You Don't Get to Say

You don't get to say what laws our guys will pass and we don't get to say what laws your guys will pass. Isn't that the whole point of splitting the people up in the first place? Also, you are doing a lot of stereotyping here. All Republicans are not rich pricks and all Democrats are not poor downtrodden peasants. Take you and I for example. Not that it's any of my business, but I am guessing that you have more money than  I do, based on where you live and where I live, yet you are a Democrat and I am a Republican.

That shelter developer was quoted in our local newspaper, and he was quoting a line from the movie "Field of Dreams". You may be right that he didn't mean it the way I interpreted it, but the fact still remains that we don't have homeless people living in the streets in Cheboygan County. It's not that we don't have poor people around here, but they don't live in the streets like they do in the big cities. I thought it was because of the climate, but you're right, Chicago is not all that much warmer than Cheboygan, so I guess I don't know why.

When did they start calling them "homeless people" instead of "bums" anyway? I remember seeing some bums in Chicago on Canal Street when I had a part time job on Clinton, one block over. Actually, they weren't all bums, some of them were hoboes. According to a guy I once met who claimed to be a hobo himself, the difference is that a hobo is a migratory worker and a bum is a migratory non-worker. Another time I read somewhere that a tramp is a migratory non-worker, while a bum is a stationary non-worker. Then again, in Robert Frost's poem "Two Tramps at Mud Time", the two tramps are seasonally out of work lumberjacks. Maybe that's why they invented the term "homeless", because there was no general agreement about the exact meaning of the other terms. Anyway, on Canal Street there were a couple of places that hired people by the day, which is why I say that those guys weren't all bums, some of them must have worked at least some of the time. Be that as it may, what did bums, hoboes and tramps do before they invented homeless shelters? I have read that they had soup kitchens during the Great Depression, but I don't remember reading that they had homeless shelters until they started calling them homeless people. I have never heard of bum, tramp, or hobo shelters, so where did those guys go when it got cold outside?

I don't know what to tell you about Trump, Cruz, and Rubio. I thought that Trump was a joke at first, but now he is being taken seriously. You know more about it than I do. Do you think that arguing with Trump has made the other two guys funny in the head, or were they always that way? From what you tell me, these so-called debates aren't really debates, more like shouting matches. Why are they having so many of them anyway? I don't remember them having weekly debates for a year before any other election. Are the Democrats having that many too? Be that as it may, I have changed my mind about voting Libertarian if Trump wins the Republican nomination. Now I am resolved to vote for any Republican they put up there because it has become obvious to me that is exactly what they don't want me to do. Why else would they have the Republicans making such fools of themselves?

2/28/16: Meanwhile, back at Splitsville, I have come up with as plan for our Republican schools. I saw something on TV once about an urban school district that was actually paying kids to attend. They figured that it was cheaper than sending truant officers after them when they didn't show up for days at a time. It was just an experiment, and I haven't heard anything about it since, so I don't know how it worked out for them. One of the problems with kids nowadays is that there are few paying jobs available to them, so why not make school their job? I don't know how much we would have to pay them to make it worth their while, but I am guessing not all that much, since they aren't making anything at all now, except for the pimps and the drug dealers, but we could never compete with them anyway. I would also pay them more if they got good grades and dock their pay for tardiness, absenteeism, and misbehavior.

Now that they would have a few bucks in their pockets, it would behoove us to teach them about financial responsibility, so I would start teaching money management skills in all the grades. By first grade they should know how to count money and make change and, by twelfth grade, they should know how to make money in the stock market. We could also have something like those 401K plans, where we would match any money they chose to put aside for the future if they commit to leaving it in there till graduation. We might have to float some bonds for start up costs, but the program should eventually pay for itself because we would be turning out productive tax paying citizens. Kids from the Democracy would be welcome to attend free of charge because we would likely transform them into money grubbing capitalists like ourselves.