Free Lunch

So I am not even sure who gets booted off the ark this time, but rest assured I am going to find out! 

This week the school sent home the annual collection of forms that they require we fill out: contingency plans in case of emergency, medical updates, a school newsletter.  In this packet was a form that has caused me much distress, an application for financial assistance with the hot lunch program.  Originally, it was a source of angst because I am not sure whether I should submit it on behalf of my child.  From previous posts you probably know that my husband and I have both been unemployed for over a year.  But we have also budgeted and saved and made good enough investments throughout the 20 years we have been working so that, although we are feeling the strain of our unemployment, we are not in danger of losing our house, or underfeeding our children.  We have had to cut back and make some choices, but no terribly hard choices…yet. 

Cobra is up this month and we need to come up with over $1600 a month to cover our family’s insurance costs (thank you to the new health plan that insists we subsidize other people’s health insurance).  Unemployment ends in a few months as well and then we will have nothing coming in and quite a bit going out.  As for jobs, well they are out there, but not in our fields and not even making half of what we once did.  It is the old catch 22 right now, if we take one of the unskilled jobs out there, we lose all benefits and can’t make the new lower salary stretch far enough, but soon enough it won’t matter because all our benefits will be gone and we’ll need to take whatever we can get.

To that end, I have been wondering whether or not I should apply for the reduced lunch program.  We can afford to send our child to school with a packed lunch, but he really wants to get a hot lunch and it is an expense we don’t need to add in right now.  I had decided to teach him you can’t get everything you want and sometimes you have to stick with what you can afford and was about to throw away the form when I read that you do not need to be an American citizen to receive free or reduced lunch. WHAT?!!

Let me repeat that outrage,...W.H.A.T!  Here I am a citizen of the United States and a taxpayer in a state that is known for its ridiculous taxes.  I live in a town that has a high tax rate and I always pay what is required of me.  I don’t cheat on my taxes and although I grumble (a ton) I pay my taxes like a responsible citizen.  So here I am struggling with whether or not it would be right for me to take advantage of a program I may not need as much as someone else and you are telling me that MY tax dollars are going to feed someone who isn’t even a citizen?  Read doesn’t pay taxes.  Read is already STEALING the education itself, and now will be receiving a free lunch too. 

Really?  Why does this society reward people who break the rules or have no sense of personal responsibility?  For God’s sake if this country wasn’t so busy giving handouts to people who come looking for the proverbial free lunch at every turn, then maybe the rest of us wouldn’t be so overtaxed that we are unable to make our own ends meet.

For us my child’s lunch isn’t really free, our tax dollars are paying for it; unfortunately, so are yours.  My question: if they are going to offer free lunch on the backs of tax-payers, why don’t they just provide free lunch to ALL children?  This is something I have never understood.  Well I understand it; it is called socialism, but they refuse to advertise that because if they did there would be more of an outrage.  But that is what it is people, taking money from one group to subsidize another is indeed socialism.

And again, if they just stopped taxing so much to provide all these free bees then you wouldn’t be subsidizing my kids lunch because I’d have enough to pay for it and none of us would subsidize the lunches of criminals who don’t deserve something for nothing in the first place!

Really, here I am having contributed tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to my community and I am feeling badly about taking something that I PAID FOR but that someone else might need more. Then I learn that this same community is offering MY HARD EARNED MONEY to someone who has contributed NOTHING!  Before you argue against me think of this: maybe if the government hadn’t taken so much of my money over the years and had left it in my bank account instead of taking it to pay for expensive cars for the politicians, the same road to be redone continuously for the past 5 years, or to disperse in the socialist fashion to which they have become so accustomed, I might have enough money in my account to pay for my kids to buy lunch at school.

            So what did I decide?  I don’t think I’ll be taking advantage of the program because we don’t really need it the way I think some people do.  Isn’t it a shame though that my son can’t have something he wants and which I could afford if someone else wasn’t taking my money for his free lunch?

