Posted by
Sidney Allen Johnson on Saturday, March 14, 2009 8:43:59 PM
You can’t make this stuff up. Even as the American taxpayer is
being awakened from his slumber of tolerance for the outrage that is
the Obama agenda, the “Parasite in Chief’s” faithful
supporters insist on demanding their “right” to the fruits
of other’s labor. The John Galt and “Tea Party”
phenomena that are sweeping across America is sadly, if unsurprisingly,
not being reported by the mainstream media who seem to think only the
rage of the “entitlement” class is newsworthy. Yet what the
media fail to perceive is the amount of anger that these so called
“civil disobedience” demonstrations provoke in the
Americans whose work and assets must be taxed in order to satiate the
appetite of ACORN and their socially engineered parasites. Read for
yourself and watch your anger rise as well…
LOS ANGELES — A school board
meeting turned into a display of civil disobedience Tuesday as about 50
educators refused to leave, creating a brief standoff with police, who
refused to make any arrests in the presence of media.
The members of ACORN and United Teachers Los Angeles — all
wearing bright red shirts — entered the Los Angeles Unified
School District Board of Education meeting on Tuesday afternoon, sat
down and began chanting. Police said the protesters were staging an
illegal occupation of a public building. The district said no arrests
would occur as long as members of media were in building.
UTLA President A.J. Duffy approached the speakers’ lectern
and told the board, “You know why we’re here. You know
I’m not leaving this rostrum. You know I’m going to keep
talking.” As he spoke several teachers sat on the floor in front
of the board and held up signs saying “Students lose when we lose
teachers, No layoffs” as the crowd began chanting.
Board President Monica Garcia repeatedly asked Duffy to sit
down, but he kept speaking. The microphone was turned off, but Duffy
continued to speak and the chanting continued. Garcia then announced
that the “disturbance has interrupted our meeting to the point
where the orderly conduct of this meeting is not feasible.”
There go our buddies in ACORN again. Its good that we have them
looking out for our welfare…oops did I say w e l f a r e? Pardon
me.
ACORN’s shakedown soldiers consider actions like occupying a
public school board’s meeting room to be an act of “civil
disobedience.” In truth it is just another arrogant display of a
parasitic need to inefficiently consume resources that can be better
used elsewhere. In this case they are trying to preserve employees of a
teacher’s union in the face of dwindling tax revenues. The school
board was merely attempting to do their job of deciding where to
allocate the funds that are available. Unfortunately that involves
cutting costs, firing teachers and living in the real world where tax
revenue is not unlimited. Enter the parasites of the teachers union and
their allies ACORN to demand that they be preserved at someone elses
expense.
There are reasons why zoo’s and national parks have signs
prominently displayed that say “please don’t feed the
animals.” Once the animals get accustomed to the handouts, not
only do they become dependent on them, they will actually get violent
in making demands for them. We are seeing this “animal”
behavior in the actions of ACORN and their fellow “community
organizers.”
As surely as a hookworm believes that a dog exists just to further
his own survival, so too do teachers unions and community activist
groups like ACORN believe that schools and the government exist solely
to provide them with the financial sustenance they need to survive and
thrive. It is a complete misconception of the arrangement between the
taxpayer and the receivers of the government’s largesse. In this
case the misconception is abetted by the failure of the schools to
educate anyone to know any better. A marvelously self-reciprocating
system.
This misconception comes from the belief that things like government
jobs and checks are somehow an entitlement. How did they come to view
it that way? We fed the animals, that’s how. Teachers unions are
no more concerned with the education of children than ACORN
(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is concerned
with reforming communities. The goal of the teacher’s union is
only to increase their membership, not test scores. They are just
parasites whose sole preoccupation is to educate, and thereby
procreate, more parasites. These are the proceeds from our
“investment” (our President’s term for this sort of
social engineering) in forty years of the “war on poverty.”
Do you feel cheated? Well you should, if for no reason other than the
ingratitude and revisionist history the beneficiaries of these
“investments” have construed. Nowhere was this better
demonstrated than during a recent exchange between Bill O’Reilly
and Dr. Marc Lamont Hill:
“The problem here is that you won’t acknowledge that
for the last 20 years, we’ve had wealth redistribution.
It’s just gone from the middle class and the poor to the
rich.” - Dr. Marc Lamont Hill
Therein hides the lie that the American political left feeds to its
all too willing victims. The idea that capitalists, industrialists and
other assorted “rich” people acquired their wealth FROM the
poor and the middle class. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but
such “misconceptions” placate a desire for those who need
an excuse for their life’s circumstances. It allows them to
perceive themselves as a “victim,” as well as attach the
blame to someone whom they can then extract some form of reparation. In
the case of the current administration, income inequality is the
justification for redistributionist tax policies.
However the wealth that these “rich” people have
acquired was never in the possession of the poor and the middle class.
In fact this wealth did not exist at all until these industrious people
invested, worked and ultimately CREATED it. It is the fruits of their
skills and labor that brought this wealth into existence and, lest we
forget, this wealth was then taxed right off the top. Much of this
taxed wealth was used for the great social engineering experiment that
is the 40 year “War on Poverty.” It was the industrialists
and capitalists whose taxed income was redistributed to the poor! What
would they have been able to do with THEIR money if they had been
allowed to keep it and reinvest it into the economy? We can only guess.
However we do know what became of the money that was redistributed to
the poor.
The U.S. government has spent close to $10 trillion dollars on
domestic welfare programs since President Lyndon Johnson launched the
“War on Poverty” in 1965. These include Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (now Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families—TANF); food stamps; Medicaid; the Special Supplemental
Food Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); utilities
assistance under the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program
(LIHEAP); housing assistance under a variety of programs, including
public housing and Section 8 rental assistance; and the free
commodities program. And then state and local governments engage in
welfare spending that includes free medical care for the impoverished
through charity hospitals. And what, pray-tell, did this
“investment” into the poor communities return?
