‘A’ in narcissism...

...'D' in Citizenship.

The Ontario H.S. senior who wrote “Pass tax extensions” (Inland newspapers, May19th) deserves high marks for self-centeredness.  The letter urged the passing of Gov. Brown’s “temporary tax extension”.   Her entire point, oft restated, was to keep non-taxpaying, non-tuition-paying students like her in school as long as possible, without cost to her.  Safe to say she does not pay her own bills, and there is a 45% chance her parents pay no income tax, since 55% almost half of the population pays none while the “evil rich” 2% pay 40% of all income tax revenue.  She neglected to mention that Brown’s plan is a five (5) year extension of what was originally billed as a “temporary” two (2) year tax by the Progressive Socialists that have held power in the Sacramento legislature since the last time that Moonbeam was in the State House. 

Then as now, Brown tried to grow the unions and social freebies at the expense of a dwindling number of actual producers of tax revenue and productive jobs.  We are threatened with the loss of police, firefighters and teachers if they don’t get more billions to spend.  We never seem to hear about “losing” programs for illegal aliens and social give-aways, or threats of reductions to redundant government employees and smothering regulations.  L.A. alone spends $1.6 billion (their figure) a year specifically on illegal aliens for schooling, meals and housing.  Does anyone really believe the Progressives will reduce spending to eliminate this tax once it is extended?

Unions’ shrinking numbers (now less than 12% of actual workers) worry their rich union bosses, who soak up much of the record breaking funding we have thrown down the bottomless school pit since introduction of the lottery.  If the trend continues, they will be out of a job with no productive skills.  How will they pay for their own kids’ private schools?  Who will oppose the spread of States flourishing under “right to work” (no enforced union privileges) rules?

The student’s teacher gets a ‘B+’ for teaching the bumper-sticker sound bites.  No annoying math or logical facts to cloud her message; just her pronoun-laden focus, “I, I, I, me, me, me”.  She gets xtra credit for working in the other “advantage” of ignoring reality in favor of taxes: “…it will help keep the…educators and public school employees.”  She even manages to say, “…extension will lead not only to fewer budget cuts…”, as if government spending was a major virtue in itself.  ‘A’ in ideology.  (One wonders if this student believes in "sharing the wealth".  Is she or her fellow pro-Socialist  students willing to give up a few hard-earned Grade Point Average points so that disadvantaged or just plain lazy students could have a higher GPA?  No, they're not [several surveys concurring]. Why? Because they "earned" their grades and its "not fair" for the system to take away their points to "share" with others who are not as fortunate, motivated or industrious?!?)

Certainly, we need to look to the future.  If we do not get our bankrupted State’s spending under control, the educational system will collapse altogether, along with the rest of our economy.  The feds cannot afford to bail us out along with their own debt, racing towards $23 TRILLION ($80,000 for every one of us; man, woman and child).  Even if we took every nickel from the “rich” (which they would probably leave to avoid) and taxed the rest of us at 50%, it wouldn’t cover the debt, let alone any other costs. Like education. 

But remember, it’s all about, “…a better and brighter future for us, the students.”