Beginnings of American Socialism in Public Education? – Patriot Update.

These people “occupying” business districts, government districts, public squares and shopping areas, and some school grounds are nothing more than petulant, greedy thugs who think they have a right to confiscate the rightful fruits of direct labor and investment. In the minds of the liberal left, including His Royal HighAss, our hopeful President-for-Life Obama, anyone making more than $250,000 in combined family or household income is “wealthy”. Of course, they overlook the fact that a good education at an upper-level college can cost more than $30,000 per year.

Bloomberg’s website gives the following data on the most recent academic year’s tuition rates nationwide:

You could spend a lot more for an Ivy League college, of course. Harvard University and Yale University charge $33,696 and $36,500 respectively for tuition alone for the 2009-2010 year. Add in room and board, as well as other expenses, and you’ve cracked $50,000 a year.
Compare that with a national state-university tuition average of $6,762 and you know how much of a deal Wyoming is at $3,621. At the high end are New Jersey, $10,874; New Hampshire, $10,522; Vermont, $10,500; and Illinois, $10,353. 
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2009-08-18/harvard-ivy-leagues-bust-tuition-cost-bubble-john-f-wasik.html

So, if you are a member of a “greedy rich” family with a +$250k income, and two kids heading off to college, sending them off to an Ivy League university could potentially cost you a total of $400k for tuition and board (2 x $50k per year x 4 years). Consider that if you actually ARE at the “magic threshhold” of $250k, you probably pay about the national average in taxes of 45%. This number would include all your federal, state and local taxes, income taxes, property taxes, school taxes, and sales taxes, as well as FICA and Medicare contributions. So, you wind up with 55% of your $250k salary after taxes, or about $137,500. So that is what your friendly neighborhood IRS Examiner would call “disposable income”. Except of course that your mortgage, homeowner’s insurance, car payment, car insurance, transportation expenses, utilities and other necessities will probably eat up about 25% of that remaining $137.5k, leaving you with about $100k. Well, that’s plenty of money left to live on, so you are still “rich”, right?

Well, what about health insurance? And retirement contributions. And savings for that “rainy day”? Long term investments for the future of your children? And household maintenance expenses like lawncare, snow removal, the occasional roof repair, pest control, etc? Oh, and I almost forgot to metion another “imperative”: food! That’s right, we all need to eat, don’t we? So figure in the cost to feed a typical family of four for a year. And since the typical $250k family has both parents working full time to generate that income, there’s almost no time to prepare meals, and so factor in another 15% on top of your food costs for fast food and restaurant meals. Well, by the time you pay all of those expenses, you may have $30k to $40k remaining. Plenty of money, right?

Oops…we also have those darned “incidental expenses” we never really plan for: clothing, footwear, insurance deductibles and co-pays, auto repairs, entertainment, vacations, furniture, cable TV, internet, and many, many more. So in reality, we have about $20k left over. Well, let’s divide all of that among the four people in the household, and that’s $5k per person, or less than $100.00 per week of spending money in your pocket for each member, from Monday to Sunday. At $6.00 for a latte’ or cappuccino, $12 for a bottle of decent wine, $7 for a fast food meal, and maybe $3 to $5 for downtown parking during the workday, that money is gone pretty quickly also, isn’t it?

So how do you pay for that Ivy League education? Most people would say Federal Student Aid; except that while it keeps expenses down in the long term, those bills have to be paid starting six months after college graduation. And if both of your wonderful children want to go on to Graduate School for a Masters degree or beyond, double down on the debt you will owe. Of course your education for a “profession” such as medicine, law or education will require anywhere from 7 to 10 years of schooling if you want that Doctoral degree, and who doesn’t want to give their children a chance at the “brass ring”? So figure that the $400k for college just went closer to $800k. Do you think that it might be a little difficult to pay for that on a household income of $250k? Are people who make that much, truly “rich”? Also consider that His Royal HighAss saw to it that all student loans are now administered by the goverment, and the interest rates have now skyrocketed in comparison to competitive bank rates.

So the lie is that those considered to be “wealthy” typically are not wealthy at all. It is an illusory ruse concocted by the leftists to perpetuate their war against capitalism.

So now, I give you the other side of this story….what about the truly rich? Those who can afford to be philanthropic? You know, the “greedy” rich and the “evil” corporations? Well, let’s take a look at charitable giving in the USA. The Center on Philanthropy, a respected think-tank at Indiana University shows that for the charitable year of 2010, the following statistics:

CHICAGO, Ill. (June 20, 2011) – Giving USA Foundation™ and its research partner, the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, today announced that total charitable contributions from American individuals, corporations and foundations were an estimated $290.89 billion in 2010, up from a revised estimate of $280.30 billion for 2009. The 2010 estimate represents growth of 3.8 percent in current dollars and 2.1 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Source: http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/news/2011/06/pr-GUSA.aspx

So let’s be generous and round that number down a bit, to an even $290 BILLION dollars. Let’s understand something about this number:

First; the money comes from people who can afford it. Very few of the “poor” make any kind of substantive charitable contributions; they likely receive them.

Second; that dollar amount equals 290,000 ONE MILLION DOLLAR donations, just to put it in perspective, since many people can’t imagine a billion of anything.

