WyBlog

The $1.1 million dollar turtle

Politicians waste our money on some pretty bizarre stuff. $800 hammers and $600 toilet seats are the stuff of late-night comic gold. But I don't think anything can top New Jersey's latest expenditure — The $1.1 Million Dollar Turtle.

We bought a "calcareous fen", some sort of swamp in which our Million Dollar Turtle can spend his days frolicking about. For he is no ordinary turtle; he is one of the last remaining "endangered bog turtles".

Woo Hoo!

One million of our tax dollars went to purchase a small portion of a 324 acre glorified swamp in Sussex County. "Private contributors" kicked in another 70 grand. (BFD!) The New Jersey office of the Trust for Public Lands, an ecological advocacy group which lobbies for (what else) government to buy up land and dedicate it to obscure creatures no one has ever heard of, is "confident" the state will purchase the remaining acres of this "calcareous fen" next year.

They see so many trees perhaps they think that money grows on them.

Alas, money comes from the beleagured taxpayers, who if asked would presumably put buying a "calcareous fen" pretty low on their priority list. That is if anybody besides Marlin Perkins has even heard of one.

New Jersey is $8.5 billion dollars in the hole. And the Million Dollar Turtle is but a drop in the bucket. Yet a wise man once said, "watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." Unfortunately, watching the pennies is incomprehensible for a lot of the people around here.

We have got to stop wasting money. The Million Dollar Turtle is an affront to everyone who is struggling to make ends meet and getting soaked by taxes. Money does not grow on trees, regardless of what the econuts might think.

Posted at 19:05 by Chris Wysocki   [/nj_politics]   Comments | Archived | Perm Link |
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