ConcernedForFuture's Blog

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared."
- Cicero, 42 B.C.

I don't think I need to say anything more, just think. Okay, here is a hint:

"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation."
- George W. Bush

"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator"
- George W. Bush

"There ought to be limits to freedom"
- George W. Bush

"If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within."
- President James Madison

"Dictatorships start wars because they need external enemies to exert internal control over their own people."
- Richard Perle

If you don't think there's anything you can do about it:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
-Thomas Jefferson, American Declaration of Independence

We are the people, we do have power, we only have to exercise it:

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
- Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural

And if for SOME reason, you don't see the problems:

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Or if you think it would be unpatriotic:

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country."
– Teddy Roosevelt

If you do nothing:

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The patriot act is an abomination. Keep giving up your freedoms for security:

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. "
- Dwight D. Eisenhower, President and 5-Star General

Just remember, the ways we are manipulated are not new things, Hitler and Stalin both knew these methods long ago:

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
- Adolf Hitler

"The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened".
- Josef Stalin

Why do I just quote these larger than life people? The truths they say are truths,because they are the general principals this country was founded on. They are not perfect for sure, but their ideas are in the past, to warn us in the future.

My wife is a teacher, and this is her first year tenured. This year has been a joke, and all of her co-workers, even the students are being effected by the current budget crisis.

My wife and I stay up watching the news, hoping to see some sort of media attention, something to alert the general public of how bad things are. What do we see?

Alligators. For some reason, there is news, that lasts for over 5 minutes, about alligators. Are we supposed to be concerned, maybe scared? Is this a real threat? Do we have enough things to be scared of? Pedophiles, murderers, people stealing our aluminum, thieves... and now alligators. All I can say is 'wow, are you serious?'

After that.. a short piece about how what pregnant women eat, may effect the sex of the child. They didn't say what they should or shouldn't eat, or what basis they are reporting this information, just that it 'might' effect the sex of the child.
Despite what biology teachers have taught for years, and what they still teach, the news is saying something different. Biology teachers would have you believe that as soon as a man's sperm hits the womans egg, the sex of the baby is determined, and that since only the man can pass on the Y chromosome, that nothing the woman does can effect the babies sex.

Are the professors, who have studied the subject for so many years, wrong? And if so, give us some sort of supporting FACTS, so that we can go tell them how wrong they are!

In any case, we didn't see anything about the education budget crisis... till this morning, on the news ticker on the bottom, was it only briefly mentioned, that legislature is meeting about the education budget. It wasn't talked about, it only flashed across the screen for a moment.

So while there is no coverage about education, something that effects our fundamental values.. whether ours kids get a good education.. we are being told to fear alligators, and told that women should be careful what they eat while pregnant..

About 2 weeks ago, in Volusia county, all schools had all funds frozen. If a teacher ordered paper, or any other supply, it was denied. The kids here, soon, won't have the things they need to learn in the classroom... because the teachers can't get it. But thats not all thats happened so far, there needs to be 47 million dollars cut from the budget for schools in volusia county alone.

Yesterday, there was a meeting that included all principals, in which they were told any teacher who is not tenured(meaning has not taught for three years, and is under contract) is fired, and won't be brought back next year. If this is their 3rd year teaching, they are not tenured until the first day of the next year, so they are fired. They will finish out this year, and not come back after.

So even though the number of students remain the same, there will be less teachers. There was supposed to be a law, limiting class size to 25 students per teacher, most likely to increase the quality of education, maybe even for the safety of the students, but obviously this can't happen now.

Do you know about this? This isn't even over, that still is not enough of a budget cut, so what is next? And why isn't this in the news?