Give It Back

If you want a quick example of how hard it is to take away a government entitlement, look at the NYC public schools this week.  You will have to look from the outside, though, because schools are closed all week.  They call it the mid winter break, which is not to be confused with the other breaks:  Christmas week, spring break, July & August summer vacation, religious holidays in September & October, Thanksgiving week, Election Day, Veterans Day, Columbus Day and others that I'm sure I left out.  Teaching is a great part time job if you can get it.

But the schools never used to have a week off in February. That all changed, however, under Obama's Presidential role model, President Carter.  In the winter of '77 or '78, the Arab world was squeezing the oil supply.  They sensed weakness in Carter, and sadly they were correct.  One of the initiatives was to conserve energy by closing schools for one week during the winter.  They called it "Energy Conservation Week."  We were told that once the crisis passed, the schools would reopen again for that week in February.

A couple of years later Reagan became President, and we had so much oil, it was coming out of our water faucets.  The oil crisis was like Carter-gone.  So the schools should have opened, right?  Wrong.  We gave the teachers a week off with pay and they had no intention of giving it back.  And our political leaders, cowards to their core, never demanded that they give that week back. 

And thirty-plus years later, teachers still have that week off. 

Because once the government gives you something, the post WWII generations of Americans have been brainwashed to think that you never have to give it back.

But those days are over.