David McElroy

If you wonder why governments in this country are broke, consider their priorities. While taxpayers struggle with bare necessities, California spent close to a quarter of a million dollars to move a shrub.

The story starts in 2009 when an ecologist spotted a bush called Franciscan manzanita in the path of a highway project. The shrub is a common plant that can be bought from commercial nurseries for as little as $15.98. It was formerly fairly common in the San Francisco area, but as the city expanded, examples of it growing wild dwindled. There was still plenty of it in nurseries if you wanted it, but it wasn’t known to be growing wildly in nature as this one random plant was.

After the ecologist spotted the plant in the path of a billion-dollar highway project, three local environmental groups — Wild Equity Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the California Native Plant Society — filed an emergency petition for protection under the Endangered Species Act.

As a result, an agreement was reached between the Presidio Trust, the California Department of Transportation, the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game to spend $200,000 to save the bush by transplanting it to another location. About half of the cost was for the actual transplanting, but another $75,000 is for taking care of the shrub for the next 10 years and an additional $25,000 is to pay for paperwork requirements for the plant over the next decade. (You can read the 42-page PDF of the agreement here.)

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Since this is the weekend when many Americans are frantically trying to get their tax returns ready for the IRS, we’ll look at the world through tax-colored eyes. First, keep in mind that the IRS isn’t heartless. As long as you give them everything, you won’t be punished.

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When Barack Obama was elected president four years ago, we heard a lot of talk about it being a watershed moment in leading us to a post-racial America. If a black man could be elected president, race wasn’t going to matter so much, the theory went. A glance at recent headlines shows we’re nowhere close to this — and I’m not sure we ever will be.

The immediate reactions to the shooting of Trayvon Martin point toward just how deep the fracture lines lie. Blacks — and especially black politicians — lined up strongly against shooter George Zimmerman. The initial narrative we heard was that young black men are under attack in America by white people. (Complicating matters is the fact that Zimmerman is half Hispanic, which muddies the waters a bit, but people selling the narrative are willing to ignore that detail. Of course, calling Zimmerman white since one parent was white is a bit like calling Obama white for having a white mother.)

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have been active in calling for Zimmerman’s arrest and punishment. Barack Obama was quick to align himself with Martin when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” And the New Black Panther Party offered a $10,000 bounty for the “capture” of Zimmerman. I wonder if they would have been upset and ready to agitate if the races had been reversed.

On the other hand, gun groups were quick to start a defense fund for Zimmerman. Texas attorneys offered $10,000 toward his defense. And plenty of people were quick to believe Zimmerman’s side of the story. I wonder if they would have been so quick if it had been a black homeowner who had shot a white teen-ager.

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