Thinking For Ourselves

If you like my sarcastic rants, thank you and you can expect one shortly.  In the meantime, I have had such a trying week that I took a little time off from writing, especially about the things bothering me, because I was afraid that humorously sarcastic would morph into downright mean and I don't want to go there.  If I did, I wouldn't be allowed my own ark.  

However, in thinking about last week's post and the labels of left and right for political thinking, I realized that we as Americans have boxed ourselves into a two party system.  Americans' political views are as varied as Americans themselves and I think it is time we stop limiting ourselves.  Perhaps a little old-fashioned American diversity would do this country good during the next round of elections so here is my challenge to you all.

Don’t blindly follow a political party or politician.  Don’t let anyone tell you how a good “Democrat” or Republican" thinks.  Here is a quiz that will help you to determine to which party your own ideals are closest.  Politicians use propaganda to convince the masses they are Democrat or Republican depending on the agenda.  But when an intellectual debate is held, I think you’ll see that many who vote along party lines because they think they are supposed to would actually align themselves with a different political party if they examined the belief systems of all the political options.  Take this test and see which party you truly line up with best.  And then use that knowledge in the next election when it can make a difference.

And I’ll be back to bitching in the near future.

"Racist!"- A Propagandist Appeal To Fear

People who throw out the accusation of racism out of propagandist motivation or pure ignorance, are not allowed on the ark.  By the way, neither are racists.

            It really isn’t a complicated concept.

rac·ism  (rā'sĭz'əm)   n.        -1.            The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.        -1.            Discrimination or prejudice based on race. rac'ist  adj.  & n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

However, in today’s discussion of many of the important issues facing our country, the term is flung around by the left with reckless abandon.  Actually, that is inaccurate; there is nothing reckless about it.  The term racism is carefully wielded to discredit anyone who may disagree with the leftist agenda.  It is a propagandist tactic called an appeal to fear.  If there is nothing real to discredit a person with conservative ideas, if the facts don’t support a true repudiation of the opposition, then the left pulls out their Scarlet Letter “R.”  99% of the time it is totally unfounded, but for some reason that doesn’t seem to matter.

Racism is a dirty term and the liberals count on that.  No one wants to be labeled as a racist, and unfortunately once ignorant America hears that term pinned on someone they lock on it, prejudge (how ironic), and refuse to actually hear the facts and opinions presented logically by the accused person, even though the accused isn’t a racist.

If people truly stopped and thought, or even better yet, listened to the actual arguments presented by the opposition, they might actually learn something and form their own opinions based on facts.  Oh the horror.  That is exactly what propagandists fear, but what we, as Americans, have to start doing again.  I’ll tell you, you can bet our great-grandfathers did not vote based on what someone told them they should think.  They listened, they evaluated and they came to their own decisions, right or wrong.  If contemporary Americans did more of that, America would not be in the mess it is today.

Just a few examples that I want the thinking individuals who read my blog to consider:

People opposing illegal immigration are called racists.

How is opposing illegal activity racist?  I have not heard a single Tea Party member denigrate any race, just the ILLEGAL activity.  As a group, they do no oppose Mexicans, Irish, Russians, or any other ethnicity that is currently represented by these criminals.   They oppose the criminals.  Perhaps you remember logical fallacies from high school English?  If not, I believe the term is inductive argument and there is an example of it here (scroll down to the bottom of the page).  Logical fallacies are used in propaganda to trick people into thinking something is true when it isn’t.  It is the tactic being used by those on the left to slander the right and try to discredit the movement to secure our borders.  No one is saying that most Mexicans are illegal, what is being said is that most ILLEGALS are Mexicans.  Do you see the difference?  The left hopes you don’t and so they throw out racist to blur your view.

People who oppose higher taxes are also called racist.

