I'm celebrating a very important personal anniversary. Twenty-five years ago today, after spending the morning and early afternoon as a sophomore student at Westminster High School in Westminster, California, probably ditching at least one class, coming back late from an off-campus lunch, and more likely than not, spending most of my time writing poetry or a short story instead of paying attention in class, I donned my black Reebok sneakers, black socks, black dress pants, white button-down long sleeve shirt, burgundy and dark blue thick polyester tie (which I still have hanging in my closet as a souvenir) with a thick dark blue apron, and thanks to a car ride furnished by my mom, started the very first shift of my very first job.
Still six months shy of reaching my sixteenth year on this earth, I would spend what at the time seemed like a very long tenure of six months bagging groceries, mopping and sweeping floors, re-stocking go-backs and secretly assisting the cooler stock crew (don’t tell the union) for what started out as a mere 12 hours a week that quickly turned into a full-time 40 hours.
While at the time the day-to-day tasks that even included shoveling broken glass out of the recycling machines into transport bins and hand-trucking pallets of product out into the parking lot and then back into the store on the Fourth of July for the big parking lot sale seemed unbearable at times, there is no single period of time in my early years that had more of an impact on my work ethic, career and life thus far.
By the time I would leave college some four years later to take my first actual full-time office job with actual benefits like health insurance and a retirement plan, I had sold baby clothes and furniture, made and sold cookies and sandwiches at a bakery, sold books and helped manage a bookstore, and amassed an entire portfolio of part-time and full-time-by-hours-but-not-by-benefits jobs that even included three simultaneous 20 hour per week jobs while attending community college full-time for a few months during what I did not realize would be the last semester I attended school.
But when I look back on the 25 years that encompass both being an employee and a small business owner, working 12 hours a week and working 100 hours a week, working for minimum wage and not-so-minimum wage, working out in the sun with a shovel and working inside a posh, high-rise corporate office with the latest and greatest in computer technology while wearing a suit, I credit that very first job with teaching me more than any school ever did.
I look back at a good, solid 25 years of never having used any of that damned algebra that gave me so much trouble. Sure, I might use a little of the geometry from time to time when I’m hanging a framed picture on a wall, but that’s just the basic third-grade stuff, not any of the geometry with little “x’s” and “y’s” that I labored year after year during my teens trying to understand. I look back at a good, solid 25 years of never having used any of that damned base-six crap, or any of the stuff I learned in all of those College Prep Honors Science classes that I barely passed.
What I have used year in and year out are the interview skills I started perfecting the day my mom drove me to all the Lucky grocery stores in town so that I could ask for job applications. What I have used year in and year out is the skill set of knowing how to work with both fantastic and horrible bosses like good ‘ol Bill, my manager at the grocery store, who managed somehow to be both all at once. What I have used year in and year out is the work ethic that I first forged by completing a bunch of mindless, labor-intensive, repetitive tasks, all the while, steeling myself in the fact that no matter what happened in life, I was going to move upward and onward and never stop building a better life for me and those around me. What I have used year in and year out is the understanding that my work is my own, my work ethic is my own, and above all, my lot in life and the success or failure of everything about it is all up to me and no one else.
Unfortunately, these are all things that I did not learn while attending school for fifteen years. I really wish that in those very, very, very long fifteen years instead of being taught what I needed to know in order to do well on standardized tests, I had been allowed to pursue my own education path, much as I did as soon as I got home from school, and much as I have done each and every day since I walked out of a state-subsidized, taxpayer-funded classroom for the last time.
I cannot imagine how my world might be even better today were I allowed to reach an agreement with schooling to concentrate on the skills I knew I would need as early on as I knew that I was going need them instead of having to still learn skills that would later prove to be as useless as I always knew they were going to be. Schooling should have let me concentrate on the skills that I knew I would be using to make a living one day instead of the skills that simply allowed me to pass a test well enough for the school to get funded for another year.
Apparently, the U.S. Supreme Court, Taxifornia Supreme Court, Illegal Immigrant rights groups, Dream Act supporters, a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals, and the three to four million illegal immigrants living in Taxifornia are all in agreement that the Taxifornia taxpayer has a money tree in their backyard, should pay for anything and everything that society asks for, no matter how ridiculous, and that once again, the 41% of us who receive no government aid need to continue to foot the bill for the other 59% to continue to live a standard of life that frankly, they do not earn themselves like the rest of us.
According to the Boston Harold, “The U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday to uphold California’s policy of granting reduced, in-state tuition to college students who are illegal immigrants is likely to bolster similar proposals across the nation as well as a California measure to provide financial aid for the undocumented.”
