In the realms of man, there’s nothing quite as parasitic as the United States “entitlement culture.”
Spawned from unconstitutional U.S. handouts to people and crony businesses, sired through massive debt and the inflation of the money supply, it’s not only produced generation after generation of termagant Americans who are ill-equipped to manage their own lives or offer productive skills to others, it’s seen wide swaths of the population demand everything from “paid leave” backed by the threat of government statute, to gender-swapping of popular male fictional characters, to skyrocketing demand for college, its resultant price increases, and inevitable grade inflation.
And now, this beautiful gem, Kate Lobosco’s hand-wringing CNN diaper-soaker about how a poor, defenseless, civic-minded teacher is suing evidently “evil” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and how the beautiful people in Congress are “listening to” her plight. It’s just one example of the litany of pop media sob stories on the subject that reveal both how widespread and pervasive unconstitutional federal handouts are and how destructive they are to the idea of self-reliance.
Prior to heroic Kelly Finlaw’s September 19 “testimony” before Congress (that would be the U.S. Congress, created by the U.S. Constitution), CNN’s Lobosco wrote:
A middle school art teacher who was denied loan forgiveness by the Department of Education is going to Capitol Hill Thursday to explain why she's suing Secretary Betsy DeVos over the alleged mismanagement of the program.
So, let’s see if we can nail this down. A tax-funded, public school teacher is suing a tax-funded secretary of a federal department not sanctioned by any enumerated power of the Constitution because she wants her tax-subsidized, unconstitutional federal student loans to be forgiven and completely paid off by…
...the taxpayers.
Makes sense.
But, see (cue violins), as a public school teacher, her salary isn’t that high, and politicians and pop media figures portray public school teachers as nun-like, priest-like pleasure-deniers who sacrifice for “the community” and for “the children,” so of course we should be on her – and the collectivists’ – side.
Or, perhaps when one decides that he or she is going to live off money forcibly taken from other people, it’s not wise to call it a "salary," and even less wise to call that a career. Also, perhaps such a person would be wise not to complain when the also-tax-funded government decides not to "forgive" the loans he or she took out to get a degree (loans that were from a government-created education loan corporation).
Parasitism is not a strong position from which to claim the moral high ground.
Unnnnn-lesss one lives in “Entitlement USA.” Then it’s the epitome of saintliness. It’s heroic, which seems to be the view the leftists in the House held when they arranged this little show to push for even greater amounts of tax cash to be showered on people getting degrees that will put them into government-paid, “public sector” jobs: i.e. that will continue the parasitism. Continues Lobosco:
Kelly Finlaw, who teaches in New York, couldn't wait to apply for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF), which cancels remaining debt for public sector workers after they make 10 years of payments. But when her 10 years was up in 2017, Finlaw's application was denied because one of her loans was ineligible.
So she’s upset because she got a loan that was ineligible to fit the manifestly anti-constitutional loan “forgiveness”. How sad and terrible. It’s a good thing kindly politicians in DC found out about her, that they’re listening to her.
But, as anyone who has covered Capitol Hill can verify, appearances such as that made by Ms. Finlaw aren’t some kind of “spontaneous” result of a bottom-up citizen complaint. They are performances -- put on by politicians who arrange for people with emotional stories to offer “testimony” -- that help drive a political narrative and a political agenda, such as new legislation or changes to existing statutes.
Which is why CNN was able to tell us what Finlaw was going to say BEFORE she appeared last Thursday…
‘If the PSLF program wasn't meant for me -- a teacher who loves her job, pays her bills, and comes from a family where loans were her only option -- who was it meant for(?)’ Finlaw is expected to say to members of the House Education and Labor committee, according to her prepared testimony.
Well, evidently, Ms. Finlaw does not want to pay her bills. She wants taxpayers, already on the hook to pay her “public sector” salary, to pay the bills she took on herself. Those would be bills acquired to get an “Art Education” degree at tax-subsidized Grace College, and to get a Masters degree in “Urban Studies” at tax-subsidized Eastern University, allowing her to spend her spare time, as BeyondSkin tells us, painting murals, publishing prints, and “doodling” – when she’s not traveling around the globe painting for the Philadelphia-based “BuildABridge” non-profit – a non-profit that ALSO receives oodles of taxpayer money from the state of Pennsylvania.
Notice a pattern here?
How about some more points to fill in the pattern…?
It turns out that Ms. Finlaw isn’t the only “heroic” teacher involved in this crusade to expand college loan forgiveness for people who go into the “public sector”. She’s one of numerous teachers connected to the collectivism-pushing American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union.
The union brought the suit in July.
AFT President Randi Weingarten has said:
Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a right, but Betsy DeVos has turned it into a crapshoot.
A right? Entitlement? It appears that Ms. Weingarten doesn’t understand the nature of rights, which are negative – or “hands off” – in nature. You have a right to be left alone by me and I have a right to be left alone by you. No one has a positive (as in posited by agents of the state) right to anything from someone else, for that assumes that another person must provide it, which is slavery.
No man has a claim on others.
But Finlaw, Weingarten, the AFT, and their pals in DC believe differently, and they cite George W. Bush as one of their philosophical allies, because his Administration was the one that pushed for this “loan forgiveness” (i.e. further tax subsidization), and they just don’t like that certain loans aren’t being recognized as qualifying for the program.
So sad. A lawsuit against the tax-funded federal Department of Education, to be heard in tax-funded courts will be just the thing to make it all better.
Americans are “entitled” to it, right?