Apparently wanting to keep your own hard earned money is now “racist”.  What on earth does one have to do with the other?  The conservative argument is that American’s money is being taken from us, carelessly spent and often corruptly used, and that we have had enough.  Look back 100 years.  This country ran much more efficiently on a much smaller percentage of the American Worker’s dollar.  Even 30 years ago we did more with less.  Take education for example, my school offered gym, art, music, theater, after school sports all included in my parents tax rate.  Nowadays the same school has cancelled art and gym and decreased its sports program.  Those sports that are still around require the students to pay for their own uniforms and provide their own transportation.  Why is that?  They get more money now per kid than they did then? The answer is mismanagement combined with entitlement.  Just look to any teenager to see this principal in action.  If you give a kid $10 a week allowance, at the end of the week he will have nothing left over (the average kid anyway). If you give him $20, same thing.  Entitled entities are likely to spend anything they can get their hands on and then ask for more when they want something else. That is what our government does now because they know that they can take more whenever they run out of what they have already taken from us.

The right argues that we don’t work this hard so someone else can spend it with abandon.  Nowhere is black, white, brown, yellow, or blue mentioned.  In fact, I would argue it is the left that is racist because what they are truly saying is that the problem is not with their misspending, it is with the people of color in our country not contributing enough.  They are deflecting responsibility by calling the minorities the entitled entities.

All I am asking is the next time you hear the term racist tossed out to refute a position, listen carefully. Did the accused really utter anything racist at all, or is the accuser planting his own racist view into the argument and attributing it to his opposition?  Be wary of propaganda.  It can get you all turned around.  Don’t take someone else’s word for it.  Go to the source.  Look up the accused article, download the indicted speech.  And learn for yourself what that person’s points are, then evaluate them based on their merit not on your political affiliation.

And if you are interested in hearing true racism, check out this site.  You’ll see something I’ve been noticing for years now.  Most racism seems to come from exactly the individuals who cry “racist” the loudest.  But you be the judge. 

America Conceeds Land To Mexico or : Get The Lunatic Out Of My House

Okay,  I have to say it; Obama does not get on my ark.  For many reasons, not the least of which is that I will require verification and a background check and he won’t produce a birth certificate to authenticate my search, so right there he’s denied.  But today’s reason is the prevailing problem of his refusal to protect America starting with Arizona.

       The US has closed parkland in Arizona to citizens because the illegal drug trafficking and human trafficking has made the land too dangerous.  So in essence, America just gave territories 80 miles inside OUR border to the Mexicans.  Just handed it over without a fight.

       You realize that America has spent billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives fighting to protect other people’s borders from being infiltrated.  We lost approximately 58,000 lives in Vietnam, 110,000 lives in WWI and almost 300,000 in WWII (google it), and in none of those wars was America infiltrated. Now, when the Mexicans are crossing into our country, some heavily armed, trafficking drugs, arms, and humans, we can’t secure out own border?  Bullshit. Of course we can, but we won’t.

       The signs posted by the government warning American citizens to stay out of the parkland are an embarrassment.  For God sakes, use our military for what it was designed to do, protect America.  It would not take years or even months for our military to go into that parkland and drive out the invaders.  I doubt it would even takes weeks if we went to our own border and fought as hard to secure it as we have to secure the borders of our allies.  The message Obama is sending? The people of America are not his allies.  In my book, it is treasonous to allow invaders to take over our land without even a fight, a fight we could so easily win with our high-powered weapons, tanks, land mines and other military tactics.  Isn’t that one of the main responsibilities of our government, to protect its citizens?  What takes higher priority than our safety and the security of our land?  The answer isn’t, but should be, nothing!

       For those of you who are happy to live in New Jersey, or Michigan, or Massachusetts and not have to worry about part of your states being taken from you and handed over to citizens of another nation, think of it in these terms.  What is happening in Arizona is like this:

Your neighbor decides to commandeer your bedroom so he can do his drug deals out of it.  You call the police and say “My neighbor has just pointed a gun at my head and insisted I let him have a portion of my house.  Come arrest this lunatic.” 

And the police respond by saying “All of your house?”

