French proverb says, “A nation will not long survive after its citizens begin to think of government not as a watchdog to be fed, but as a cow to be milked.”

We have two problems here: a government that wants to spend money wildly (and where are they getting that money?), and a citizenry who is willing to let them spend it, in hopes they’re going to skim off some of the cream from that cow. We are in the financial mess we’re in because of the greed of a lot of people.

George Washington said, “Government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Our government has conveniently forgotten they are supposed to be working for us, that they are to be a servant, not a master.

EVALYN FINNEY

Sandpoint