Ah, socialism: the Spearfish City Council made two special appropriations at its Monday, May 7 meeting. The city first appropriated $4,130 to buy and maintain 300 used pairs of roller skates from a closing rink in Montana. According to yesterday's Black Hills Pioneer, the Spearfish Rec Center has rented roller skates from a private vendor for $500 per event. The city realizes it can use taxpayer dollars more efficiently and make our freewheeling citizens happier by owning its own cache of roller skates. Rec center honcho Chris Harwood told the council she's getting the skates for about half of what used skates can cost.
As if cheap roller skating isn't enough fun, the city is springing for a 16-foot inflatable movie screen to host up to movie nights at the rec center and in Spearfish's various glittering parks. Screen, hi-def projector, movie licensing, and staffing will cost $11,579. Local moviehouse Northern Hills Cinema appears not to have filed any protest about government intrusion into its marketplace; the Spearfish entertainment apparently does not suffer from a scarcity mentality.
Now remember: Spearfish sits in hard-red Republican Lawrence County. But the good Republicans here find their lives made better with roller skating, outdoor movies, a rec center, and a glorious bike trail and city parks... all brought to them by tax dollars, local government, and cooperative social effort. How nice!
¡Viva la revolucion!
Now if only people would see that tax dollars can be used to help everyone live, not just roller skate and watch movies in the park, then we'd really be rolling. It's nice to see tax dollars going back to the people who pay the taxes, though, and not being spent (too) frivolously. Even if outdoor movies are kind of overrated.
Conservatives with Common Sense have nothing against rollerskating or parks.
Mr. Sibby (not yet a member of the Conservatives with Common Sense) even enjoys rollerskating and parks. You saying that your libby friends are the only ones that like parks is like me saying only conservatives like a good steak and cold beer.
This is not socialism to republicans not by any means. Spearfish and the rest of Lawerence County would have you believe that they are using tax dollars to make things better for the citizens and they wish to call it by its true name, conservative socialism. Yes, CS as they lovingly call it, can be found all over Chamber of Commerce literature and not only in Spearfish, but all over our red state. I like to see the sponsors of "tax and spend" go out of their way to loudly condemn those non-existent tax and spend liberals that are in the government today. Thanks for calling them out on this, of course, they will spit and sputter and stomp their feet and say that this spending is different, but in the end, we all know it is the same.
Carter, outdoor movies here in Spearfish might be somewhat better than similar events in Madison or Sioux Falls: fewer mosquitoes out here in the Hills!
Grudz, this cadre of "Conservatives with Common Sense," if it really exists, needs to pipe up and tell it's Tea Party compatriots that all this yelling about socialism is really silly, since parks and police and public schools prove that socialism is an essential ingredient to maintain our quality of life.
Ahhh good old outdoor activities. Great fun for many people. Nothing really wrong with that at all. Let the grumblers grumble all they want. They may not partake in any of those things,but to those that do it's just plain ol' fun and good for ya.
Not being in favor of socialized healthcare, this point you made is one that I’ve struggled with. Perhaps the government shouldn’t be getting involved with the community items you mentioned. However, do you believe there’s a difference between rather inexpensive, quaility of life enhancing projects and extremely expensive, quailty of life enhancing (at least until we’re no longer able to afford it) socialized healthcare? I wish socialized healthcare worked, it just doesn’t seem to be viable in the long-term.
Ben, socilaized healthcare seems to be sustaining lives better in the many countries that use some form of it than the private for-profit system used here. We spend (2010 figures) over $7000 per capita on health care—17.9% of our GDP. Only three other countries spend more than $5000 per capita on health care (as of 2009). Yet we rank only 30th worldwide for life expectancy. And our private insurance system, if it is sustainable (and my double-digit annual premium increases over the past few years fill me with doubt), remains sustainable only as long as we have socialized health insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid to take on the tens of millions of people the private system doesn't want to insure. Socialized health care works at least as well as our system: you'll live at least long, and you and the nation will have more money left to spend on other things, like grass-fed beef, whole-wheat bread, and public schools.
That said, I am intrigued by the suggestion that we may be able to embrace small-scale socialist projects while still rejecting large-scale socialist projects. I'm curious: if there is a valid distinction along the lines Ben suggests, is it just a matter of degree or a matter of principle? Is it somehow not socialism if we only appropriate a small portion of the public wealth for public goods? Or do roller skates and movies (not to mention parks and rec centers!) invalidate the Tea Party's utter rhetorical contempt for socialism?
"Preventing depression requires proactive interventions by health-care system:" RT @PsyPost.