Redistribution of Wealth Starts With A Bus Pass

     Yesterday, I got my first taste of what it would be like with Obama in office another four unbearably long years. My eldest daughter is in college, and in the process of making a tuition payment, I discovered that she was being charged all kinds of silly fees. If you've ever been through Escrow, you know what I'm talking about.

     Anyhow, she was being charged a $27 Transportation Fee. Huh? We just bought her a car this summer so that she would be able to get to and from school on her own. We 're paying for her car insurance, too -- and we even threw in a AAA card for roadside assistance. The girl is completely dialed in to get to and from school on her own.

     So I called the college and discovered that the "Transportation Fee" was to help offset the high cost of bus passes for all the other students who had to take the bus. As the traffic czar told me, "Bus passes are about $340 a year, and most of our students can't afford that. So this helps bring the cost down."

     I explained to him that my daughter had her own car and wouldn't ever need to take the bus, and that I wanted the $27 fee waived. Call me heartless (or a right-winger, some might say) but I don't think we should have to pay for the cost of other students' bus fare. That's THEIR parents' expense, not mine.

     So I suggested that perhaps some of that collective $27 per student go toward helping to offset my daughter's gas costs getting to and from school. That seems fair, doesn't it?

     Complete silence on the other end of the phone. -->

ENCOURAGE YOUR TEENS TO VOTE!

My oldest daughter, who just finished her freshman year in college, wants to be a nurse.  Not sure where that calling came from, since her mother has always been weak-kneed at the sight of blood.  But I love that she wants to make her living as a healer and nurturer. She will be a natural at it, too, as she has always been balm for my spirit. 

While I think she has chosen the perfect profession at a time when the world needs more healing, I worry about her, too.  CBS News reports that half of recent college graduates can't find full-time jobs.  What must the parents of these graduates be thinking right now? I would imagine they feel cheated out of a rite of passage:  The right for them to pass on self-sufficiency to their children.

And do these grads who can’t find jobs feel hoodwinked? Think about it.  From the time our children are old enough to read a book, we impress upon them the importance of learning and getting educated.  “Without a good education, it will be hard for you to find a good job someday.”  Haven’t we all recited some variation of this mantra through the years? 

Now, record numbers of young adults are moving back in with their parents, crippled by grim job prospects and insurmountable student-loan debt. There's even a name for them:  Boomerang kids. In fact, the Census Bureau reports the number of shared households increased 11.4 percent to 22 million, between 2007 and 2010. 

What kind of America are we passing on to our children – the new generation of dependents?  The last four years of an ineffective presidency -- more focused on dragging down the country with a stratospheric deficit than trying to create jobs -- has placed every parent in the uncomfortable position of having to tell our children the truth:  “It doesn’t matter how hard you work in school to get good grades, Sweetie, you’re pretty much screwed once you graduate.”

So, as my 18-year-old transitions into adulthood and takes a giant leap of faith into her vastly uncertain future, I am hovering over her as a helicopter mom one last time to encourage her to do something that will greatly improve her job prospects one day:  

           “Honey, you need to register to vote.”