One century, one decade and one year separate us from the birth of Ronald Reagan. With each passing day, especially in these troubling times, we are reminded of Reagan’s basic goodness and, yes, greatness.
Derided by the Manhattan elites and the Georgetown Cocktail Set as a “simpleton,” Reagan’s genius was his ability to simplify the seemingly complex.
“If you want less of something, tax it,” Reagan said, succinctly explaining the rationale for tax cuts. History recalls that the reduction of tax rates led to the expansion of economic opportunity during the Reagan era.
But our 40th president also understood the absurdity of the big-talking, big-spending, big-government left. “If you want more of something, subsidize it,” Reagan warned.
Sure enough, Joe Biden is buying bigger and bigger problems for our nation and our future.
Among the outrageous examples of “your tax dollars at work” comes this gem: the funding of the distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts.
Courtesy of Senate Democrats and Vice President Harris, who cast the deciding vote, the American Rescue Plan features a “harm reduction” grant program.
Of course, it comes with a cheap price — at least by Washington standards: “Only” $30 million. As it stands now, that dough will be divvied up into $400 thousand chunks and sent to local governments as well as selected “nonprofit organizations.”
The goal? To make drug use safer for addicts.
How will that be accomplished? In part, through the purchase of “smoking kits and supplies” for addicts. The all-knowing, all-caring, sensitive bureaucratic souls at the Department of Health and Human Services will oversee this beneficence.
An HHS official confirmed this “forward-thinking action” to the “Washington Free Beacon,” explaining that the smoking kits will include those precious, specially made pipes for users to smoke crystal meth, crack cocaine or “any illicit substance.”
But faced with a strong and immediate backlash from media reports concerning the inclusion of crack pipes, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra issued an “11th hour revision.” A press release stated that “no federal funding will be used … to put pipes in safe smoking kits.”
So the “safe smoking kits” remain…Addicts will just have to furnish their own crack pipes. Got it!
But Ol’ Joe and his gang didn’t limit the giveaway by grants to just smoking kits. Other items to be distributed included fentanyl strips, syringes and condoms!
Also detailed among the items for which your tax dollars can be spent are “disease screenings” and vaccinations. Remember, this was enacted during the COVID-centric days of “crisis,” and as we’ve collectively learned, the left never lets a “crisis go to waste.”
Undergirding this entire exercise is a wrongheaded idea that government should shoulder the responsibility of making drug use more secure and “healthier.”
To the extent government is involved, its resources should be focused on the prevention of drug abuse.
“Big Guy,” J.D. Hayworth, Author
It’s bad enough that the Biden Bunch disregards this simple concept, but compounding the error is the curious moral and political “accounting” that accompanies it. By abandoning “equality” in favor of “equity,” the left confers special status on an underclass and a commitment to expanding that underclass.
Here’s the perverse rationale at work: These grants are prioritized for “underserved communities.”
While the late actor and comedian Robin Williams joked that “cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much money,” can anyone seriously believe that expanding access to drugs and drug paraphernalia in “underserved communities” does anything but increase the number of drug abusers in those communities?
Compassionate? No, it’s “confused compassion” at best — and, more likely, counterfeit.
Subsidizing drug abuse and all that comes with it — violent crime, homelessness and death — is no way to serve “underserved communities.”
Written by J.D. Hayworth for the West Valley View ~ February 21, 2022