A story on the local TV news station saddened me. Again. It seems to be happening an awful lot to me lately. Maybe I'm becoming an old, soft fool (stop snickering!!). But there just seems to be so many bad things to see and read about in the news. I'm sure that I don't have to delineate them for you. From Penn State to Syracuse to the economy, to the Middle East, we've all been barraged with a litany of gloom and doom stories. It's so bad that, for some religious fanatics, this is right in step with their prediction of The End of Days. I don't know about you, but it scares the shit out of me sometimes. But even more than frightened, I'm deeply saddened. Some of the things that I see out there are so wrong, yet so easily fixed.
The story I saw on the news this morning is the latest example. The report was on Rockland County, NY (the county in which I reside) and it's latest struggle with balancing the budget. In order to close its deficit, Rockland, like so many other Counties around the Country, it has been forced to make many difficult decisions regarding where funding must be cut, i.e. which social services, charitable, community, and art organizations will find their operating budgets severely slashed. The report went on to say that County taxes will also be raised in the effort to reduce the deficit. It highlighted one group in particular; the early childhood education program, Head Start. The budget would reduce the County's funding to Head Start significantly. So much so that the quality of care and the level of education provided to the children and families in the program would suffer greatly. In an interview with the Executive Director of Rockland's Head Start program, Ouida Foster Toutebon, Ms. Toutobon pointed out that for every tax dollar spent in an early childhood education program, like Head Start, $7-$9 is saved when that child reaches adulthood. It seems like pretty simple math to me. It reminds of that old transmission commercial: You can pay me know or you can pay me later.
As if this wasn't enough to send me into one of my all-to-frequent depressions, the next story put me over the edge. The newscast transitioned from this story of frugality and sacrifice to one about Cyber Monday! The report went on to say that, by early indicators, Cyber Monday, as well as Black Friday, would set records for the amount of people shopping and the volume of purchases made. The wanton consumerism so wanted and, perhaps, NEEDED by all of us as well as the retailers, was accomplished. People BOUGHT and they bought with wild enthusiasm.
Look, I'm not trying to play Scrooge here, but, when you think about it, don't you find it odd that we can sure find the money to buy TV's with screens so large that people have to watch them from another room, but SCREAM when we might have to pay more (or at all) to keep worthy and SUCCESSFUL organizations like Head Start from being cut out of existence? When you think about it, would you be really disappointed if you bought the 48" super-plasma-3D-mega screen TV instead of the 53" one and, with the money saved, donated it to a worthy organization - like Head Start?
This is one of the things that I've harping on since I started this damned blog! Things NEED to change. The days of excess are over. But they should be over for ALL, not just for some. We need to think about WHAT we need to change and HOW we need to change them. We need to get our PRIORITIES straight. Do we want large screen TV's where we can watch Access Hollywood in spectacular hi-definition until our eyes bleed? Or do we want to educate our children to become productive members of our society? When you think about it, it shouldn't be that difficult a choice.
When you think about it, isn't that what the Holiday Season is really supposed to be all about? I'm just sayin'. . . .
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