A common thread can be found in a majority of government articles appearing in the recent editions of The Weekly Observer. Whether the coverage is of city and town councils in Hemingway or Johnsonville, reports from the Williamsburg County Council meetings, or the gatherings of the county’s District School Board, the same term hangs around all: stimulus.
This is to be expected of course. After all, each one of the bodies mentioned is indeed a government entity, and therefore connected to the massive spending coming out of our nation’s capital. If one were surprised at hearing the “s” word in the chambers of local and county boards and councils, they just haven’t been paying attention to current events. The surprise, however, should come from how and when the “s” word is being used at these events.
In the County Council, money to purchase and repair government vehicles came from federal stimulus funds. In Hemingway and Johnsonville, questions about civic repair projects and downtown refurbishment drifted back to stimulus moneys that might provide for such improvements; and there is a very strong possibility that the problems facing some area schools will be solved through, you guessed it, “stimulus.”
With the “s” word serving as the new cure-all for city and county ailments, one wonders what anybody did before there was such a thing as a “federal stimulus”. What happened when a school’s roof needed fixed or a town needed new streetlights before the age of “bailouts” and “recovery plans?” Where did we turn to before our national government insisted the best way to deal with problems of the economy was for them to totally take over and decide where money needed to be spent?
The stimulus was originally sold as a chance to bring our economy out of a recession and start the flow of cash back into the marketplace, but did anybody stop and really listen to those who questioned how this might affect our dependence on the federal government? Sure, you might see an economy on the mend and projects coming to our counties and towns, but when all of it bears the mark of Washington, DC and slowly turns us all into wards of the state, is it worth it?
Have we really all been convinced that the stimulation of our economy comes with the cost of our independence from big government? Perhaps the United States needs less of a financial stimulus and more a freedom wakeup call.
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