Another Day for our Government

I woke up this morning, and one of the first websites I visited had the headline, "US Settles WTO Online Gambling Claims with the European Union". I began to read it, and it got me more and more infuriating. Our government has basically decided that paying some foreign countries billions of dollars is better than legalizing and regulating online poker in our country. Nevermind that the vast majority of our country thinks the law is against our rights as Americans as set forth by the Bill of Rights. Of course, legalizing it would bring billions of dollars of revenue for our government, a government that is perpetually short on money and long on fruitless expenses such as the one I am talking about. This is what pisses me off the most. In a time when our economy is suffering, our government is willing to flush billions down the drain (no one has commented how much, but the EU was asking $100 billion with ongoing payments annually of $3.44 billion). Here's the link to the article - http://www.pokernews.com/news/2007/12/us-settles-online-gaming-claims.htm

Of course, this event likely won't even be a blip on and in the news because the government will try to keep it on the down low. However, you will continue to hear President Bush and many other politicians bitch and moan how we still need to find funds to support this and that program. You'll hear some say we need to raise taxes. What could $20 billion do, let alone potentially $100 billion?

The scary thing is, you know this is just the tip of the iceberg. Our government throws around money like it grows on trees. Every politician does it. A lobbyist gave me money, here's a $20 million program to help you out; here's a tax loophole for your industry that will save you $50 million/year. All I have to do is attach it to this bill we got going. Then these same politicians will have the audacity to say the budget is out of control.

These are the thoughts that went through my head as I read the article. I could write about this topic for hours. It is one of the reasons our country could be in deep s&*t in the years ahead. Hopefully, sometime soon there will be a major overhaul in how our country is run. I wish I were optimistic this will happen, but I'm not.