Insert your color here, all will work….except a few

Ya know, I am not against entitlements or programs for the poor.  Some of us walk a fine line in life on being self supporting to needing help.  I'd like to think that with all the taxes we pay, that something is there to help people when in need. In fact, I think the government is here to help us, not us helping the government.  We send a lot of money to the government and it should come back in the form of programs, jobs, and infrastructure support of our communities.

Instead, we have millionaire politicians who have no idea, no connection to the common working person, telling us to tighten our belts.  Both parties in this country suck.  The Republicans, who can dream up a shitty idea, make it worse, then go to lunch and spend more on lunch than some people make in a week.  The Democrats who also have shitty ideas but have no backbone what so ever.

Can you imagine stealing thousands from someone, getting caught and not going to jail?  Well that is basically what happened to Wall Street bankers.  They stole millions from working people and not one went to jail. Don’t include Madoff as he stole from his rich friends which will get you every time.  Neither Republicans, who protect their rich corporate buddies nor the Democrats who love the huge donations to keep them in their jobs charged or tried one person.  Greed from the rich, greedy CEO’s, corrupt politics at all levels is what caused our economic meltdown.  Not union school teachers.  Not a single union state worker. Not a single union wage earner caused it.  In fact, quality union work built this country, allowed for wages that bought new homes, cars, washers, refrigerators, and allowed the country to proper.  You think if cheap Chinese labor built our bridges and buildings they would last as long as they have?  Yet, the rich politicians, especially the Right is going after the very core of this county, working class people.  The Democrats are silent, like idle school boys and do nothing. Cutting programs for the poor and elderly while spending billions, for example, on a jet (F35) that doesn’t work.  Tax cuts for corporations who pay very little or no taxes anyway.  Big oil and on and on.  Then there is the other side of this..  The programs we or they call entitlements.

Where we need to look is at people who have made a career out of living off of and manipulation of the system for years, nay, generations. It's these people who will sell their Link card for 50 cents on the dollar, will use the cash to get their nails done instead of shoes and a coat for their child.  It those that get pregnant every year from a different man and then collect off of these and expect the government to pay their hospitals bills. Free cell phones. I went for most of my life without a cell phone and I pay for the one I have now because I work and can afford it.  Getting your utilities paid so you can have A/C while renting an A/C unit from a high cost rental store. Maybe one could pay their utility bill if they didn’t have to pay $39.99 a week for a A/C unit.  But what’s money when you are handed it?

I won't even go into what I think is the biggest waste of money, Head Start and early childhood programs.  Glorified babysitting programs that do not work.  Not because the program isn't good, it is, but because the child returns to a home full of idiots, drug users, and free loaders.  If it did work, one would think after 30 years the quality of high school students would have improved within the minorities and poor.  It hasn't. Visit Peoria High any day.  I'll bet more than half the students there were in Head Start at some time and I know they don't teach foul language and dis-respect at Head Start.  District 150 can’t pass State standards because of it’s clientele, not because it mis-spends, or is grossly mis managed.  It has always been mis-managed as I remember from the early 70s people complaining about the schools and how they were run.  Even so, you can not teach stupid nor can you fix stupid. 

Please don’t say color is an issue or poor is an issue.  People can be smart and poor and Pekin High School, which is 98% white, is not making standards either.  All for the same basic reasons.  Generation after generation growing up with a parent or parents too young.  I mean if you are a grandmother at 35, then that’s too damn young. No family structure like I had in the 60s. No respect taught at home so no respect shown by siblings. But most of all, society has come to coddle over the years our kids.  Christ, you can’t paddle them in school, you can’t touch them, take them to a private room and yell at them unless you are accused of child molesting.  The State must provide a nutrisious lunch and for free in most cases.  What happened to the parent making their kids lunch? I could go on and on but most know what’s happening today.

How to fix this?  Well as long as health care in this country is for profit, we won’t. Why? Let’s say the State or Feds decide to stop paying for all medical cards.  No more free births girls.  No more running to the emergency room and clogging that facility because your kid has a rash. Nothing.  Well, you know that generous organization known as OSF that cares so much about the poor they have built modern clinics in many poor neighborhoods?  Like down on Mathew Street?  Those would close in a New York second.  OSF isn’t there to help the poor unless OSF helps itself to the State or government treasury.  The payments stop, so will their charity.  Wanna bet?  Big big money in taking care of poor people with medical cards.  So, with the rich in this country controlling the interests of politicians, we will never ever get rid of this cash cow.

How about ending the free lunch program and make kids pay for lunch or parents provide a lunch?  Shit, millions of dollars will be lost to the district and because of mis-managed spending, they wouldn’t be able to afford the lunch program at all. The free lunch program feeds itself.  because of the bullshit government laws that saw a child needs nutritious food and it MUST be provided, the districts alone couldn’t afford this without some help.  Hence the free lunch program for those too damn deprived. Didn’t need these food laws in the 40s, 50s, or even the 60s.  No body is twisting your arm when you go to Mickey D’s. Besides, if you ever watched a school lunch room, 65% of the food hits the shitcan because students won’t eat it unless it’s covered in cheese or some sweet sauce. Besides, when something is handed to you free day after day, after a while you don’t give a damn about it. 

The only way to fix the problems is to educate and start holding parents responsible for their kids actions.  To make the kids know that there are consequences to their choices and enforce it.  While I believe that this country, the greatest on the planet, should provide health care to everyone like most of the world’s countries do, we should take the profit out of being sick.  We should also make people aware that health care does have costs and you have to be responsible.  No more free births out of wedlock.  If you can’t afford it, then a payment plan will be afforded you. OSF, BTW, doesn’t do payment plans.  It’s all or nothing there praise God. 

Basically what I am saying is this.  Everything needs to be looked at.  Free housing, healthcare, all entitlement programs.  The people that run them and make good money of them also.  The politicians in this country are basically to corrupt to fix. For Joe Blow to run for Congress, he would need in excess of a million dollars to get elected.  Think our founding fathers envisioned this? The corporate greed that comes before American pride. Profits, which are good and needed, but not before the welfare of the workers who make profits possible. Going over seas to sweat shops for labor, building cheap crap that makes us here sick or injured using it.  All for the buck.  The system is broke.  Can we vote them out? Sure, but in this country maybe 25% show up to vote.  We are finally paying and reaping what years of ignorance and turning our backs on social economic problems have done to our country.  Instead we face and support other countries and finance wars.  It will end in the future.  We will either overcome and adjust and wake up and take care of each other and our planet or we will fall, like other great civilizations have in our history and anarchy will rule.  We will either become our brother’s keepers or we will work our masters land.

Think about it….I most likely won’t be around for the fall or the cure but my kids, and their kids will be.