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Okay, I think I have the strength to carry on one more flurry. Codejack, your pie-in-the-sky, “rainbows are pretty” with unicorns and leprechauns running wild through the flowers ideology makes me cringe. 1st off, have you ever heard of the term, “Self-licking ice cream cone”??? That is what government bureaucracy’s are as well as the entitlement programs and people they produce. 2nd, NOTHING is free… there is no such thing as a free lunch, free college, free healthcare, etc. etc. etc…. so please stop referring to it as such… someone somewhere has to pay for it all…. And darlin’ it sure isn’t the government doing the paying (refer back to self-licking ice cream cone). I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I held my 1st “job” at the ripe ole age of 8… washing dishes in the back of my grandfather’s BBQ restaurant in central Texas trying to prove that I was a hard enough worker to get promoted to a front of the house job waiting tables. From there, I went on to work at a ranch in the summers of my 7th and 8th grade years to pay for camp during the summers. After that, I worked at soccer camps for in kind training – all before I was of “legal” working age. My parents helped instill in me a pride of working hard to get where and what I wanted…. something your way of thinking eliminates… it turns people into victims… hell look at the aftermath of Katrina…. many people suffered (and still do) as well as died waiting for the “government” to come in and SAVE THE DAY.

After graduating HS, I left for college, fell in love, got married and left during my junior year. Soon after that I found myself 1100 miles from home as a single parent with very little income. One of my “friends” at the time suggested that I go down to DSS (Department of Social Services) and apply for food stamps…. I was reluctant b/c I had been raised that reliance on others to do for you what you should be doing for yourself gets you nowhere fast… but I felt like I was in between a rock and a hard place, so I went down to the local DSS. Let me describe that day for you in detail. Reluctantly, feeling like I had let myself down, I went inside, grabbed a number, my paperwork and sat down to begin applying for a number of government handouts. To this day, almost like some form of PTSD, I can still feel the spirit of despair that filled the air when I walked into that building. People with no hope, no sense of self… it is so hard to describe what it felt like in there…. just take a 1 ton rock and place it on your chest-— there was no feeling of escape only some sort of mediocrity, damnation, loss of anything bigger. What I am describing here is not HOW I FELT…. it was how the entire place felt, it was the look on the people’s faces, the way they carried themselves, the stagnation… the loss of many dreams -— sheer and utter despair. At some point, I am not quite sure how long I sat in that chair, I eventually got up, left and went to my car where I wept. I am not sure how long I sat there crying…. but I remember it so vividly… like it was yesterday, I even remember the red shirt, blue jeans and tan boots I was wearing. My heart ached, it ached for all of those lost souls… all of those people who had so obviously given up…. given up on life. As I wiped the tears off of my face and started the car, I vowed to make sure that I -— ME -— not the government -— was in charge here and perfectly capable of making ends meet… hard wasn’t an issue… it was do or do not…. nothing else. Over the next 3 years, as a full-time student, I worked, as many as 6 jobs at one time, to make ends meet… anything from mowing the fields at school (hey I thought it was great b/c I could work on my tan at the same time) to serving coffee at the local coffee house. I didn’t have access to insurance to pay for my healthcare, I used services provided through my student fees from the school healthcare office. I knew that routine wellness/sick visits to my PCP were $35.00 a pop and I made sure I had the money to pay for them if needed. My PCP also knew of my financial situation, b/c I made him aware, and the few times I needed antibiotics or the like, he gave me the samples given to him from his pharmaceutical reps. I used my local Health Department for other services… I still had to pay for them mind you, but received services based on a sliding pay scale due to my income level. Next, for my dental care, I would go into our local Technical College’s dental hygienist program for my 6mos cleanings…. yeah, they need “guinea pigs” to practice on and at $5/visit you can’t pass that up… especially since the “guinea pig” must get checked out by 2 DDS’s before leaving the chair -— let me tell you, those were some of the most thorough dental cleanings I have had in my life ( a little time consuming, but you know that from the get go).

Life is hard… there is no doubt about that; however, nothing grows on the mountain top only in the valleys…. when I read/hear sycophantic messages such as yours, it reminds me of the day I walked into that DSS building… it reminds me of the desperation in the air. No matter HOW you try to wrap up your message…. it does nothing but tear down the individual. An when the individual is lost… ALL IS LOST.