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Bike Race Cancelled…

So, today it was announced that the Tour of Missouri bike race was cancelled after the state allocated no money for it. I realize this won’t make me any friends in the cycling community, but really I don’t care. The Parents-As-Teachers program was slashed and cut into damn near non-existence. My kid’s school district lost most of the state funding it usually gets and now only 15% of the kids can even go to summer school. So, forgive me if I don’t give a s*** that you can’t have $1 million dollars for a bike ride.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Randomness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Bike Race Cancelled…”

  1. Adam Says:
    May 27th, 2010 at 10:11 pm

    I’m glad someone has some perspective on this. It’s amazing how much people freak out about things like this while completely ignoring all of the other horrible cuts.

  2. VeryPublicCraig Says:
    May 28th, 2010 at 8:36 am

    I have seen the Parents as Teachers argument before. But that position posits that NO money should be spent to promote the state. How can anything be more important than our children? Road signs? Lame formulaic TV spots? Of course, nothing is more important than our children. And both of my girls were beneficiaries of the PAT program, and we did what our parent educator suggested to show our support.

    But, the Tour of Missouri funding wasn’t just a flushing of $1M down the toilet on TV spots and signage. It had a quantifiable return on investment of more than 30:1, and the funding made its way through the General Assembly. So our elected representatives said it should be spent, and the appointed political cronies of Nixon thwarted the will of the people.

    Patrick D. Reply:
    May 28th, 2010 at 8:43 am

    You make some very valid points. I certainly will give you that. But I will subscribe that if you asked 100 of my friends if the state should spend $1M on a bike ride, that 96 of them would say no. So, that ‘will of the people’ is always subject to whichever side was the most effective at lobbying.

    And in a more general sense, this state (like many) is going under financially. We need to reign in spending. The signs at our state entrances recently purchased were ridiculous. There are a lot of places that could cut some spending. I just thinks SCHOOLS is the entirely wrong one to pick.