Weather Forecast


Middle income tax money

Middle income tax money

When a “nonprofit” business like RREAL gets federal or state grants, the bulk (well over 50 percent) of the money comes from the middle and lower income people. So these businesses are building their existence primarily on the back of the middle class.

What do the middle income taxpayers get for their money? They get, for example, $300,000 toward a new building instead of adapting existing vacant structures to really save energy. They get $2 million toward so-called solar furnace devices that because of use only during the winter with its low sun and short days function only about one-third of the time they are mounted on the wall or roof.

These devices will take years to pay back the energy it took to create them so where is the real energy savings? These devices use materials that to obtain and process are far from green. These devices only work with electricity so they are not “renewable” and during power outages when they might be sorely needed they don’t work. Nor are they renewable because they will never make enough energy to reproduce themselves.

What they get for their money is a device that much of the time is an expensive wall ornament and they don’t even personally get the device.

This money is dispatched by a bureaucracy that is invested in maintaining the money flow because this is their job. Is this a wise expenditure of federal and state tax money? Would it better be spent on true infrastructure that creates many jobs and truly protects the future?

The middle income taxpayers are the true unsung heroes of these projects. They aren’t consulted on the spending of their money and in these frugal times can hardly afford these expensive wall hangings.

John Weber,


Denton (Denny) Newman Jr.
(218) 855-5889