Thursday, January 12, 2006
Teatime in “New California”
Tea drinking has always been a part of our history, such as the Boston Tea Party in 1773, a protest of tea tax. Tea rooms have sprung up across the country. You may even know a “tea aficionado.” (Our cousin set up a little shop in Pennsylvania, serving the finest Assam teas and others.) Yes, tea is part of our heritage. Sonny and Gloria Kamm of Pasadena, California, sure thought so. They amassed a collection of over 6,000 teapots. Sounds good, but…
Now, these avid collectors have turned to taxpayers to fund a chunk of the projected $10 million cost of building a home for their “children” in the town of Sparta in Alleghany County, North Carolina, thanks in large part to the efforts of Jean McLaughlin, director of the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. On behalf of taxpayers everywhere who keep getting stuck with the bill for these projects, I say, “Gee, thanks, Jean.”
If you’re asking why you should care, think about the money your child’s school needs and other legitimate uses for taxes. Further, think about what YOU could do with that money.
Guess who the Executive Director of the museum is. Yep, Patrick Woodie, a former Alleghany County commissioner. Seems like Woodie wrangled a new job at taxpayer expense. Simple for someone used to collecting a taxdollar-funded paycheck. Of course, he claims it’s all for the county residents, after several expensive attempts to bring manufacturing back to the county failed. Tourism is the answer. Works every time. Well, sort of. The museum will take a dozen people in Sparta off the unemployment line AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE. Whoopee.
This definitely falls under the classification of “What Were They Thinking?” Of course, the answer is: “They Weren’t”!
With government pork at an all-time high, this seems to even the most spendthriftiest among us to be a real head-scratcher. I guess if Alaska can get $200 million to do with as it pleases (originally for building the now-infamous “bridge to nowhere” to connect Ketchikan to Gravina Island, a community of 50 people that has no roads), then us tea drinkers can have an edifice housing the finest bric-a-brac around.
Woodie claims that getting money from taxpayers (both state and federal) will jiggle loose the private donations. Just because it hasn’t worked in the past…
I’m all for people having jobs but don’t see this as a solution. It also begs the question: If the Kamms want a home for their “children,” why don’t they fund it?
Further, why is the Gold LEAF Foundation using funds wrested from the tobacco industry for this porkish homage to tea? Sounds like a small town I knew in California where they used tobacco funds to pay for having live reindeer at their Christmas Festival.
So much for helping counties, including Wake, that have watched their economies go up in smoke when lawyers were successful, after decades of trying, to get tobacco companies to pay for the poor choices of their customers, putting many tobacco farms out of business. Too bad the tobacco farmers couldn’t get FDA approval of tobacco as a food additive like the soybean growers did.
Gotta go now. It’s teatime.
Copyright © 2006 A.C. Cargill