This means that the Taxifornia taxpayer will need to foot the bill for a tuition discount for 41,000 students that rings up at annual costs of $23,000 at a UC school, $11,000 at a Cal State school, and $4,400 at community colleges. Correct me if I am wrong, but was not the in-state tuition discount set up so that the children of people who had lived and worked in Taxifornia – paid Taxifornia income tax, and worse yet, federal income tax, could get a break when sending their kids to college? Why then, would that discount, at the taxpayer’s expense, be extended to the non-income-tax-paying non-citizen?
Not that I was ever in agreement with the taxpayer footing tuition bills (Yes, I’m one of those nut-jobs that believes you should pay for college yourself), but this really continues to be a step too far for a state government that spends way too much money and relies too heavily on the hard work of some people, while completely turning a blind eye to law-breaking and lack of hard work from others.
You want to go to college? You want to send your kids to college? Then start saving. Start putting money away. You and your parents shouldn’t get to not plan ahead, then on high school graduation day, stick your hand out and expect us to foot the bill.
So, if this wasn’t bad enough, the Boston Harold continues with their story: “Undocumented students and their advocates said they will use the court’s action to push for passage of the California Dream Act, state legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to receive campus-based aid and the state’s Cal Grants for their bills at UC, Cal State and community colleges. It could cost about $32.2 million annually, according to an analysis by the Assembly Appropriations Committee. The measure, proposed by Democratic Assemblyman Gil Cedillo, recently passed the state Assembly and is being considered in the state Senate. The Legislature approved a similar measure but former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it last year as he had with previous versions. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, ‘supports the principles of the Dream Act and would closely consider any legislation that reaches his desk,’ his spokesman Evan Westrup said Monday."
So, not only is Taxifornia asking the idiot taxpayer to help foot tuition bills for illegal immigrants, but it may soon be asking them to foot the bill for state-funded financial aid as well.
No accountability, no personal responsibility, and no respect for the law of the land for some, and accountability, personal responsibility, and a heavy load of taxes for others. Freedom to do what you want, when you want, all with no consequences for some, and jail time if you don’t pay your taxes for others.
Senior Business Writer for LifeInc. on Today, Allison Linn, recently reported on a study conducted by the RAND corporation, USC, and the University of Michigan in which middle-aged couples were asked the following three questions:
•If the chance of getting a disease is 10 percent, how many people out of 1,000 would be expected to get the disease?
•If five people all have the winning numbers in the lottery and the prize is $2 million, how much will each of them get?
•Let’s say you have $200 in a savings account. The account earns 10 percent interest per year. How much would you have in the account at the end of two years?
Couples in which both people answered the questions correctly had an average net worth of $1.7 million, while couples where neither could answer these questions correctly had an average net worth of $200,000.
So, when you are out there searching for your lifetime mate, make sure you have these questions handy!
In case you need some help, the answers are: 100, $400,000 and $242.
Gold cards are out and platinum cards are in. Credit card companies are already working on their next wave of smoke and mirrors to rope people into the “prestige” of high-end credit card patronage. Titanium cards allow you to carry a balance of $100,000, have no annual fee, and perks like free internet access and magazine subscriptions. The vultures are trying to market titanium cards to law and medical students who they are hoping will rack up large bills now, but have the earning power later to eventually pay them off. If that’s not enough, ultra-elite cards like diamond, quantum, infinite, and black are also making their debuts with credit lines that start at six figures. American Express Black has benefits like roadside assistance and guaranteed airport parking, but carries an annual fee of $2,500. My advice on credit cards? Whether your card is gold, platinum, titanium, or Ukrainian, don’t carry a credit card balance, and always try to get cards without an annual fee. If you’re looking for a status symbol, how about being able to say you have no credit card debt in a nation where the average household carries $35,000 in credit card debt? If you need to carry a balance, look for a low-rate card, which is not necessarily going to be a “metal” or “element” or “smoke and mirrors” card. Watch out for “rebate” cards. Sure, you might get a free tank of gas every month, but are you paying $300 in finance charges instead of just spending your own $30 on gas? Always pay your minimum due and pay it on time...if you don’t there are clauses in the credit card application you signed that are there just to stick it you. Always be firm, almost a problem customer to your credit card companies. Be courteous, of course, but also demanding, and always threaten to take your business elsewhere. Call your credit card companies and tell them you are going to transfer balances away from them if they don’t lower your rate. You’d be surprised at how quickly they may lower your rates if you scare ‘em.
