Midnight Basketball

After-school programs is not pork and should not be treated lightly. Every minute on the basketball court is a drug-dealers moment of
frustration. Anyone who is against prevention is one who did not listen to Batman. Even the jail movies of the Thirties featured the defender of rehabilitation and usually it was the warden. Every minute after school for individual counseling is a minute away from the emptness of working couples, or fatherless homes. Every minute of rehearsal or music lesson is a minute free from shoot-outs on the streets.

The real pork is to contractors who build the prisons. Far better to ship the most violent criminals to a desolate Pacific atoll. Drug addicts belong in boot camp and non-violent, drug-free, first time felon should be placed in a controlled environment and given public works jobs cleaning up the environment. Chronic drug runners and dealers over the age of twenty-four should be mailed to Colombia.

Less Government

For a hundred years in the spirit of a United States the northern industrial states shared generously its revenue to the southern belt. Now that the south has thrown away its kerosene lamp, thanks to the graces of the Democratic Party and the Tennessee Valley, it no longer wishes to play by the rules as a new industrial power because the Dixiecrats are now full blown Republicans who ride herd on Jeffersonians but love the theory of states rights.

State government and so-called local governments are the worst leviers of taxes since the Romans. The Republican scheme has always been to focus on the central government while the people are being robbed back home by their own kind who abuse the much heralded Tenth Amendment and resistance to the National Labor Act.

Pork: the rich man’s white meat

Congress cannot trust itself and control its appetite for pork. Nevertheless, perceived toxic is another’s bread and butter, but special tax loopholes for individuals and corporations should certainly be eliminated. Pork and perks—a way of life—are not restricted to the federal government. Local politics, universities, small businesses, corporations—and, yes, charities—all indulge. And for the states rights fanatics, the whole pig stays home.


Welfare Reform


The only true welfare reform possible is through a war on poverty with the creation of jobs and job-training. The safety-net now used is stagnated precisely because the Republicans thwarted the Democrats’ move to wipe out poverty with equal opportunity workfare. As for impoverished unwed teenage mothers, it is the family’s responsibility to pursue community assistance to feed another mouth. If the teenager is kicked out of the house, rather than building more orphanages as we do prisons, put more money into local out-reach programs for temporary housing until the family is forced to take its daughter back or face a federal penalty. As for the rare, proven worthless schemers where children are not involved, give them three weeks notice to get a life or lose benefits. They have three options: job, armed service, or exile.


Education

Whatever happened to tracking in schools? It seems it has been derailed? Every child is entitled to public education, hopefully in order to become a reasonably intelligent citizen. If correctly grounded in the minimum essentials of instructive learning, and with good counseling, a student in his second year of secondary education should know whether he or she wishes to continue in academics or shift to a vocational school. Billions are wasted on frivolous college curricula and on hundreds of thousands of students who are poorly advised or totally misplaced. However, elitism is not advocated here because life time continuing education should be an option for every citizen.

Drugs

How long can the narcotic incursion go on? A horrendous problem that seems to be forgotten other than its dire effects on the crime scene. The war on drugs must be revitalized — on a plane with terror — not only to reduce crime, but to curb AIDS and the demoralizing effect on youth or there will be no future for millions of today’s youth, resulting in a bleak future for the United States.