The Tribune headline on July 2 was incomplete. "$100M for clean coal" is only half the story.

As are all the references to spending in your paper, the cost is absent. One hundred million dollars is the entire income of 2,500 average Americans, confiscated by our irrepressible federal government, to be spent by a private enterprise to make a profit. The article explains that Basin already has done this type of work elsewhere. They are willing to pony up $200 million themselves. Why is it that the broader costs are never identified? These politicians are spending our treasure, or inflating away our wealth.

That hard-earned treasure would be spent by working people as they see fit, maybe on products Basin creates or on many other things necessary to our economy, and our resources allocated efficiently. The so-called stimulus is the leftovers of a wasteful reallocation through Washington filtered through a bureaucracy that siphons off much more than half of it to feed its own growth.

Let's look at $200 million left in the economy and the good and the jobs that would create. Three-thousand-five-hundred jobs … 5,000 jobs? That's the math. Instead of allowing czars and more layers of federal gravy to be ladled out, we should be saying "no" to this crazy stimulation. It leaves you wondering what these politicians gain from this out-of-control spending. Are they buying votes? I think if Sen. Kent Conrad votes for cap-and-trade, we will know the truth.

Every dollar spent by government is at least two less spent by citizens in the overall economy. When is the so-called adversarial press we depend on going to report the true story of our government and our politicians? When is the Tribune going to actually do some homework on the threesome we keep sending to Washington? When will you report what you know?