"Gimme' Some More"

  How many of you have had the chance to sit your children down and tell them “how it was “when you were their age? My father always captures my full attention when he shares his stories of picture-show movies that only cost a dime and popcorn for a penny. He tells how a quarter really went a long way in the fifties. My son also loves to hear the stories his Paw Paw rattles off at family gatherings. Dad tells stories of how you had to work for what you wanted. No one gave you a free ride. Stories of saving for weeks, months, even years to purchase something you “had your eye on”. Stories of how Paw Paw’s father was strict with his punishment, at times harsh, and how that is what gave him the sense of right and wrong he has today. You see he received whippings as a child. His parents had no idea what “time out” was. And after all that scolding and spanking, something happened that is unheard of in our time.


   He grew up to be a man with a moral compass. A taxpaying, working, family man who raised four taxpaying, working children. An American Citizen. He doesn’t even have a criminal record. This man worked his whole life. He paid into the tax system, Social Security, paid for his share of health insurance through his job, was a homeowner, a gun owner and even coached his son’s baseball team. He paid for the food on the table with the salary he earned. No, he didn’t get a government rebate when he traded in his old station wagon. He didn’t get government money to help him purchase a new home either. Why, he didn’t even get government money to pay for his healthcare. What he did do was pay into a tax system that gave money to other citizens and non-citizens for all of these reasons.

    Maybe people today deserve money back to help them with a new car purchase? Perhaps we should reap the benefits of taxes before we pay into the system, instead of waiting our turn to draw social security benefits. I’m not sure how the government justifies this new system they are implementing. What year was the cut-off where we stopped taking care of ourselves and asked the government to do this for us? Of all the statistics the government agencies like to report, maybe they could clue me in on this one. The nation’s mindset has gone 180 degrees out from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Instead of taking pride in what we have accomplished, more and more it is the norm to take pride in what you have squandered. Are we really getting over on the government when we take these handouts, or are we leaching off of the people who earned it? My father’s generation had many failures and many successes, but one thing was for sure, they all physically did something. You can’t fail if you are sitting in a section eight home waiting for a government check. You can’t fail if you do nothing all month but wait for your food stamp card to be validated. And you won’t be able to fail if the government bails out every business that makes bad financial decisions. Isn’t the threat of failure what drives the winners?

  What has happened to “the way things used to be?” Where has America slid off course? When we elect a new President, are we not electing someone to repair what is broken? We need leadership that will do away with these programs instead of escalating them and concocting new ones. Ronald Reagan said “Welfare's purpose should be to eliminate, as far as possible, the need for its own existence.” I wonder if this is even on the agenda anymore. Reagan also said “We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added”. Now, I wasn’t born until 1970. A quarter just never seemed like a “bundle of money” to me. But those last two quotes, somehow, make TOTAL sense to me. What do they mean to you?
       Note to self:     Save a quarter to show your grandchildren what they looked like, on second thought, save any currency you have. The “New World Order” will be using ‘credits’ by then. )