The Coonridge Digest: Mason jars won’t quite do the trick

Greetings from the Ridge.

I think F.D.R. had it right. There are lots of us who can remember trying to wipe polio off the face of the nation one dime at a time.

Millions of schoolchildren would fill their punch-out cards and turn them in dutifully every Monday morning. Entertainer Eddie Cantor started the grassroots effort by calling on the nation to send dimes to President Roosevelt at the White House and in 1954 1,830,000 schoolchildren were inoculated with Jonas Salk’s vaccine. It remains the largest peacetime mobilization of volunteers in history.

It’s time to send the kids out with their Mason jars and start collecting the dimes. There’s no other way they’re going to get an education.

The man sitting in the White House, the man or woman in the governor’s mansion, are completely bought and paid for. You’d be a fool to think otherwise. In the past fourteen years, the Oil and Gas industry has contributed $179,725,562 to the Democratic and Republican candidates, and guess what? We’re going to drill in Alaska. If you want the vote you’ve got to buy it.

Then there’s the public school system. Underfunded in the best of times, it is about to crash into the pit of the current economic downturn. While the White House demands that no child be left behind because the slogan is easily pronounceable, even in a heated Presidential debate, no one in authority has even the slightest intention of helping kids catch up. The President’s proposed budget marked the first time in a decade that overall funds for schools will be cut and 48 programs have been left behind permanently.

Governors decry the poor condition of their state’s schools, yet most still rely on the horse and buggy method of property tax, for fear that an income or sales tax increase might leave them driving their own buggy after the next election. They’re masters of the microphone and the cowards of the county.

Let’s face facts. Kids can’t vote, the parents of school age children are not typically in the high-income, high-influence political donations bracket, and families are turning to home schooling at an ever-increasing rate. Unless you’ve got a million dollar contribution in your pocket, we just don’t care much about you.

But…it’s the modern world. Text messaging has replaced penmanship, you can buy hamburgers from a machine, and most of us have started to tinkle indoors. The year is 2005 and it’s time that kids got in gear and joined the new world order. They need to start collecting dimes to buy their own lobbyists.

I’m serious as the grave. Third and fourth and eighth-graders have got to stop fooling around with selling pizzas to buy band uniforms, pushing magazine subscriptions to purchase sports equipment, and collecting money for UNICEF. They need a highly paid somebody in Washington to lobby their cause.

So just what kind of money are we talking about? According to Political Money Line, more than 25,500 lobbyists spent at least $1.6 billion lobbying Congress in 2002. That comes out to about $3 million per legislator. Maybe Mason jars won’t quite do the trick. You see, you not only have to pay the lobbyist, you’ve got to provide him with the cash to throw around. It isn’t about lobbying at all, it’s about cash.

Okay, there are 50 million students in U.S. public schools. 13 million of those are in poverty so we’ll let them keep their dimes. That leaves 37 million kids to buy a lobbyist. We spend three times more on each prisoner than per public school pupil so we might send the little tykes to the prisons first…maybe a special day each month where the kindergarten could mingle with the cons during their exercise break, picking up a dime here and there.

The President’s proposal would cut out early childhood care for 1 million kids. Since according to his own Department of Education, every $1 invested in early childhood education will save $7 by increasing literacy, employment, and future education, it would be wise for the pre-schoolers to start skipping math and milk time, and get their little buns out on the street. Panhandlers are irritating, but how could anyone turn down the pleading eyes of a four-year-old with a sign around his neck saying, "Please help me buy a lobbyist"?

Children of the nation unite! You’re wasting your time learning how to count and read and feel and think! If you want an education, follow the lead of American politics. Quit school, get out there work to buy your own lobbyist!

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.