Libertarian Commentary #16-17E, by Nathan Barton

Government SHOULD be a weekly comedy show on some cable channel, sorta like the old “There Oughta Be A Law” comic strip.  It’s just that what is so funny (to some) often is sheer misery and terror to those targeted by the minions of the law.

Consider this incident in Houston, as reported by KTRK (ABC 13 Eyewitness News), who recognized it (amazing: mainstream media!) as the lunacy that it is.  13-year-old eighth grader Danesiah Neal, at Fort Bend Independent School District’s Christa McAuliffe Middle School, was trying to buy lunch using a $2 bill given to her by her grandmother when she was stopped by the cops. “I went to the lunch line and they said my $2 bill was fake,” Danesiah told Ted Oberg Investigates. “They gave it to the police. Then they sent me to the police office. A police officer said I could be in big trouble.” Yeah, third-degree felony trouble. And that’s just one of eight counterfeiting charges investigated against high- and middle-school students at Fort Bend ISD since the 2013-2014 school year. And more than forty in the Houston area in the last two years: most of them minorities.  She should have tried to pass one of those Clinton or Obummer $3 bills.

Like I said, hilarious: unless you are the black 13-year-old being told you are headed for a permanent stay in juvie.  Or her grandmother or rest of the family. Or the longsuffering taxpayers supporting the $45,000 per year salary of the cop who was so stupid he didn’t recognize a 1953 $2 bill as legitimate.  A clown?  Yeah, one of the really scary ones that give kids nightmares.

Lessons learned?  I only wish:

1. Get your children OUT of these evil places called “public schools.”
2. Before you get them out, stop making them eat at the cafeterias and whatever swill they serve – in addition to mounded heaps of humiliation and all the rest of the “intangible benefits.”
3. Stop using “law enforcement” on children: first try something simple like parents or grandparents.
4. Get rid of inflation and fiat money. Why on earth should a school lunch (of chicken nuggets, apparently: evil when served by McD or BK but just fine at school lunchrooms?) cost $2?  Two dollars in funny money, to boot. (By the way, do you realize that in 1953 when that $20. bill with Tom Jefferson on it was printed, it could buy nearly 2 grams of gold!  When it took just 35 dollars to buy an ounce of the soft shiny stuff?  Or – get this, that bill could have been exchanged for TWO silver dollars: 2 whole ounces!  (Today, it would take more than 70 FRN to buy that piddling bit of gold, or nearly 36 FRN to buy two ounces of silver.) What I’m saying is that a FULL lunch with chicken pieces and a veggie and fruit and milk or juice should cost about a nickel.  In honest money.
5. Government isn’t “for the children,” the children are just another excuse.

Enough is enough.