“No he says he wants the bedroom and I can stay in the rest of my house with my wife and kids as long as we stay out of his way, pay the rent, and make sure no one bothers him.”

“Well then, it sounds like it isn’t safe in your bedroom, I’d stay out.”

“What?!”

“Well, you still have the other rooms, you should be happy with that.  Don’t bother the guy, stay out of his way, and I’d make sure you pay the utilities and taxes on time, you want to make sure he has everything he needs so he doesn’t become a problem.”

“Become a problem!  Are you kidding me?  I own this house. There is an intruder in my house.  You are the police.  You take an oath too protect and serve.  So protect and serve, come get this lunatic out of my house!”

“Sorry sir, we can’t do that.  Have a nice day.”

Do you get it now?  We need our government to protect us.  We need them to reclaim our land and our resources.  For God sakes: Get the lunatic out of the house! 

Simple Is Good

This may seem over simplified, but sometimes simple is good.  Why is it so hard to figure out that our taxes are too high, our government too big, and the social programs are too corrupt?

             I honestly believe that if the two sides would stop the power struggle and become part of the solution instead of perpetuating the problem, we could solve most of our country’s problems to the general populous’ satisfaction relatively quickly.  And we could do it while lowering taxes and still keeping the social programs.  You can actually be socially liberal and fiscally conservative if you are honest, efficient and effective.

            Here is my suggestion to do the above while helping decrease the unemployment rate across America.   Spend those stimulus dollars on hiring people whose sole job it is to check and make sure all the social programs such as, welfare, Medicaid, government housing, etc., are operating according to the law.  (But do it honestly and efficiently.  Think like the private sector. We don’t need a group of people all related somehow, making 6 figures each, to do the job of one man.  Let’s control the corruption at that level as well)

One job category per deception would do it.  For instance, one job description would be to track down anyone working under the table.  The person working under the table is automatically cut from the welfare ranks.  The employer is fined the amount the individual worker collected from the social service.  Another job would be to track down anyone collecting in multiple states.  Again, the deceptive party is automatically cut off.  A third job description might be to find anyone who is living with a baby daddy, but not claiming his income as part of the household income.  Again the offender is cut off from any benefits and the significant other is made to pay back the amount stolen from society while he/she lived in the household with the claimant.  Finally, and really isn’t this incredibly obvious, if you are a criminal, whether domestic or foreign, you get nothing.  You forfeited any societal assistance when you committed a crime against the society, including but not limited to, breaking laws to gain access to this country and it’s beautiful benefits.

            While we are at it, lets eliminate the incentives to have more children you cannot afford.  If you qualify for services legally and honestly, they are given to you, but you may not increase those benefits by having more children.  If you get $X a week and you are a family if 3 and then choose to become a family of 4, you still only get $X a week.  Those of us who pay our own way in the world actually have to make the hard choice sometimes not to have that second, third or fourth kid because we can’t afford to.  The same should be true for those we support with our tax dollars.  Why should I have to stop at two kids because my money is subsidizing your family of six?  I shouldn’t.

            The choice isn’t between screwing the taxpayers or helping the needy, it is really about controlling the corruption and giving only what is truly needed to those who truly need it.  So again I argue, if the politicians want to help this country and its people, it is fairly simple.  Stop thinking about yourselves, your images, and your agendas and do what is best for us.  Control the corruption and both sides get what they want, and more important, you’ll be doing what you were actually put in office to do, servicing the citizens, not your egos. Honest, efficient and effective, it is that simple.

The American Way...Went!

There is no room on the ark for entitled people. You better be able to contribute and be willing to work hard, if you can’t, you can’t get on – period! If you are looking for a free ride, you won’t get it here.

This country was founded on the American Dream, a philosophy that with hard work, courage and determination anyone can prosper and achieve success.  Or in the famous words of Mick Jagger  “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.”  So why is it so many people feel entitled?

You are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the PURSUIT, not happiness itself.  Let’s break that down a bit. 

