Bucks
Wish List
Dear Friends,
Good morning. For years, I’ve published a wish list at the dawn of each New Year. It began when I was the Publisher of the Quakertown Free Press, years ago. Unfortunately, the wish list hasn’t changed much.
World peace remains at the top. There’s no larger tinderbox than the Middle East. As they have for several thousand years, religious zealots continue to destabilize the region. The only thing that’s changed is the weaponry…and the willingness to wage suicide attacks against the innocent.
As an aside, I’ve never understood why America has not found an alternative to its dependence upon oil from the Middle East. Both political parties are to blame for the 60 years of inaction. And we still haven’t figured it out.
Here at home, I wish for a new president who can unify America this year. We are a terribly divided nation…blue states, red states...the far left versus the far right. We need someone like Abraham Lincoln who unified the country. Although he lacked executive experience (not much legislative experience either), Lincoln became a true leader by appointing rivals to his cabinet.
In Pennsylvania, I wish that the legislature would have the gumption to reduce the number of municipalities and end the public’s dependence on the property tax for education. If I had a magic wand, I’d shave the 2,600 municipalities to coincide with the state’s 501 school districts. Bucks County has 54 municipalities but only 13 school districts. Do we need 54 boroughs and townships? Hardly. A plethora of municipalities makes it easy for developers to macadamize the farmland.
I’d substitute a broad based state tax (sales or income) and have the Commonwealth distribute the funds to the 501 school districts on a per student basis. New Hope/ Solebury would receive fewer funds than Pennridge. Why would I do this? Because property rich school districts can offer a better education for the children than poor school districts [can].
And speaking about wish lists, I thought about an experiment that one of my pals and I organized years ago. We asked 30 friends, with varying political beliefs, to list their five most important wishes and meet for a discussion. When all the wishes were tabulated, they numbered in the hundreds.
We narrowed them down to 25 wishes for the two- hour confab. After all was said and done…after the wrangling and the heated debate…we finally agreed on one wish: protecting and mentoring children. For me, that wish remains unchanged.
Every child should be a wanted child…every child should be nurtured and given the best head start…every child should receive an equal opportunity for a top drawer education…every child’s neighborhood should be safe…every child should have carrying parents at home…every child should never be hungry or be without adequate health care.
Here we are living in the richest nation in the world, and we don’t take care of our children. It’s so frustrating. Why can’t we get this done?
Would it require us to operate the schools 24 hours a day, seven days each week? I believe that public schools are the last safe haven for children. Would it be expensive? You bet it would. But as Derek Bok, the former Harvard President once said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
Think about it for a moment. There are 2 million prisoners in America. The average cost per inmate is $40,000 per year. Friends, housing felons exceeds $80 billion every 12 months! It would take only 20 years to get the job done…that’s only one generation. When you look at the prisons we build, the enormous cost to house inmates, and the staggering price of social programs… caring for children 24/7 would be a bargain.
And while I’m at it, I wish that presidents would not stand in the way of science and discovery. And I wish they’d stay out of our bedrooms too…but that’s a column for another day.
Finally, I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton. Personally, I like Barack Obama or [New York City Mayor] Michael Bloomberg, who now admits to being an independent. But wouldn’t it be fascinating for historians to record that the 20 year presidential sequence was a Bush followed by a Clinton, followed by a Bush, followed by a Clinton but all the Bushes and Clintons were different?
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith