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Responsibility #36
(written prior to July 1992)
To the People of the United States of America:
Like post high school and college, there is no right nor responsibility for the government to provide funds for adult continuing education and retraining. Yet with our fast moving technology and social changes, it is probable that most of our citizens will be faced with one or more career field shifts, or education and training updates, prior to retirement. It has been and must remain normally, the responsibility of the individual to cope with these challenges. Unless provided as a benefit by an employer or a union, funds to accomplish these ends must be provided out of savings, or by non-government backed loans.
The risks of education loans are generally much greater in this category. The borrower is likely to have existing financial obligations: a family to support, a mortgage to pay, credit card and other loans, possibly alimony or child support payments, etc. They will have a fraction of their working years ahead of them. In their late thirties and older, employment and salary prospects are likely to be compromised. They may consciously or unconsciously resist adjusting their life styles, to lower incomes and the burden of the education loan. Hence, if government guaranteed loans are to be offered, there is even greater need for evaluation and counseling, to do justice to both the taxpayer and the loan applicant. Again, these loans would come at the expense of other government guaranteed loans, if we are ever to put our federal government back on a reasonable financial basis (see Responsibility #35).
There is another trouble with government guaranteed education loans, that must be remedied. Some technical and trade schools, and other educational institutions, have failed or closed, having in effect absconded with prepaid tuitions. The borrowers, and the government, have been left holding the bag. This risk must be removed by appropriate evaluation and monitoring of the educational institutions, meting out the loan proceeds on an as earned basis, where the financial health of the school is considered marginal.
Grants are another candidate for economies. The nation needs to keep educators' noses to the grind stone in teaching our students. Subsidization by grants is unwarranted, and conflicts with the teaching role. Horror stories appear in the media from time to time of useless, immoral, or otherwise wasteful grants, coming from various government departments. Federal grants must be adequately policed, to assure that they serve a useful purpose in and of themselves, and are worth the money to be expended, in comparison to other general welfare needs.
The next subject to discuss, in regard to beefing up the foundation of our nation, is Health Hazards. We have touched upon or discussed at length, in previous essays, a number of health hazards to the individuals and families, that make up We the People: abortion, euthanasia, suicide, sexual mores, divorce, drugs, guns, and gangs. We will expand or expound upon a number of these, and other health hazards, toward alleviating or eliminating their costs, and other deleterious consequences.
First, the nation must return to, and improve upon, the taboos of two plus generations ago, for the communications and entertainment industries. From toddler to senior citizen, we are markedly effected by the explicit and implicit messages drummed into our senses by these entities.
Despite the relative strictness of the strictures of that earlier period, society failed to recognize how costly and deadly the habit of tobacco smoking would prove to be decades later. Smoking was heavily promoted in our golden oldie movies (and is far from absent, in movies and TV programs being produced today). In retrospect, the individual who suspects a conspiracy in any evil practice, could swear that the motion picture and tobacco industries were in collusion, to foist this habit on the viewers. If so, their mission was accomplished in spades. The tobacco habit has caused more misery and unhappiness, more medical costs, and more deaths (several times over), than the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II.
The tobacco industry, and the mass media, spare no horses in promoting smoking addiction. They produced ads to seduce all age groups, and used all types of appeals from patriotism to cartoons for kids. Examples: "Lucky Strike green has gone to war" of World War II, the macho Marlborough Man of the 1980s, the very recent smoking Joe Camel cartoon character aimed allegedly at children. With the naive or unsuspecting cooperation of the armed services, the Red Cross, and the USO, the tobacco industry invested heavily in its future during World War II, by distributing free cigarettes to service personnel. The addictions created then have done enormously greater harm, than all the German and Japanese ordnance.
In the past couple of decades, much (but too little) has been done to inhibit smoking, and to protect smokers and non-smokers from its devastating effects. Warning labels have been required, to advise the purchaser of the "possible" harmful effects of smoking. Tobacco users have been subject to higher costs of their habit, in "sin" taxes and premiums for health and life insurance. Smoking prohibitions have been proclaimed, in more and more areas in public buildings. Yet our Congress and President continue to subsidize tobacco farmers, and to protect the tobacco producers and distributors.
It is high time that the following principle be enacted into law and practice (resorting to a Constitutional Amendment if necessary). The United States will do all that it can to limit and control the production, distribution, sale, and use of products and services that are (or are reasonably deemed to be) subversive to the life, health, and happiness of citizens and residents of our nation.
Learning from our Prohibition era experience, an outright ban would not be imposed on some of the subversive items. Instead, the particular industry would be limited to satisfying the demand of the residual users, who refuse to respond to the warnings. The users will be required to pay all the costs, to themselves and to society, of the subversive habit. Society will be free to discriminate (within limits) against the use and users. The users will be constantly reminded of the harmful effects, to encourage their resolve to quit.
Specific recommendations as to tobacco will be presented at the beginning of the next paper.
Publius IV
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