First of all that means you are entitled to try and obtain happiness, there is nothing in the bill of rights that says you are guaranteed to obtain it.  There is no clause that states that if you try to achieve happiness on your own, but come up short, that someone else will do it for you. 

Secondly there is some effort involved.  That means you need to work toward it.  You know work, that old fashioned concept whereby you exert yourself and you are rewarded by the fruits of that labor.  So sitting on your butt looking for a handout is not part of the equation.  Nowhere in the bill of rights does it say that I need to subsidize your lifestyle.  What happened to good old-fashioned capitalism?  The work ethic that our grandfathers and great-grandfathers built their American Dream on: the harder you work, the better the pay off.

The bill of rights entitles you to life.  The intent is that you are protected from being murdered, not that you are entitled to live your life in middleclass America.  The right to life is not the right to own your own home whether you can afford it or not.  It is not the right to live in the wealthier communities subsidized by the people who work hard to make enough money to live their without anyone else’s assistance.  And it is certainly not the right to a large screen TV, cable, a cell phone, or a car.  These things are not entitlements, they are luxuries and if you don’t understand that, well then you are a large part of the problem.

When my husband and I were laid off last year we sat down and figured out what we had to cut to get by.  We cut a lot of things on the above list and more.  It made life harder, but that is what responsible people do.  They buy what they can afford, they pay their own debts, and they don’t expect anything from anyone.  It is no one else’s job to feed, house, or clothe me and my family, other than my own.  That is why I am writing this blog, and searching for work in fields that aren’t necessarily what I want to do.  Because it is not about desire, it is about personal responsibility. What I can’t figure out is, why is that so hard for so many people to understand?

When did it become commonplace to expect other people to give you things you haven’t earned?  Where is the pride?  Where is the shame?  And before you get on me for being heartless, let me tell you that what I didn’t cut were my donations to the charities I support.  I can no longer give them money, but I can give them other things like time.  I had to cut back, but I didn’t cut them out.  But that is my choice and should not be forced on me by my government. The government is not in the charity business, or at least it shouldn’t be.  It should be in the business of upholding the written laws, securing our national security.  It should not be stealing from the rich to give to the poor. 

The government has no right to take away my hard earned money, the money I am trying to save for my children’s college educations, or my own retirement, and give it to someone else.  Many of our current taxes are levied so they can do just that, force their charities on the taxpayers; insist we give money we worked for to support the causes they think we should.  If I want to support the veterans or the homeless (and I do) I need my money in my hands to do so.  But they take it and give it to the lazy, or the deceptive, or the illegal.  Why is my money subsidizing a murder’s college education, or an illegal immigrant’s medical bills, or a liar’s lifestyle?  Welfare was not set up with that intent.  If you do your research (and I do) then you would know that welfare was originally intended for the widows and orphan’s of our men in uniform and expanded to encompass truly destitute families in the depression, UNTIL they got back on their feet, which they did because they had pride!  It has been mutilated now to give money to anyone who can scam the system and many, many do.  Not all, but a LOT.

You want a suggestion for some of that stimulus money?  Spend it on jobs securing people to investigate welfare recipients and revamp the system so that no one who isn’t truly destitute can collect.  Money isn't free; you have to work for it. Again, I quote The Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.”

For God sakes America, can we stop breeding entitlement?  It is not helping anyone, certainly not the hardworking Americans who subsidize the entitled ones, and not even the people you think it is.  See this article on the effects of welfare.  Teach a man to fish and all that.  So stop GIVING so much to so many for so little.  Let Americans earn the pride they are capable of having in themselves if they only put a little bit of hard work into going after the things they want.  The best feeling in the world is earning something through an earnest and strenuous attempt, not having it handed to you. The current system robs people of that feeling.  Not only does it steal money from the hardworking, but it's also stealing pride and potential from those who would be hardworking if they had to be.

So if you are reading this, I hope you have pride, and a sense of personal responsibility. I hope you know what it means to work hard and sacrifice when you have to.  And if you do, then I wish you the best of luck in your pursuit of happiness; you’ve earned it.  