Well, it could have happened to anybody right? Families were
destroyed as the illegitimacy rate skyrocketed. Welfare programs that
rewarded women for having more babies naturally produced…more
babies! Those women who “qualified” as single mothers would
get preferential treatment by the system so naturally this led to the
phenomenon, entirely predictable, of more single mothers. Welfare
quickly became a way of life. That’s what happens when the
government tries to help people. They created a class of professional
parasites whose sole area of expertise was fulfilling the criteria
established by the government to get the “free” money. Way
to go guys.
Lets not forget what our investment in education has returned as
well. Federal spending on education has risen steadily over the past
three decades to unprecedented levels. The United States spent $553
billion on public elementary and secondary education in
2006–2007, which is 4.2 percent of gross domestic product.
In 2004–2005 (the most recent school year for which data are
available), an average of $9,266 was spent per pupil in American public
schools. This means that a student entering first grade in 2004 could
expect approximately $111,000 to be spent on his or her elementary and
secondary education if the student completes high school. Yet the
results for all this increased spending are increasingly mediocre. The
more we spend…the less we get.
Math Rankings
Grade 4: 12th in the world
Grade 8: 27th
Grade 12: 19th
Science Rankings
Grade 4; 3rd
Grade 8: 17th
Grade 12: 16th
Its clear that something other than money is needed to
“reform” our education. Perhaps outlawing the teachers
unions would be a good place to start. Unfortunately the Obama
administration is sending them MORE money. Feeding the parasites is not
the answer.
In this election cycle the democrats made an appeal to one
particular group of people whom they had previously not been very
successful at drawing into their coalition of the damned and
downtrodden. Christians fell into the old “social gospel”
trap that actually was a hallmark of Franklin Roosevelt’s brand
of social intervention. It’s the idea of trying to prey upon a
Christian’s need to fulfill Christ’s many exhortations to
feed the poor and the downtrodden such as:
LUKE 14: 13-14 But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the
maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot
recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of
the just.
And of course Jesus did set an example by feeding a multitude of 5000
in this passage that is a favorite of the “social gospel”
apologists:
JOHN 6: 1-14: After these things Jesus went over the sea of
Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed
him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were
diseased. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his
disciples. And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jesus
then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he
saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And
this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do. Philip
answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for
them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his disciples,
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, saith unto him, There is a lad
here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes: but what are
they among so many? And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there
was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five
thousand. And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he
distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set
down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would. When they were
filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that
remain, that nothing be lost. Therefore they gathered them together,
and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves,
which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men,
when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth
that prophet that should come into the world.
It is truly one of the great miracles that Jesus performed during his
time on earth. Its amazing how even the most anti-Christian purveyors
of social engineering love to use this particular moment in
Jesus’ history in an attempt to shame Christians into supporting
their socialist ideas. Often they even attempt to portray Jesus himself
as some sort of “robin hood” liberal. As always, however,
they leave out something very important. Jesus commanded individuals,
not governments, to help the poor. There is a reason for this that
eludes far too many people. It is not just the food that is the issue.
It is the human interaction as one person CHOOSES to help another
person. The feeling of worth and value that is imparted when someone
goes out of his way to personally spend time with, and assist, another
human being is as nourishing for the spirit as the food is to the body.
No government social program can provide that interaction for it is a
totally impersonal transaction that merely establishes your
qualifications based on a set of criteria.
Then of course there is the one thing you will never hear from the
liberal social engineers and their “social gospel”
apologists allies. Its the next verse in the passage:
JOHN 6:15: When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come
and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a
mountain himself alone.
Yea, that makes a difference. He knew they would come back. First,
they would come back expecting him to feed them again and then they
would want to make him a king. Therefore I think it is important to
point out that Jesus fed them ONCE and then left. Once is charity.
Anything more and you begin to create dependence. By engaging them just
once they would better remember him AND what he said, rather than just
associate him with free food. That Jesus was a smart man. Apparently he
knew the worst thing he could do for them was to make them dependent on
getting something for nothing. But then again, Jesus wasn’t
running for elected office. He didn’t need their votes.
Unfortunately that’s not the case with the social engineers of
the modern welfare state.
Our new President doesn’t seem to share Jesus’ desire to
help his fellow man as much as to get him to associate the government
assistance with the “generosity” of his administration.
It’s easy to be generous with someone else’s money. You can
say he is right to call these programs an “investment” in
America. It’s an investment in making as many Americans dependent
on the government as possible, and particularly the Democratic party
who “redistributed” it to them. This is how you encourage
more parasites. There is nothing in a government program to provide
that sense of self worth. In fact, by accepting such entitlements,
there is an implied acceptance of one’s lack of worth. Therefore
it must always be a dysfunctional relationship based upon need and
dependence. The same attributes one finds in the relationship between
an addict and his supplier. Make no mistake about it, all parasites are
addicts. Especially those that are socially engineered.
The “War on Poverty” and the “Great Society”
represented the crowning achievement of the liberals social engineering
vision of society. Government programs hailed as the solution to social
problems. The “unintended” consequences that followed have
made the word “liberal” so much of a political liability
that almost no political candidate desires that designation.
Unfortunately these policies have returned with the election of the
parasite messiah Barack Obama. However this time the professional
parasite class created by these disastrous practices is arrogantly
DEMANDING what was once GIVEN as an act of benevolence. And like the
animals in a national park that were foolishly fed by well meaning
tourists, they are willing to attack and use force to acquire their
demands.
We must stop feeding these animals.