Our opinion
The Moultrie Observer
MOULTRIE —
Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma makes a good point. You get rid of trillion dollar deficits a billion dollars at a time.
Just recently, former Colquitt Countian Chas Cannon wrote this newspaper an op-ed piece decrying the ill-advised spending attitude of our government, citing the “Robo Squirrel” project. We took his advice and Googled “Robo Squirrel.”
Subsequently in that search came Sen. Coburn’s “Wastebook”report of some $16-plus billion supplied by hardworking taxpayers on projects that would immediately draw the opening line: “You’ve got to be kidding!”
When the smoke clears in this research of dubious leadership, we find that “oversight” apparently is a lost art. Rather “out-of-sight” seems to prevail.
Among Coburn’s fleecing-the-taxpayers concerns are robotic squirrels, menus for Martian meals and a musical about climate change.
Although NASA has no plans or budget for any manned spaceflights to Mars, the agency spends about $1 million each year on developing "the Mars menu." It's an effort to come up with a variety of foods that humans could eat one day on Mars.
Then there’s a $325,000 grant for the development of "Robosquirrel" - a robotic rodent designed to test the interaction between rattlesnakes and squirrels.
It’s ludicrous to even begin to find socially redeeming value or constitutional conscience in any of this spending. These are ready-made jokes for David Letterman and Jay Leno.
At a time when our economy is sucking wind and people are out of jobs, to allow such spending as this should make us think in terms of tar and feathers.
Most of us who grew up on a farm and those who have ever driven by a farm and those who have done neither but can spell farm can tell researchers that squirrels and rattlesnakes don’t interact well. Of course that list would also include many other creatures. And assuming someone had no clue about how rattlesnakes and squirrels get along, the question remains...why would he even want to know? We should be studying, “why can’t Congress interact responsibly?”
At the risk of being a bit corny, what we need to be concerned about at this point are the apparent squirrels we have in Congress. And given some of the comments and positions taken by some of our “leaders” in both parties in recent months, we must conclude that some of them are quite nutty. Islands do not tilt when overpopulated and no, it’s not God’s will when a rape victim gets pregnant from that attack.
And again, where is “oversight?”