Unemployment For The Gainfully Employed

No unions on my ark.  Initially, unions were devised to allow the little guy to have a collective bargaining power against the oppressive employers.  They did their job.  When originally formed, unions were able to help: secure child labor laws, create a fair length work day/week, institute a minimum wage policy, and generally secure the rights of the everyman in the work force.  Most unions have outlived their usefulness.  Some have become the abusive power they were originally fighting against.  That is why there will be no unions on my ark.  Go ahead and strike.  Feel free to build your own.  But you won’t need a union card to get on mine and this is one of the reasons why:

So that same union I referred to in an earlier post did yet another thing that incensed me.  It’s no secret; I don’t like unions, or at least this particular one. Not only do I disagree with many of the positions and politics of the union, I was incredibly bothered by this latest mass e-mail suggesting that all part time professors should apply for unemployment over all breaks despite the fact that we are not unemployed.  This is an excerpt from the letter I sent to my boss when I was presented with the choice between joining the union or losing my job.

“…On the one hand, the Union tells us we should vote against the repeal of the state income tax because the state is already under-funded and we cannot afford to lose the revenue. (I voted for the repeal by the way, because the problem is not too little money, it is mismanagement of that money).  Then on the other hand, the same union advocates that all of us should go out and collect unemployment (from an under-funded state) when we are fully expecting to return to our jobs after the summer break. 

An intelligent independent thinker would recognize that by choosing to be a college professor, you are choosing a job with unique scheduling; some would even say that is a benefit of this profession. To act as if we are entitled to extra compensation simply because the college is on break is, if not illegal, certainly immoral and not in keeping with the way the unemployment benefits were intended.

Unemployment was intended for the people who unexpectedly find themselves out of work, people who are laid off and cannot pay their simple living expenses such as rent, and food, and heat without assistance.  It is not intended for people who chose a profession that has inherent breaks, to supplement their agreed upon income by manipulating the system.  Despite the fact that there is language that allows the union's advocates to get around the original intentions of this benefit, it is still wrong.  I do not want to be a part of a group that would manipulate the system in this manner.  If there is really an issue with insufficient funds, then the union should not be promoting that we take funds to which we are not really entitled despite the fact that our advocates have found away around it. 

This is just one of the many examples of union practices of which I do not want to be a part.  How do I rectify joining, not to mention funding, a group that acts in what I believe to be dishonorable ways?  I appreciate your sympathy and understanding and I also greatly appreciate your willingness to wait until hearing from me.  I would ask you to indulge me just a little bit longer, because this is an income I was counting on and to lose it on such short notice, especially in these hard economic times, would be very difficult.  I am put in a very hard spot where I need to decide between my income and my principals.  In addition, obviously, I want to look further into the matter of whether or not it is indeed illegal for the college to terminate me simply because I will

not join the union. So please do indulge me a bit longer while I do my research and discuss the matter with my family.  I promise I will not take too long in getting back to you.”

         Ultimately I learned that there is a fee you can pay the union that does not entitle you to full membership, but does allow you to be part of the collective bargaining with the employer.  The fee charged is less than full membership, but does not entitle you to any of the discounts or extraneous benefits that teachers get.  It also cannot be spent on anything other than collective bargaining, so no mailings, campaign funds etc.  Due to needing the income of this job, and for no other reason, I opted to pay this fee, forgo any union benies and go about my business.  Apparently I made too much of a fuss, because despite doing so, my contract was not picked up for the following semester and I found myself unemployed.  No one so much as contacted to tell me I was fired.  I just never received my classroom assignment so when I called in to ask about the day, time and location of the class I had been teaching for two years, I was told, “oh that class is no longer being offered.”  I looked it up. It was.  But someone else was teaching it.  So with less than two weeks until the next semester started and with no opportunity at this point to find work at another institution for the upcoming semester, I found myself unemployed.  Kind of ironic I guess.

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen….You Go Girl!

