Tapping taxpayers

American taxpayers who raised their eyebrows over padded funding for pet projects in the federal highway bill might arch them even higher over efforts to save dying languages.

At risk are 2,500 native languages, or dialects of various languages, spoken only by a few individuals whose knowledge and understanding of a particular language will die with them over the next century or so.

Efforts to preserve information about the way we humans express ourselves and the way we observe the world around us are commendable. But here's the question: Why is this a function of the U.S. government -- and, more particularly, its taxpayers?

So far $4.4 million has been earmarked for the dying-languages project with requests for annual funding of $2 million a year -- a drop in the federal-spending bucket -- to preserve the estimated 10,000 languages/dialects left on our planet.

Even taxpayers who consider funding for projects like a $200 million-plus bridge in Alaska to serve an island with a population of 50 to be pure pork-barrel politics realize that highways and bridges are essential to our nation's infrastructure.

Government's role in providing essential services has been recognized for thousands of years. But more and more U.S. tax dollars are being spent on projects and services that are better served by private enterprise.

The Guguyimadjir spoken in Australia may be one of them.