Third; divide that by $13k, the maximum non-taxable annual gift according to IRS rules, and that would equate to more than 22,300,000 individual donors.

I respectfully submit that the “greedy” rich are truly not “greedy”, and that corporations are anything but “evil”. Let’s put those charitable donations into perspective;

American Red Cross national operating budget for FY 2007-2008: $5.502 Billon dollars  
     Source:  userwww.sfsu.edu/~lertel/Documents/AMERICAN_RED_CROSS.doc

    United Way 2005 expenses (last year they gave non-worldwide tax data) was a paltry $58 Million dollars
    Source: http://unway.3cdn.net/01115fdb0069e36a03_ugm6bn41y.pdf

   The Salvation Army reports about $2 Billion Dollars of revenue against $1.6 Billion Dollars in expenses
    Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/salvarmy.html

   The American Cancer Society posted $848 Million Dollars in donations in 2005
    Source: http://www.charitywatch.org/articles/cancer.html

  So look, America’s Top 4 charities probably collect less than $10 Billion in donations today, based on historic contributions and current data. Well, that still leaves another $280 Billion in contributions among the other charities. So how many other charities are funded with the left over money? How about nearly ALL of them?

  WHAT’S MY POINT????

If the “Blame Wall Street” crowd could have what it wanted, total confiscation and redistribution of personal wealth for everyone over $250k per year (which is actually what they DO advocate!), then there would be NO charitable contributions in the United States, which means the disappearance of these charitable agencies, now and forever:

AARP Foundation

Accion International

Accuracy in Media

ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

ACLU Foundation

ActionAid International USA

Action Against Hunger – USA

Action on Smoking and Health

Adoptaplatoon

Africa-America Institute

African Wildlife Foundation

Africare

AFS-USA

AIDS Research Alliance

Air Force Aid Society

Alaska Conservation Foundation

Alley Cat Allies

Alliance for Retired Americans

ALM International / American Leprosy Missions

ALS Association – National Office

ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Alzheimer’s Association / Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Disorders Association

Alzheimer’s Disease Research, a program of the American Health Assistance Foundation

Alzheimer’s Foundation of America

American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults / American Brotherhood for the Blind

American Association of the Deaf-Blind

American Association of Police Officers

American Association of State Troopers

American Association of State Troopers Scholarship Foundation

American Bird Conservancy

American Brain Tumor Association

American Breast Cancer Foundation

American Brotherhood for the Blind / American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults

American Cancer Society

American Civil Rights Union

American Council of the Blind – National Office

American Diabetes Association

American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

American Farmland Trust

American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens

American Forests

American Foundation for the Blind

American Foundation for Disabled Children

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

American Friends Service Committee

American Health Assistance Foundation

American Heart Association / American Stroke Association

American Humane Association

American Indian College Fund

American Indian Education Foundation / American Indian Relief Council / Council of Indian Nations / Native American AID / National Relief Charities / Navajo Relief Fund / Sioux Nation Relief Fund / Southwest Indian Relief Council

American Indian Youth Running Strong / Christian Relief Services Charities

American Institute for Cancer Research

American Jewish Committee

American Jewish Congress

American Jewish World Service

American Kidney Fund

American Legion National Headquarters

American Leprosy Missions / ALM International

American Life League

American Liver Foundation

American Lung Association / Christmas Seals – National Office

American Near East Refugee Aid

American Parkinson Disease Association

American Police and Sheriffs Association / Disabled Police and Sheriffs Foundation / Police Officers Safety Association

American Printing House for the Blind

American Red Cross

American Refugee Committee

American Rivers

American Social Health Association

American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA)

American Stroke Association / American Heart Association

American Studies Center / Radio America

American Veterans Center, a program of American Studies Center

Americans Feeding Americans / Feed the Children

Americans for UNFPA (formerly U.S. Committee for U.N. Population Fund)

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

AmeriCares

Amnesty International of the U.S.A.

AMVETS National Headquarters

AMVETS National Service Foundation

Angel Planes / Miracle Flights for Kids

Animal Legal Defense Fund

Animal Welfare Institute

Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith & Foundation

Arc of the United States – National Office

Armed Forces Aid Campaign / US Armed Forces Iraq Casualty Appeal / TREA Memorial Foundation

Armed Services YMCA of the USA

Army Emergency Relief

Arthritis Foundation

Asia Foundation

Asia Society

Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund

Asian Relief / World Villages for Children

Associated Humane Societies

Association for Firefighters & Paramedics

Association on American Indian Affairs

Autism Speaks

Avon Foundation/Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

And these are just the ones that start with the letter “A”!!!
I would like to tell you that confiscating wealth from the “rich” and the “corporations” as these idiots advocate, and as the leadership in the Democrat Party supports, would kill the social safety net in America for all time to come. It would require the formation of true “cradle to grave” federal funding for every human activity in every field of human endeavor for every family, everywhere in America. Imagine how much new debt the federal goverment would incur. Is THIS the utopia these morons are demanding?

WAKE THE HELL UP, AMERICA!

Chuck Ruggiero, Chairman

Jefferson TEA Party

Watertown, NY