Welfare for the Wealthy

When I worked for a very large printer in York some years ago, business was booming and the owners were set to expand.

At first the owners felt a plant in North New Jersey would be a good idea to attract more and more of the New York City marketplace. But after a search for land they decided that real estate was much too expensive in North Jersey.

So what did the owners do? They went to the Pennsylvania state government and told them that they're looking at building in New Jersey, even though they had given up on that idea.

What did the state government do? Well they showered them with money, tax breaks, incentives.

The printer in York duped state government into thinking that they were spending millions to keep business and jobs in Pennsylvania. The owners laughed and laughed and laughed, and then went and bought another $100,000 car.

Believe me folks when I tell you this is all par for the course. It's welfare for the wealthy, and it happens every day.

When I was a staff writer for the Lebanon Daily News I was covering a dispute just outside of Annville where a developer had plans to swoop in and build a huge housing development with a golf course and airport. The locals were very upset. They argued that they didn't want to see the loss of this farmland, and that the local township couldn't support such a sudden large population boom.

The final decision came down to the county commissioners somehow. I had the hardest time reaching the developer. Then, finally, one day I was told that the spokesman for the developer happened to be one of the county commissioners. In a nutshell they gave one of the three county commissioners a big, fat check as a way of buying his vote.

Trust me when I tell you, this stuff goes on everyday all over the United States. It's welfare for the wealthy.

It doesn't matter whether you're Republican, Democrat, or Independent like myself. It's going on all over the place out there folks. I have first hand experiences with this stuff. It makes me a little sick to my stomach.

I hear people complain about welfare. Well I personally don't know anyone who is on welfare, and I can't imagine anyone being content living on welfare. What is it, like $7,000 a year? That's living in squalor. Who's going to be content living on that? Except those who are in desperate need.

But I don't hear enough people complaining about and standing up to our welfare for the wealthy. I will guarantee you that the spending on welfare for the wealthy is far greater than our spending on welfare for the needy and impoverished.

I was brought up in a church that taught me to lend a hand to my brothers or sisters in need.

Maybe I'm confused but are the needy defined as the executives of huge, global, financial institutions whose salaries would blow your mind, and who through their own methods of corruption and greed negatively effect us all?