Another day, another example of government blowing money it doesn’t have.
There was a quarter-page ad in this week’s Nevada Appeal headlined “Got a Question?” The ad lists three sample questions: (1) Where can I write my congressman? (2) What’s the state flower of Florida? (3) Where can I find the health information I need?
Ask these questions of pretty much any American kid over the age of eight and where do you think they’ll go online to find the answers? Exactly. Google. Maybe Yahoo. Or perhaps Dogpile.
All are privately-run online search engines where you can find the answer to almost any question under the sun. But where does this advertisement tell readers to go to get their simple questions answered?
A public library website.
That’s right, according to this “Ask a Librarian” ad, you should use the taxpayer-funded public library system “from your home computer or at your local library” for “fast, reliable and free” answers to all your questions rather than Google.
In these tight budgetary times, why is the taxpayer-funded public library system spending money advertising a taxpayer-funded search engine system which is competing with the private sector?
Here’s another example.
Do you have a AAA membership or other kind of roadside assistance card? A lot of people do. In addition, there’s a privately-owned roadside assistance service in Las Vegas called The Car Doctor (owned by my son’s godparents) which will come out to your disabled (don’t say “handicapped”!) vehicle and either get it running again or tow you out of trouble.
But a few years ago, the government decided that roadside assistance should be a taxpayer-funded entitlement. So it opened a government-run, taxpayer-funded competing roadside assistance operation.
But government is running at a bare-bones level, right? Nothing to cut anywhere, right? Right.
Posted on December 15th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
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