From the Crow’s Nest
by CLINT YOUNTS
Who else out there currently reading this here newspaper has ever attended a fancy dinner party, and instead of taking the sidewalk to the front door, you cut across the freshly-mowed lawn? As your hosts usher you into their home, you notice a peculiar, rather offensive odor that seems to follow you throughout the house, and as you greet other guests, you observe numerous grimaces and nose-crinkling sneers. It’s not until you hear the hostess shriek, “There’s dog crap on my new carpet!” that you realize you stepped in a big pile of it while taking your shortcut across the lawn.
Well, folks, thanks to a certain news item I recently came across in a local medium, I believe I have just stepped on a fresh turd, and I’m fixin’ to raise a stink. I just learned, as have many others I presume, that the big shots running our state have gotten their priorities all out of whack. Public schools are critically low on funding, causing hundreds of teachers and other school employees to lose jobs. Several schools are forced to close and lock their doors because there’s not enough money to keep them open. Where has all the money gone that has been funding our schools for so many generations?
According to the news article I just read, for the past decade a huge wad of our tax dollars went to a fund that allows Texas inmates to take college courses while they are incarcerated. This money is meant to be a loan that the cons are supposed to pay back to the state, but apparently very little of it is. So far, of the 22,000 convicts who have gotten out of prison with a sheepskin, only a third of these grads have paid us back for their student loan. The other ex-cons still owe the state nearly 10 million bucks. Over the past decade, the state has paid nearly $27 million to provide inmates with higher education while getting only $4.7 million back on their loans. I ask you, is this smart money management?
I don’t recall the state offering to give my two daughters a loan to help them through college, then saying, “By the way, once you graduate, we’d like that money back if you please”. Are these state officials so gullible to think convicted thieves are really going to give back money that they had no right obtaining in the first place? If you can’t trust an educated crook, who can you trust? What kind of morons do we have up in Austin handling our money? Does Governor Perry and our comptroller realize that a mess of ex-cons have unpaid IOUs that could sure help our economy right now? I wonder if they even know money is being spent on higher education in low places. Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire (another elected official who is supposed to be running this state) reported that he, too, was unaware of this program to educate criminals in Texas prisons. If the longest-serving current member of Texas Senate doesn’t know where our tax dollars are being spent, then who does?
Now, I’m a little old-fashioned, just a simple, country boy. I don’t understand much about socio-economics or sociopaths, but I do understand that our children and grandchildren deserve a better education than a bunch of thieves, drug dealers and rapists. Why do we allow millions of our (yes, fellow Texans, OUR) dollars to go to supplying convicted felons a college education? I’m no financial wizard, but I bet $27 million could’ve been put to a better use than teaching a class in Child Psychology to a convicted sex offender. How many teacher salaries could’ve been paid with these millions, keeping teachers in the classroom instead of the unemployment line?
Here’s an idea. Since we will have an abundance of highly qualified but unemployed educators pounding the pavement this summer for work, let’s hire them to go into our prisons and teach these social misfits instead of our own children. Forget the kids! Just leave that child behind! It’s that guy who sexually abused and killed his own son who should be taught world history. That young, nice man who was found guilty of selling crack to elementary kids needs to be taught some business classes so once he gets out of jail, he can make an even higher profit.
I just don’t get it. How can our state officials, people that are supposed to be well-educated and knowledgeable, be so foolish with state spending? Instead of spending tax dollars on educating convicts, I think some professors need to head on over to the state capitol. Have them teach those guys some economics, finance and business classes. While they’re at it, have ‘em toss in a lesson on common sense. As for the poor, misunderstood boys behind bars, they should continue to receive some education. Let’s start by teaching them the Ten Commandments.
I know I’m supposed to write a humor column, but this matter of firing qualified teachers is no laughing matter. And when I read that our tax dollars are being wasted on convicts instead of children, I just got another bur under my saddle. Allow me this time to vent some anger, and I promise to scrape the dog poop off my boot and get back to my regular stuff next week. Right now, I’d better open a window after raising such a stink before Maw gets back home.
Clint Younts gets a bur under his saddle occasionally, espeically when talking about educatin’ the young ’ns. He works at a veterinary clinic while running cattle on his property.
