[mburbank]

I'm kind of skipping ahead a bit to welcome Mr. Raven to the board (or s., who could tell) and to say I'm certainly not ignoring you, but I'm only in a half day today, I've got my daughter with me at work as my wife has the flu, and so there won't be much coming from me today.

I will say this, though:

"A large majority of funds goes to welfare."

I need time to get back up facts, but I'd place money on the table that by any stretch of the imaginiation and by any deffinition of the word 'majority', that statement is very, very, very wrong. I think (and budget experts chime in so I don't need to bug my brother who works for the fed) go to entightlement programs, which are not welfare, ie. social security and medicare. I think the military comes next, and then paying down the national debt (which was gone for a while but is back, bigger than ever!) and I think there are several other places your tax dollars go before we get anywhere near welfare.