On 03/11/2011 11:48 AM, John H wrote:
Article from the Kool Aid lady:


"Call it an occupational hazard, but I can't look at the Occupy Wall
Street protesters without thinking, "Who parented these people?"

As a culture columnist, I've commented on the social and political
ramifications of the "movement" - now known as "OWS" - whose fairyland agenda can be summarized by
one of their placards: "Everything for everybody."

Thanks to their pipe-dream platform, it's clear there are people with serious designs on
"transformational" change in America who are using the protesters like bedsprings in a brothel.

Yet it's not my role as a commentator that prompts my parenting
question, but rather the fact that I'm the mother of four teens and
young adults. There are some crucial life lessons that the protesters' moms clearly have not passed
along.

Here, then, are five things the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but
obviously didn't, so I will:

* Life isn't fair. The concept of justice - that everyone should be
treated fairly - is a worthy and worthwhile moral imperative on which our nation was founded. But
justice and economic equality are not the same. Or, as Mick Jagger said, "You can't always get what
you want."

No matter how you try to "level the playing field," some people have better luck, skills, talents or
connections that land them in better places. Some seem to have all the advantages in life but
squander them, others play the modest hand they're dealt and make up the difference in hard work and
perseverance, and some find jobs on Wall Street and eventually buy houses in the Hamptons. Is it
fair? Stupid question.

* Nothing is "free." Protesting with signs that seek "free" college
degrees and "free" health care make you look like idiots, because
colleges and hospitals don't operate on rainbows and sunshine. There is no magic money machine to
tap for your meandering educational careers and "slow paths" to adulthood, and the 53 percent of
taxpaying Americans owe you neither a degree nor an annual physical.

While I'm pointing out this obvious fact, here are a few other things that are not free: overtime
for police officers and municipal workers, trash hauling, repairs to fixtures and property, condoms,
Band-Aids and the food that inexplicably appears on the tables in your makeshift protest kitchens.
Real people with real dollars are underwriting your civic temper tantrum.

* Your word is your bond. When you demonstrate to eliminate student loan debt, you are advocating
precisely the lack of integrity you decry in others. Loans are made based on solemn promises to
repay them. No one forces you to borrow money; you are free to choose educational pursuits that
don't require loans, or to seek technical or vocational training that allows you to support yourself
and your ongoing educational goals. Also, for the record, being a college student is not a state of
victimization. It's a privilege that billions of young people around the globe would die for -
literally.

* A protest is not a party. On Saturday in New York, while making a mad dash from my cab to the door
of my hotel to avoid you, I saw what isn't evident in the newsreel footage of your demonstrations:
Most of you are doing this only for attention and fun. Serious people in a sober pursuit of social
and political change don't dance jigs down Sixth Avenue like attendees of a Renaissance festival.
You look foolish, you smell gross, you are clearly high and you don't seem to realize that all
around you are people who deem you irrelevant.

* There are reasons you haven't found jobs. The truth? Your tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial
piercings and dirty dreadlocks are off-putting. Nonconformity for the sake of nonconformity isn't a
virtue. Occupy reality: Only 4 percent of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4
percent, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you."

Marybeth Hicks is the author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the
Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom." Find her on the Web at
www.marybethhicks.comhttp://www.marybethhicks.com/ .

The example close to me is this. Two people start out at about the same
time, similar degrees, similar pay checks...same city...economics of
income to each is about the same. If anything, the poorer of the two
has had more family income.

At 20, the conservative one worked two jobs and avoided student loans.
The other liberal-socialist type racked up $24K in student loans, still
not fully paid 30 years later. Spending many $1000's on avoidable
interest, the wealth gap has started.

The conservative person bought a smaller home, paid their home off in
there late 30's. At 40 they bought they moved up, bought the big house
and cash for the difference. Liberal socialist buying the big house to
start, re-mortgaged for big vacations and toys, as well as to cover
excessive credit card spending and debts.

Bad times hit, both get unemployed for awhile. Conservative has
reserves, gets a job and continues up the wealth curve. Liberal
socialist doesn't even cut spending, and then gets the repo order for
the cars and home. Also then gets a job months later and starts over
after personal bankruptcy.

Now over the years the conservative saves a little often, learns to
invest it and it grows big. Grows so big it pays more per month than
they make when they are just 50! Liberal-socialist well, never saved a
dime.

Now at 55 the accountant says to the conservative, why the hell do you
work? You do better at the markets than a job and can't need more than
that dividend income provides. But the liberal socialist hears the
conservative is retiring, and loaded up with envy and greed with
rationality and self righteousness, "I deserve better." Also states how
unfair it is they will have to work to 65 and government pensions are
pretty small.

So does the liberal-socialist fleabagger deserve sympathy or contempt?

Fact is you are your own worst enemy. And while a liberal-socialist
fleabagger denies the conservative value of lif is what you make it, the
fleabaggers screw themselves.

--
The reason government can't fix the economic problems is government is
the problem.