Love It or Leave It? Bull-Butter!

This blog is called a 'Rant.' Well fasten your seat belts!

I entered what would culminate in a thirty-nine year teaching/coaching career in 1962 making $4,850 while coaching three sports. My son, daughter, daughter in-law and two grand-daughters are career teachers. Obviously, they all embrace the notion that teaching is 'the grandest of enterprises.'

Just yesterday, my daughter came from Jacksonville to Decatur to join us for lunch and shop at the nearby Target Store. It's that time of year when department stores nationwide put their back-to-back school supplies on display and Target offers a 15% discount to teachers. My middle school Spanish-teaching daughter purchased over $100 worth of supplies...not for her but for her students. She will repeat this expenditure to begin the second semester. My calculation reveals a $6,000.00 out-of-pocket personal cost in her years teaching thus far; she has a few more years to go before retirement. It used to be that she could claim up to $250.00 a year on income taxes for this educational expenditure on students. No longer! I guess it was costing our government too much to continue such a 'giveaway.' Of course, we will pay farmers for NOT planting while children in America go to bed hungry every night.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle will blow-smoke up voters butts about the importance of education but once elections are over nothing much is done for educators. Teachers are treated much like first responders, i.e. Police, fire fighters, EMT, military and vets. Our elected officials and general  public will give empty verbal praise and stop short of truly supporting and advancing the cause of learning.This nation talks crap when it comes to education and our international rankings prove the point.

If you have concluded that I am criticizing our nation, then you're smarter than most of your countrymen for I sure the hell am doing just that. That said, I don't plan to 'leave' America but stay and embrace my Constitutionally protected right to call out my leaders and point out the phony stuff said by the same. Until teachers no longer have to spend their own monies for children in their classrooms, perhaps, all teachers should 'take a knee' during the National Anthem at public school events.

Oh by the way, President Trump calls out four congresswomen of color for not 'loving America' and tells them to 'leave the country if they don't love the country;' yet he got a bogus medical doctor's affidavit to state he had bone spurs on his heels and could draft-dodge and not serve our country in military. This man has a set tiny balls and a big mouth!