Shared Sacrifice

Last month, our President addressed the National Governor’s Association, wherein he suggested that “shared sacrifice” should become a new catch-phrase, of sorts, for America. “If all the pain is shared by one group,” he said, “that’s not good for anyone.”

This recession has been felt in nearly every sector of the economy, among people from nearly every socioeconomic category.  Those of us who are retired didn’t get a “cost of living” increase in spite of the soaring prices of virtually everything.  Even the wealthiest among us have had fewer opportunities in which to invest and with which to expand their wealth and that has resulted in fewer employment opportunities for others.

In reality, the “one group” of people that has been most successfully sheltered from the “pain” that the President wants us all to “share” is government employees.  But, speaking from the other side of his mouth, President Obama told the Governors that "I don't think it does anybody any good when public employees are denigrated or vilified.”

Here is the truth for those who can handle the truth.  In the state of Wisconsin, state taxpayers pay nearly 100% of the costs of government employee retirement pension contributions, and well over 90% of government employee’s healthcare insurance costs.  What we have here is a case of Parasites Devouring Their Host.

Do you have any idea of what a lousy job America’s “teachers” do educating our children?  The more money “we the people” pour into the US educational system, the dumber our kids seem to get.    (Link)
The problem is, the unions prevent firing the bad teachers and giving pay raises to the best of them.  Unions require all such actions be biased strictly on seniority.

There’s an eighth grade civics test from 1954 that can be accessed on the Internet.  It asks such questions as “Tell the provisions of each of the amendments,” and “Write the Preamble to the Constitution.”  Now, THAT is what I call an education?    (Link)
 
I have a grand daughter who is a high school senior and a straight A student.  I knew more about civics, or any subject for that matter, in the seventh grade than she knows as a senior.  And she is about to graduate at the top of her class.

I’m of an age where I can vouch for the fact that “back in the day” we were taught American civics in school, and we were taught to be proud of America.  Nowadays, more often than not the kids are taught to be, at best, neutral about the United States, and at worst to hate it.  (Link)

Not content with dumbing down America’s children, many of our “teachers” have promoted anti-American propaganda, globalism, and entitlement mentality.  School has become more indoctrination than education.


I don’t mean this as an indictment against teachers.  The real problem is the unions involved in the protests in Wisconsin, and I know that the idiots marching in Madison are not representative of many or even most union members.  It’s the union leaders and the "Marching Moron Brigade” that I find detestable.  (Link)

The uproar there has not been about Wisconsin indiscriminately firing government workers or cutting the workers’ benefits, but about the necessity of government employees taking more financial responsibility for their own retirement and healthcare. This, of course, led to Wisconsin school teachers storming the state capitol and chanting “tax the rich – don’t cut our benefits…”

Take a look at this YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su4PwZCWUdg&feature=player_embedded