A New Political Primer

A New Political Primer
By Burt Prelutsky
Thursday, July 21, 2011

A recent study disclosed that 47% of Detroit’s residents are functionally illiterate, which suggests that 53 % are just acting uppity.

The fact that so many Americans have only a passing acquaintanceship with the English language, in spite of the fact that $13,000 is the amount spent annually to educate each Detroit student, is an indictment of public education in America. That sum happens to be a few thousand dollars over the national average, so the pathetic reality can’t be attributed to a lack of money. That such widespread illiteracy exists in a major American city is a testament to the power and gall of the teachers union and to their shameless cohorts in the Democratic Party.

In a related matter, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested that it would be a swell idea if the federal government could wave a magic wand and send incoming immigrants to Detroit for five or 10 years.

A number of Bloomberg’s fellow liberals took him to task for suggesting that America’s ongoing problem should be dealt with by sending these folks off to our urban equivalent of the Soviet’s Siberia. But, being the sort of benevolent fellow I am, I prefer to think that Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t looking to punish the immigrants; instead, he was looking to raise the curve of Detroit’s classrooms and improve the city’s illiteracy rate by filling it up with the foreign-born.

Some people think I’m too harsh on Obama and his enablers in Washington, but the truth is that I despise politicians in general. These louts have the audacity to refer to themselves as public servants, but, unlike actual maids and butlers, they are always the first in line at the buffet table, whether what’s being served up are salaries, pensions or health care.

Moreover, members of Congress, along with the president, refuse to take their oaths to protect America seriously. They encourage illegal aliens to sneak into the country by offering them health care, employment and free tuition at our colleges, and they cheer on public sector unions as they bleed us dry. Unfortunately, it’s the very people who are complicit in their dereliction of duty who have the authority to bring charges of treason. To me, the entire system is akin to having foxes in charge of prosecuting crimes against poultry.

You may have noticed that Obama has taken to delivering a speech just about every day from some solar panel or windmill factory that is supposed to prove that his fiscal policy is zipping along on all eight cylinders. Of course, the only reason the place even exists is because it’s being subsidized with our tax dollars. But that’s just Obama being Obama. But I did notice, just before dropping off into my usual coma when he starts to speak, that he was announcing his intention of increasing the number of engineers by 10,000-a-year. While it didn’t have quite the zing quotient as Jack Kennedy’s promise of putting a man on the moon, it did manage to momentarily capture my attention before I zoned out.

When I woke up, his promise had me scratching my head. I finally decided that, inasmuch as he didn’t specify what sort of engineers he had in mind, he probably figured he’d need 500 of them to run those trains he’s always yakking about and that nobody wants.

I assume the other 9,500 engineers would be paid to be passengers.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.