Score a Win for The Demons!
by Greg Perry by Greg Perry
I’ve written before about the little town we live in. It has one government building and that remains empty except monthly when members of the community get together to discuss their concerns. Everybody here lives on acreage. I can step onto my back porch and shoot any gun I want to shoot. I do that frequently.
When you think it can’t get any better, it gets better. Our town’s name is Winchester. Isn’t that just about the greatest name a town could ever have?
Let the Begging Begin
Those of us who live in Winchester generally love the idea of a town that is so small there is no government that extends beyond a mayor who meets at our little town’s one-room building monthly when community members meet. The problem is that we like things the way they are which means the government doesn’t like things the way they are. Our little town’s government works so well that larger government entities around us just can’t stand it. So they butt in. Well, no they ramrod themselves in and extract money from our pocketbooks.
The town next to ours does not have a cool name like Winchester. That town’s name is, appropriately enough, Beggs. Beggs hates the fact that Winchester wants to be left alone. Winchester residents are forced into residing in the Beggs’ school district. You know what that means, right? We must pay property taxes to support Welfare Kings and Welfare Queens, the parents who send their children to public schools.
To make sure those of us in Winchester remember our place, it’s illegal for us to use Winchester for our town’s name when we get mail. Government regulations require that the post office in Beggs "return to sender" any mail addressed to us that uses our proper, correct, and accurate town name Winchester. The government highway signs say Winchester. Our elected mayor is the mayor of Winchester. When we call the sheriff, fire department, or power company we must identify our town as Winchester. Even the government workers in Beggs agree we live in Winchester. But we’d better not get mail addressed to Winchester! We’ll be punished; we’ll go to bed without any mail for the day.
They make us say we live in Beggs when we get mail because when we fill out our property tax forms we therefore must write that we live in Beggs. Therefore, the Beggs school board gets to charge us for services never rendered.
Beggs, Borrow, and Steal
As is almost always the case in rural America, the nicest buildings in Beggs are the school buildings. After stealing money from its residents, and from surrounding towns such as Winchester year after year, many people just don’t have enough money to keep their own homes as nice as they’d like. After building the nicest buildings the teachers and school administrators want more. The insatiable teachers and school administrators always want more. When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul never complains.
Recently Beggs went begging for more.
Last year a Beggs school bond lost by 3 votes. Any time you see the word bond or levy or mill on a ballot that is code talk for tax increase. This tax increase vote that Beggs was begging for was $2.2 million to build a new football field and athletic facility. The proverbial three R’s in government schools today are far from Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic of days gone by. Today the new Three R’s are Ritalin, teacher Raises, and spoRts.
The school board came so close to victory they could taste it. They would never allow the community to have its way if the loss of money was by only three votes. They put the vote back on the ballot. Last month the tax increase passed. Free footballs for everyone!
Here are two rules of thumb: when a school bond vote passes, you will have less money for your family. When a school bond vote loses, you will have even less money for your family. Here is why: the school board will spend a lot more of your money to get the vote back on the ballot again. If you vote it down again they’ll just spend even more of your money to get it on the next ballot. It’s almost cheaper these days just to let them steal what they want the first time they request it.
A No Means Yes
If the original school bond vote had passed by 3 votes, how likely do you think the school board would have said, "Well perhaps that was a fluke. Maybe this bond isn’t the best use of our community’s funds." How often does an approved school bond vote ever get put back on the ballot in case the community decides they don’t want to spend the money anymore?
Never of course.
A loss of 3 votes? Nothing more than a delayed win.
We’re The Beggs Demons, We’ve Got Spirit
Our school’s team name… well, it’s not our school, it’s the Beggs school. Since legalized theft is the norm these days, even many Christian parents teach their children not to steal from others unless one steals to pay for the free daycare, Ritalin, phony environmental indoctrination, and footballs. Yes, as long as you steal from your neighbors to pay for footballs, theft is okay in many Christian homes I’m sad to say.
The Beggs team mascot and team name is Demons. Speaking of Christian parents, even the ones who steal from others by sending their children into that Synagogue of Satan say they don’t like the Beggs mascot and team name. They’d like to see it changed, perhaps from Demons to Angels. I do not want the team mascot and team name changed (and yes, I’m a Christian… a strong, hardcore Christian). To me, the only absolute truth that comes out of that place can be found in its name. As with the town name of Beggs, the name of Demons could not be closer to the truth in so many ways.
Emptying Voters’ Pockets and Kids Minds
My question is, why when a tax increase passes can it not automatically be put on the next ballot in case the people want to vote it down? Make tax decreases as simple as tax increases. Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
You and I cannot rally to get a tax increase voted down because we work for a living, we’d have to use after-tax family money for the campaign, and our daily lives get in the way. The school board can get a voted-down tax back on the ballot as often as it takes though, because as they wear down the populace to pass it, the invoices pile up until they ultimately steal the funds to pay for that campaign.
The Educated Society Is a Red Herring
"But don’t you want an educated society?" they ask as though the failure of the schools is the fault of you and me. If America were not statistically dead last in almost every educational subject compared to all other industrialized nations on earth, the educated society argument might have some merit. Before Dewey and Mann designed the government schools specifically to separate children from the moral upbringings of their parents, we had a highly educated America.
Jayne and I made a trek across the country a few years ago and read museum Civil War letters that children wrote to their dads fighting. In museums of the Revolutionary War, we were even more stunned at letters wives and children wrote to their battling men. A rich vocabulary, morality, respect, and insight were common in that home-educated society.
It took years of government schools and university-taught teachers to bring America to her knees educationally.
Do Not Steal
The number of independently-schooled students is now equal to the number of public school students in 25 states combined and the number is rising annually. If you want your child to attend government schools, shouldn’t you pay your child’s full educational fee instead of robbing your neighbors? The elderly living next door to you don’t have extra funds for every bond vote you want passed to give your children free footballs.
