Some positive news

Thursday, December 17, 2009

There were two “feel good” stories in last week’s Merrimack Journal:

The Police Department announced that it is sponsoring a food drive to help local food pantries, and the employees of Fidelity Investments’ Merrimack regional center collected nearly 500 winter coats during their participation in the Anton’s Cleaners’ Coats for Kids drive.

Everyone involved deserves praise, and we hope they get lots of it.

Here’s our portion:

Great job, folks. Keep it up.

You have to wonder, though, why, in the richest country in the world, some people still have to depend on the largesse of others to get by.

Why are people hungry? Why are people cold? Does it make any sense?

It’s a rhetorical question, we suppose, because we don’t have a clear answer, and we’re not sure anyone else does, but remember a few years ago when people lined up to get government-surplus cheese? Then, no one seemed to mind that government stepped in to help out. Should there be some spinoff from that program?

We don’t believe government can or should do everything, but when it comes to being hungry or cold (or both) government should do something.

It’s great that so many people are willing to give their time and effort to help, and they deserve all the credit in the world, but it shouldn’t be their responsibility.

There are people who believe the federal government’s only constitutional role is the defense of the nation, but what about the day-to-day defense of the people of the nation?

Instead of spending billions on another space shuttle launching, maybe NASA could have a food drive without having to do anything except to use space shuttle money to buy some food for the hungry.

Well, fat chance of that, of course. It’s about as hopeful as thinking Congress should have the same health care system as the rest of the nation.

No, the best we can hope for there is that Congress will vote to give the rest of the nation a semblance of the health care system it has.