WILL WE SEE YET ANOTHER ENTITLEMENT?

14 Apr. 2018

Dear Friends and Patriots,

When I was really young I lived in Odessa, way out in West Texas. The town just to the southwest of Odessa was the dusty little farm and ranch town of Pecos. Back then the leading citizen of Pecos, if money counts, was a man named Billy Sol Estes. The first time I recalled hearing his name was in 1961 when then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson flew into Midland-Odessa Airport to have a meeting with Mr. Estes.   It made all the news and was even covered by local TV stations.   I remember it.

It was the next year, in 1962, when Billy Sol Estes had an epic downfall. The story even made the national news, not just local. It seemed Mr. Estes had many scams going, most of which allowed him to rip off the U.S. taxpayer. One involved control of cotton allotments and quotas. Another involved loans to buy anhydrous ammonia tanks. Still another involved getting federal loans to build storage silos for grain, then getting government contracts to store surplus corn. The scams were devious and yet simple. He controlled and made money off cotton allotments and quotas, even though he didn’t own them. He received federal loans for anhydrous ammonia tanks, which he was supposed to be leasing. He would have leased them, too, only he didn’t actually buy many. His federally financed grain silos didn’t seem to keep much surplus corn. The corn came in alright, but it all disappeared shortly after.   Yes, old Billy Sol was a man who knew how to make money. The only problem he had was his scams all involved the federal government, and sooner or later they were bound to be on to him. He thought his friendship with the Vice President would shelter him. He was wrong. He was charged with all kinds of crimes, from mail fraud to securities fraud. He ended up serving seven years in Ft. Leavenworth’s prison.

One reason I remember Billy Sol so well involves his home in Pecos. He had a grand, two story white mansion with columns in front and an emerald green, manicured lawn with trees and shrubs around it. It looked like a mini-White House to me, an 11-year old kid.   Billy was proud of that house, and decided he didn’t want the government to take it away from him. Instead of that, as soon as he realized he was in big trouble he deeded the house to one of the poorest families in Pecos, free and clear. That alone made big news in West Texas.   Who ever heard of such a thing?

About five years after Billy Sol was convicted and sent off to prison a newspaper reporter decided to go to Pecos to visit the Estes mansion and talk to the owners. In his article he described the property as in bad need of a paint job and essentially dilapidated.   There were weeds in the mostly sand yard and evidently a lot of signs the house needed repairs. The story on the house made the rounds of all the newspapers in Texas. I read about it in my new hometown of Longview, in the Longview Journal. I asked my father what was going on with the house and why the new owners let it go to seed. My father was a man who was sparing in his use of words. His response was, “That’s what happens when you give something for nothing.   If you don’t earn it you don’t respect it enough to take care of it.” I wasn’t totally satisfied with that, so I asked about it again. I just didn’t understand. This time my father thought about it a minute and responded with, “Those people had always been poor. They didn’t know how to live in a fine home like that, and didn’t have the money to keep it up. Billy Sol thought he was pulling a fast one on the government, but his house is falling down now because of what he did. I don’t blame the people living there now. They just don’t know any better.”

My father was a life-long Democrat, but he was one of the most conservative people I ever knew. He was one of those people who could squeeze the buffalo off a nickel and not think anything of it.   His understanding of things was pretty simple – if you don’t earn it, you don’t have any business having it. If you do earn it and you let it rot, that’s a sign of your own lack of character.   His way of judging things was typically Texan back then.

My father taught me about welfare.   There was a house a block away from mine that caught my eye when my father and I would go to work in the mornings (that’s a whole different story). It was a ramshackle looking place with a dirt yard and always two or three cars parked there. I often saw a lot of kids outside that house.   Sometimes there would be six or eight of them, sometimes it seemed like there were more.   One day I asked my father who lived there. His response was typical of him. He said, “Some woman who’s on welfare.” I was 14 at the time and that was the first time I’d heard of welfare, so I asked him to tell me what it was. “That’s money the state pays her to feed her kids,” he said. I didn’t get it.   I couldn’t understand the relationship between those kids and the state. I asked him to explain more, and he did. “She has a kid every year. I think she has about 15 now. She gets money from the state for every kid she has in the house who’s under 18.” Boy, was that ever a revelation! I still didn’t get it, so I asked, “What about their father? Why isn’t he paying for his kids?” My father seemed amused by that. He told me, “I expect every one of those kids has a different father. As far as I’ve been told she’s never been married.   She doesn’t work, so she lives by having illegitimate kids and getting the state pay for them.”   There was a whole lot of education in that one conversation.

Just in case you wonder, the woman I referred to was white. I didn’t know any black people on welfare in 1965. I’m certain there were some in town who were, but the only person in town I was certain was drawing welfare was that white woman in the next block.

The anecdotes I just told you are two of the filters I used to assess a “news” story you may have heard about. It’s about hungry students on college campuses across our nation. At least, that’s what the writer and the activists behind this story want you to think. It’s really about something entirely different.

The story ran in the Washington Post on 3 April 2018, written by Caitlin Dewey. Here’s a brief synopsis:

According to researchers at Temple University and the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, “… 36 percent of students at 66 surveyed colleges and universities do not get enough to eat, and a similar number lack a secure place to live.”

“… nearly 1 in 10 community college students have gone a whole day without eating in the past month. That number was 6 percent among university students.”

“On top of that, the report found, 46 percent of community college students and 36 percent of university students struggle to pay for housing and utilities. In the past year, 12 percent of community college students and 9 percent of university students have slept in shelters or in places not intended as housing, or did not know from one day to the next where they would sleep.”

“The University of California has found that 40 percent of its students suffer food insecurity. At four state universities in Illinois, that number is 35 percent.”