Arizona State Senator Sylvia Allen….You Go Girl!

Yes we need a flood, and in this post I think you can figure out who does not get to come on the ark, all you anti-Americans out there trying to destroy my country from the inside out.  I support personal responsibility, morality, legality and upholding the laws of our country. If you don’t, I hope you know how to swim.  Senator Allen, you have a spot on the ark.

You have to wonder why so many pro illegal immigration arguments ignore the obvious and can't argue the actual point. 

The point is ILLEGAL immigrants are breaking a law.  How can you support that?  If you REALLY feel that breaking laws is okay as long as it meets a need then you have to support people who steal because they want something, or drive drunk because they need to get home, or shoot someone because he was a horrible and harassing neighbor for the past decade.  The simple fact is a law is a law and you don't have to like it, you just have to follow it. By definition, you are a criminal if you break any law and criminals are and should be prosecuted.  Perhaps you’ve heard of personal responsibility and consequences to your actions?

We don't get to pick and choose which laws we want to follow.  So if you want to try and make a compelling argument in support of breaking laws, go ahead, but if you can't do that, then shut up about America persecuting illegal immigrants!  Because by definition, the people you are defending are in fact CRIMINALS!  They knowingly and willingly broke a law and they have to suffer the consequence of that action, just like any other person committing any crime would. 

And while we are at it, stop crying racist. You want these criminals to get a pass just because they are Mexican, THAT is racism!

Public Education Is Only Free If You Steal It

When the flood comes, I am not going to save criminals.  Yes they are people too, but they are immoral people and my ark is strictly for those with moral fortitude.  I wish my country were too.

When I was a public college professor I was forced to join the teachers’ union.  And yes I mean forced.  I fought it, and was told that if I didn’t join I couldn’t work there any more (by the way, I no longer work there) but I’ll get into that at another time.  The reason I didn’t want to join is because I don’t agree with their political agenda and unfortunately they use my money to advocate their politics sending out flyers telling me and all the other teachers, what to think, how to vote, and what our position should be on an issue, national issues, not just teaching related ones. As if simply because we are teachers we must vote as a block and are not allowed to think for ourselves.  SURPRISE!  I can (and do) think for myself.  So as much as it will piss off the teachers’ union, this is what I think about your mass e-mail telling me to contact my Governor and ask him to support in-state tuition for ILLEGAL immigrants.

LIFE 101: Despite what you may have been told not everyone is entitled to everything. You make choices in life and those choices have consequences, and they should.  I’ve heard you whining, “that isn’t fair” well let me tell you what I think isn’t fair.

As educators, we are always complaining that we do not have enough resources to adequately teach our young people and yet you want to stretch those resources even further to give a discount to people who are NOT citizens of Massachusetts, but also not even citizens of the United States. 

What is unfair is that these criminal families have been exploiting what resources we do have by stealing a FREE public education from this commonwealth and country at a cost of over a billion dollars even by the most conservative estimate. 

What is unfair is that legal immigrants and natural citizens have had to pay for this same public education not only for their own children, but also for those who are obtaining it illegally. 

These criminal families have been abusing the system for as many years as their children have been in this country illegally. At what point do we as a people expect the same level of personal responsibility from these people as we do from ourselves?  It is true that most of these children had no say in the criminal activity that their parents imposed on them; however, in THIS country, we hold parents responsible for their minor children and thus the decisions the parents make naturally affect the children.  What people seem to have forgotten is that these parents, not the rest of us, are responsible for their children.  Why should an illegal alien derive more of a benefit from our education system than legal citizens?  Why should a legal citizen wanting to attend U-Mass who happens to LEGALLY reside in a neighboring state such as New Hampshire, have to pay more to attend U-Mass than someone whose whole family has broken laws to reside ILLEGALLY in Massachusetts.

We need to stop subsidizing all the criminal activity currently taking place in this state and this country.  Reward good behavior not illegal behavior.  Stop enabling the entitlement of criminals to benefits neither earned nor deserved.