I hate the government, Part 5.

Now its time to wrap up my current hating on the government. I could go on for like 50 more posts but it would be on cliche stuff like Iraq, health care and whatnot. No one really needs more crap thrown into those debates. But anyways, government hating reason #5 relates a lot to reason #1.

And so here it is, suckage reason #5:

No one wastes money better than the good ol' U.S. of A. Like in post #1, we know abstinence doesn't work but have wasted over a billion dollars on it in the last decade. Congress gives themselves a raise all the time for "cost of living increases" but never does the same for minimum wage. As an aside, I read an editorial a while back that suggested writing a little line into the next minimum wage bill that ups it ever so slightly each year for cost of living. Everyone wins. Minimum wage workers get a raise every year and companies don't have to pee their pants figuring out how to give everyone $2 more an hour. And politicians get to feel good about themselves.

Anywho, back to the topic at hand: wasting money on dumb stuff. Its not actually the money wasting that irritates me the most, actually. It is what gets screwed in the process. What specifically got this thought wheel turning was the latest budget proposal that slashes the hell out of cancer funding. Now a $40 million cut isn't much in comparison to the overall cancer budget, however, its effects are huge.

$40 million is everything to cancers that don't get any other funding and unfortunately, those are the cancers that are going to get screwed by the funding cut. And I think today is a particularly good day to discuss why cancer should get $40 million more, not less. Anyone who went to high school with me will remember when Aaron died. That was two years ago today. That obviously affected me much, much more than any of the rest of my friends since he and Tony were friends since kindergarten. Aaron died of pancreatic cancer, which just should not have happened. First of all, kids don't get that. It is an extremely rare disease in old people and pretty much unheard of in kids. Unfortunately, he was going to die from the moment he was diagnosed. A very sad reality, but entirely true. Survival rates for pancreatic cancer are for the 1 year survival, not 5 year survival like every other cancer. There simply is not a 5 year rate. Everyone dies. He made it a lot longer than could ever have been expected though. But what Aaron has to do with cancer funding is that he died because there is no "Plan B" for pancreatic cancer treatment. There is hardly a "Plan A" and it isn't exactly the most effective therapy around. The only way to develop an "Plan B" is with research dollars. Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer is an excellent example of a cancer that while so desperately in need of funding, its money will be cut because it is too rare to be "important." Breast cancer, on the other hand, is swimming in funding, so then, its really not too surprising that there are Plans A-Z for breast cancer treatment. If one doesn't work, try something else that does. You can live with breast cancer.

So as I was typing this, the news said something about the Senate passing another $100 billion Iraq bill. $100 billion is INSANE! I'm pretty sure gathering all that money up in little cash bags, dousing it with some gasoline and striking a match would be just as effective at this point but I suppose we do have to spend something, even if it is cut and run money. The rest of the budget though? I'm gonna say its about 75% sheer crap. If you made it to Congress, you're already rich. Quit paying your unproductive asses so much! Some tiny little town in the middle of a corn field is probably going to get a fancy new bridge or paved road next to one that went up 10 years ago because its Congressman wrote it into a bill and no one really cared. Vote for Bob! And finally, referring back to Reason #1 for hating the government, let's throw in a few hundred million dollars for a crack pot sex-ed program. Meanwhile, in other news, thousands of people, mostly children, quietly suffer and die as the clinical trials that would have saved them shut down. Good riddance!