I just read in an AP story by Heather Hollingsworth that Kansas City, MO is going to close down 29 of its 61 schools. These drastic measures are being taken to stave off bankruptcy. This is the first to fall, but many will fall like dominoes because they operate under a system designed to fail.

To better understand the flawed system, let’s substitute the “auto industry” for “education.” Now what would happen if the Federal Government established a Department of Auto Manufacturing as Jimmy Carter did with Education. Then this newly established DOAM put all the hourly workers in charge giving them the authority to set their own pay. Would they be overpaid or under paid? If they also were authorized to decide the number of tasks they had to perform at their job, would they be overworked or underworked?

Now, being subsidized without a profit motive and in an ironclad monopoly, suppose they were given the authority to decide who can work; would they set criteria to protect their jobs or recruit the best to improve the company? Under this scenario, overpaid and under worked employees and no way of improving the workers, what would happen to the United States auto industry? If you answered “it would die,” you might be smarter than a 5th grader.

Prior to Carter’s payoff to the teachers who helped him get elected, that payoff being establishing a cabinet level Department of Education, the United States ranked 1st in every aspect of education amongst the rest of the world. Starting the day the DOE was established, education in the United States started to decline and now it is in freefall. Currently the United States does not even rank in the top 20 of industrialized nations in math, science, geography, or literacy. To make those dismal results even worse, the United States spends more per student, than any other country, a lot more.

Now let’s consider some of the worst school districts in the country, like Kansas City, MO, Washington, DC, Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL, and many more too numerous to list, and agree that these schools are dying and need a cure. Is there a common denominator? If you watch movies when there is an outbreak of a deadly disease, the first step to control the epidemic is to look for common denominators. You must identify the source of the illness to actually end the epidemic. In all these failing school systems, it can be said that for practically 100 years Democrats have run these cities. If the Democrats are the champions of the poor, why have they devastated all hope of their residents from climbing out of their poverty by denying them a decent education? In the last election cycle all these cities unanimously blamed Bush for their poverty, crying out for “Change.”

Why? Because that is what they have been indoctrinated to believe by their self-serving elected officials and bureaucratic minions, who refuse to accept any responsibility but like to point fingers at everyone else. Until the poor understand that the Democrats in these cities are not their champions but their masters, these people living on these urban plantations will be slaves, doomed to poverty, begging for crumbs from their master’s table instead of controlling their own destiny and living up to their potential.

The Kansas City School closings is tragic and has made students and parents angry but, considering that this very angry mob brought it upon themselves through the government they elected, I have little sympathy. When they keep electing people because they hope things will change, and not realizing that they have been electing those people for a 100 years while things always got worse, they will get exactly what they deserve. Albert Einstein, a pretty smart guy, defined insanity as to keep doing the same thing over and over and each time expecting different results.

As to all those failing school districts who inflicted Obama on our nation, are you still hoping? If those people screaming about the school closings will wake up and do something other than get angry they might be able to bring hope instead of wishing for it. Maybe they might finely get angry enough this year and do something different and take control of their own lives. It seems that every November those living in the inner-cities have their ship come in, but they are always waiting at the bus station.

Hope is not something you wait for, expecting someone to give to you, it is something internal that you give to yourself. Don’t be fooled that the government cares about you and it will take care of you. To them, you are nothing more than collateral damage in their quest to achieve their own dreams. Start working on your own dreams, not theirs.

You can start by letting your government know that you are fed up by phone, e-mail or go to their office. You might even stage a protest, but be careful because as soon as you show signs that you want off the urban plantation, the media will start calling you a radical member of the “Tea Party.”

OMG, you might be a Conservative!!

Joseph Tomanelli is a CPA from Clermont, FL formerly of Mahwah, NJ. He is a former Mahwah Republican Club President, elected Republican County Committeeman, former President and Co-founder of the New Jersey Republican Assembly, an affiliate of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies. He has earned a BS degree from Ramapo College, and an MS degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology.