by Tom Blair
Columnist

33 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have primary seat belt laws, but I don’t know of any state that has seat belts in school busses. The most precious resource we have is our young folks, but they say it would be too expensive to put seat belts in busses. Some say it might cost 12 or 13 thousand dollars per buss. Too much money to protect a kid huh?

A big school bus can hold 66 kids, so it would be a little over $180 for that seat your son or daughter sits in. Divide that times the number of times they use that seat in a year and we’d probably have parents doing the “Adopt a seat program? Why not? We do it for trash on the highway.

I think it’s ironic that in America we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, while they discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.

I find it hard to believe that our government collects more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, but still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year – for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money… while people who believe in balancing the budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution can be called “extremists.”

And how in the heck can rich people who pay 86% of all income taxes be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any income tax at all.

We all hear the horror stories of our government waste and spending, and the $400 toilet lids and $50 hammers we pay for. We all know of the BILLIONS in cost overruns on defense weapons and contractor costs… but ain’t it funny that we never hear of the successful ways they have ended the problem.

If a contractor agrees to charge you $1,000 to build a patio, labor and materials included, then that’s what you pay. Unless you are stupid enough to sign a contract to have the patio built for $1,000 plus whatever labor the contractor wants to use and whatever material the contractor wants to use at whatever price he wants to pay for it.

Our government gets the low bidder to build a toilet for a $500 bid, then, when the toilet is built, we pay $10,000 in cost overruns… with no questions. No wonder we’re in the toilet!

Tom “Road” Blair

Website: www.tomroadblair.com