Tuesday, November 30, 2004
We, The Common Folk, Need Attention.
We did such a great thing—fighting for Iraq’s freedom. You don’t believe it? Just wait until the elections in January. That will prove we were right.
But now we read of a continuing campaign of threats, intimidation, and murder by insurgents design to spread fear into the public in Iraq. Talk of delaying the election. I have said it before and I will say it again, “They don’t want our form of government.” We need to get out of the business of these countries and take care of our own!
What do I mean? Very close to my home I have two members of my family who are teachers with degrees in Elementary or Secondary Education. Both are unemployed after five or six years in college and six years out. I’ve read we need teachers desperately and yet the next story says that school districts are cutting teacher positions. Then they say that we need to use students who have not yet obtained their degrees because there is a shortage. Either there is bullshit being spread or people mismanaging money somewhere.
Also what about the people who need a job that will at least allow them to feed and house their families, but they don’t have the higher education? Our President has said we will have jobs for people with higher educations, but there are two problems there: One, how does this educated person pay their bills, feed their families, and just survive until that great job becomes available? Problem two is what happens to the people who do not have the ability to learn to earn that higher education. The President said “go to school,” but he didn’t say who would pay for it or where the money would come from for survival while they are doing this.
So it is about three weeks to Christmas and the people around me are in trouble—I suspect each of you have people in trouble too—and you and I need this Nation to stop playing savior for others and take a hard look at saving our own. No more claims of “Well people don’t want to work at menial jobs.” Pay a decent wage and no job is menial. If you, as employers, can’t afford it then this nation had better get off its pompous ass and create some work or provide some assistance to allow you to create it. I know that the bottom line is profit, but dammit if you have the average person struggling and nobody buying then those profits will start to dry up.
So I’ll say that I wish there was going to be a Happy Holidays, but I highly doubt that for some people in a nation with a leadership so busy trying to show the world how to live that they can’t look down from their pedestal to see the problems that the “common folks” at home have.