“Experts say the factors underlying campus hunger are complex.  More low-income students are enrolling in college, thanks to expanded needs-based scholarship and grant programs, a move away from standardized test scores as part of the application process, and other initiatives designed to recruit more diverse students.”

“To alleviate these issues, GW (George Washington University)  opened a food pantry in 2016, stocked with canned goods, produce and day-old bagels, tucked behind an unmarked door in the same food court where students flock for poke. Hundreds of schools have recently launched these sorts of pantries: Membership in the College and University Food Bank Alliance has swelled from 15 in 2012 to more than 600 today.”

“Colleges are taking other steps as well. Some have altered their dining plans to cover more meals or to offer more low-cost options, or have begun distributing free dining hall vouchers to students who need them. Others have partnered with non-profits to redistribute unused meals to hungry students. Michigan State University, the first school to establish an on-campus pantry, has begun screening students for food insecurity during routine visits to its campus health center. In New York, St. John’s University has started advertising an emergency fund that disburses small, one-time grants to students with unexpected expenses.”

“ … advocates have called on the federal government to provide free or reduced-cost meals at colleges, as is already done in primary and secondary schools. This fall, the federal Government Accountability Office is scheduled to release a study on the extent of college hunger, which gives advocates hope that lawmakers are paying attention to the issue.”

“Advocates would like to see changes to the food stamp program to make it more available to college students. There are also calls to reevaluate the financial aid process, with particular attention to how the government assesses "need."”

          What’s this story really about? To me, it’s not actually about the lack of money or “food insecurity.” It’s about people, students and their parents, whose dreams and aspirations exceed their means (much like the family who ended up with Billy Sol Estes’s mansion). It’s about a federally subsidized education system that grows more expensive every single year – largely as an unintended consequence of those very subsidies. It’s about young people who sometimes make bad choices. Yes, it’s about the truths of all those things, but it’s more. It’s also about the progressive plan to take over America. Want to understand how that works?

          Note how fast all those “experts and advocates” go to solutions that require taxpayer subsidies? Yes, this is a problem for us all. Students are hungry. We should feed them! If we refuse, we’re complicit in denying them a fundamental right – the right to be fed on another man’s nickel.

          We (taxpayers) already feed eligible K-12 students; many of them twice every school day. The eligibility standards have lessened greatly over time. Recently there’s a new program – summer feeding. We now see food catering trucks arriving twice each summer day at school parking lots and apartment buildings to feed whoever shows up. Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean all those kids don’t need to eat. You should know about these programs. They’ve been going on and expanding for decades now.

          A more recent phenomenon has to do with the way our law treats those between 18 and 26. Progressives want us all to accept their notion that until a person is 26 they can’t be held responsible for their own lives. We have to keep them on our family insurance policies if they ask. That’s just one thing. There are others. The legal age of majority might be 18, but progressives want everyone between 18 and 26 to be treated as snowflakes, whether they are or not.

          Then, there’s tuition. Yes, this purported “food deficiency” thing looks like yet another progressive rationale to make college tuition-free. The Bernie Sanders crowd and all other progressives want to lower all standards for entry into college, then make it free as well. It’ll all be on us, too.

          As with all welfare programs, food aid for college students and free tuition will enhance the notion of 18 to 26 year old dependence. As with all welfare programs, these programs can only diminish our young people, turning them into weak, whiny, and unreasonably demanding adults. Welfare programs instill the sense of entitlement most strong people abhor. They cause people to alter their behavior; to adjust their lives in ways that ensure they can continue to qualify for their various welfare benefits.

          The article on food problems among college students is designed to make readers feel sympathy for the students, but also to divert attention from the actual causes of the phenomenon and ultimate objectives of the proposed remedies.  

          Progressives have succeeded in ruining K-12 education. They’ve succeeded in turning our colleges into ideological indoctrination laboratories where graduates can recite quotes from Chairman Mao, Lenin, and Che’, yet view all aspects of our Constitution with extreme suspicion. They’re now hard at their plan to gut the very notion of personal independence as an American virtue. A compassionate government makes sure the needy eat and have a place to stay. Individual citizens shouldn’t worry about such things. Only heartless neo-cons insist that all who are able earn their way.

          I’m not done yet. I have to take you to the end of the road, to the end game those progressives want for us all. While we’ve been busy watching football and movies, doing our yard work and backyard barbeques, hanging out at the beach, going to happy hour at our favorite bars, and attending music concerts the progressives have been systematically weakening America. They’ve always attacked our core belief; our belief in America and Americans as special and blessed.   They’re doing it as surrogates for an international cabal that intends to eventually fold our nation into an international order. To succeed they have to weaken us. They have to sow dissent and chaos in our society. They have to make us beg for a new American way – a new order that’s not based on that “ancient and obsolete Constitution.” No, if they have their way we’ll voluntarily give up on our democratic republic and opt for a progressive-led autocracy.   We came breathtakingly close to just that in 2016.

          There are a few questions that come to mind; questions that beg for answers. How long are we, the ones who understand the games, going to let those around us remain in ignorance? How long are we going to allow our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews be unknowing pawns in this terrible game? How long are we going to allow progressive politicians and their backers lie to us with impunity? How long are we going to remain “the silent majority” while the future of our nation is systematically decimated?

          Billy Sol Estes committed his crimes because he was ambitious, greedy, and unprincipled. But, compared to the average progressive ideologue Billy Sol was a prince and a man to be emulated. Progressives want all of us, the great unwashed who inhabit fly-over country, to become nothing more than useful idiots, much like the majority of their current followers. If they succeed you can bet one day they’ll erase all traces of the existence of America. It will be as if this great experiment in democracy never existed.

          Does any of this sound untrue or hyperbolic?   I only wish it was.

          You all know what to do. Will you do it, though?

In Liberty,
Steve