From the Mouths of Babes...

Recently my daughter and I took advantage of a Humane Society rabies clinic to get her cat vaccinated. While standing in line, my daughter saw a sign in the store window of the pet supply store which was sponsoring the event and pointed it out to me, laughing. The sign read “Now Accepting EBT Cards”. I saw no humor in the sign. Since it was posted on a pet supply store, it was just another example of our government wasting our tax dollars.
Looking as if she were explaining to a child, my daughter pointed out what she thought was so funny: “EBT”. She thought it was a misspelled word. No, I explained to her, that was an acronym. Then the woman behind me stated, “Be thankful you don’t know what it is.” That’s when it hit me. My youngest daughter, who is 14 years old and in high school, didn’t know what an EBT card was. I honestly almost jumped for joy right there in the middle of a line of people holding their pets and making a fool of myself.
You see, even though from time to time I have had to ask for help from a system I deplore to help raise my kids, the fact that my daughter didn’t know what an EBT card was for, showed me I wasn’t taking advantage of the system. I was not raising another generation of welfare babies. Hallelujah!!! Even though the system was broken and in dire need of repair, I was not using it unnecessarily.
The welfare system was originally created to help those in desperate need during the midst of a crisis depression in our nation. It has since been bent and twisted into a monster with no head or tail; creating a vicious cycle of handouts that generations have learned is there for the taking. The “Land of milk and honey” was never intended to hand your daily bread to you on a silver platter. Our forefathers fought and died to maintain a way of life that had nothing to do with living off welfare. I was raised that if I worked hard and saved my money, I would have a good life. Wealth was never promised to me, but pride in knowing I had earned the life I lived.
Situations have come about, some from my own bad decisions, some not, that have made it necessary to ask for a little help, please. To provide for medical care that I couldn’t afford, give me that extra bit of funds to make it through college, and make sure there was enough food on the table to keep my kids healthy. However, no one, no matter how broken a system is, should even want to rely on handouts to live. Get you through a lean time, yes, if family is unable to do so, but never a permanent replacement for an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay.
Let’s get with it people, if we want changes in our government and what it does with our billions of tax dollars, we’re going to have to show by example. Is your local politician corrupt our wasteful? Throw his butt out of office. Is your congressman or senator listening more to lobbyists than to his constituents? Give them the boot. We hired them when we voted; we can just as easily fire them in the same way. You don’t like the way the government is run. Get off your couch and run yourself. Get involved. It’s time to “put up or shut up”.