Wonder Why America’s In Trouble? Check Out McKinney, Texas

If you want to know what’s wrong with America, look no further than McKinney, Texas.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, and now the record-setting budget for a new high school football stadium has reportedly ballooned to a whopping $70 million.

Voters in McKinney approved a $63.5 million stadium in May, but just three months later, planners have called an audible — tacking on another $6.5 million to the cost of the 12,000-seat gridiron showcase. The stadium will top a $62.5 million, 12,000-seat facility under construction in Katy and a $60 million stadium that opened in Allen in 2014 to become the costliest ever to host prep pigskin.

“We’re visionaries,” McKinney Independent School District Superintendent Rick McDaniel told the Dallas Morning News after 63 percent of local voters passed a $220 million bond issue to fund the stadium and other district improvements. “And we believe we have a vision for McKinney ISD that will propel us forward for a long time.”

Visionaries? Excuse me?

Visionaries are people who innovate and create with their own money, or money obtained from voluntary donors or investors. Thomas Edison was a visionary. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were visionaries. Thomas Jefferson was a visionary. Self-congratulating school monopoly overseers do not qualify as visionaries.

We have reached a point where arrogant pricks like this school superintendent in Texas actually think they’re innovative geniuses, when all they’re doing is spending other people’s money.

When you attain someone’s money voluntarily, you first have to persuade them. Tax collectors are not persuaders, not unless you consider the threat of imprisonment an “incentive.”

When you buy a house in Texas or anywhere else, you’re forced to pay property taxes. Those taxes go to pay for the (alleged) education of children, whether you have children or not, or whether you want your children educated at those particular schools or not.

This Texas school district has extended the principle of compulsion beyond the supposed “right” of children to a free education. They have extended it to the newfound “right” to have a $70 million football stadium.

The cost overrun was blamed on rising concrete and labor prices, according to WFAA.

Well of course concrete and labor prices went up. When providers of labor and concrete are told, “Hey, we’ve won the lottery. We’ve got free money for you here,” you’d better believe their prices go up. When the people paying for the labor or concrete are the ones actually buying it, rather than politicians who have essentially stolen the money, there’s no accountability the way there would be in a normal, reasonable and rational business exchange. What else can you expect?

As with pro sports venues that can cost upwards of $1 billion, much of the sales pitch for the high school stadium was about its value as a catalyst for development. Local officials believe it will bring restaurants and retail shops to the town, some 37 miles north of Dallas.

Not everyone was thrilled at the expenditure, with Grassroots McKinney campaigning against it.

“We’re disappointed,” Mike Giles, one of the group’s leaders, told the newspaper. “But the people have spoken.”

The “people” have spoken. Which people? And why do they get to speak for all people?

So 63 percent of the population decided this expensive stadium was worth it. How many of these 63 percent pay property taxes, or any taxes at all, for that matter? What about the remaining 37 percent? Why do their property and individual rights end the moment that 63 percent (or even 50.1 percent) of the population decides something is worth paying? Why should people who do not pay taxes even be allowed to vote? Better yet … why does government do 98 percent of the things requiring taxes in the first place?

It starts with the idea that “every child has a right to education.” It moves to $70 million stadiums. It ends with absolutely everything being free, because in principle there’s nothing to stop it. That’s why the United States is now $20 trillion dollar in debt with no end in sight. We’re moving from some people having a claim on the lives, property and income of others to everyone having a claim on everyone else’s lives, property and income. Logically, there’s no way to stop it, other than restoring the rights of the individual to not have their income and property seized, in the first place.

Eventually, when everything is free, everything loses its value. What happened in Texas with this stadium is happening all across our society, with both state and federal governments. Fiscally and morally, America’s government is totally unhinged. And McKinney, Texas, shows you exactly why.

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael  Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1

Check out Dr. Hurd’s latest Newsmax Insider column here!