by Carol D. Majors

Before they died, did your grandparents or parents give you sage advice on how to live your life, such as stay away from trusts, marry a virgin, vote Democratic, no matter what? Well, in many complicated inheritance cases, trusts are the best way to go. Ask any attorney.

Marry a virgin? Well, if you really believe virgins make the best spouses, lots of luck finding one. And as far as voting for one party, without considering exactly where they intend to take your future, that is downright dimwitted! My family voted Democratic, and so did I for years. Then about two decades ago, I began to register Independent. I checked up on who was running, their backgrounds, their ideas, what they strongly supported, and I voted for the person who would back the things I thought were important.

Suppose a candidate were introducing and supporting a law that would require every person living in the United Sates to give 40 percent of their income to a restitution fund for this country’s part in the Viet Nam War? Suppose that candidate was of the party you felt obligated to support? Would you give him your vote and add 40 percent to your annual taxes? None of us is that dumb. Are we? Even worse are those people who would automatically vote for someone without having any idea how a vote for this person was going to affect us personally.

Folks, if there were ever a time when everyone needs to know exactly what the candidates and their parties are fighting so hard to achieve, now is that time.

Platforms are long and complicated, and people have their own agendas we can’t always know, but in our next election, there are a few main issues our two parties are fighting hard to accomplish. There isn’t time or space to discuss them all but I would like to touch on two points of disagreement which would likely affect most of us. One is the limiting of private ownership of guns.

Democrats are working hard on reducing quantity and quality of privately owned weapons. They would admit they would like to see only soldiers and police allowed to own guns. One of their main arguments is the use of guns in crime and murders. Chicago and Dallas are cities nearly identical in population and economics. Chicago bans guns. Dallas does not. Ifyou will check the crime and murder rate in these two cities, you will see that Chicago’s murders — by guns — outnumber Dallas’s many times over. Some of us would feel insecure living where only lawbreakers have guns and none of the rest of us have them. Hunting could eventually be only with bows.

Is everyone aware of some of the new restrictions on hunting being recommended in Virginia? What party is backing them? What candidate for governor is supporting them?

History shows us that every takeover of a Democratic-type of government, in favor of an autocratic, oppressive one, was preceded by a weapons ban for citizens. Check it out.

Many citizens of this country will oppose giving up their weapons and I believe it will take years of chipping away to achieve a total ban on guns. But another main mandate of our Democratic party is “Open Borders.” Let everyone in regardless. That is with little regard for disease, criminal intent, education or work experience.

The overload to our medical service, already short of doctors, should be of great concern to us. Our susceptibility to communicably diseases will be a problem. We can get folks shots, medication and medical treatment, but there is no end in sight. With open borders, large numbers of people will continue to enter this country daily. Our present labor force will increase until our present unemployment rate (lowest in decades) will be out of sight! People who now have jobs will lose them to immigrants who will work for less. All these jobless, homeless, hungry people will have to be cared for at our government’s expense and where does our government get money? They will spread out into every state, so that not only our federal taxes will be increasing, but also, our state taxes.

Much of the tax increase will be needed for schools. I have taught for 20 years in a public-school system where children spoke little or no English. There were several systems of trying to provide the best we could for these children.

A class of Spanish only was offered at least for a time to get them ready for other classes. Some classes offered all instruction in the morning in Spanish and all English in the afternoon. The hope was that the Spanish-speaking children would learn English and the English-speaking children would learn Spanish. My observation was that the Spanish children only paid attention in the morning and the English children got a half day of instruction.

Every bulletin posted and every notice that went home, had to be done in both languages. Some public schools were 95 percent ESL (English Second Language.)

Teachers with years at a school, who did not speak Spanish, lost their jobs to Spanish-speaking teachers. A secretary needed to speak Spanish to deal with the phone calls and visits from non-English speaking parents.

With all these new hires and programs going into effect, the Spanish speaking children made some encouraging progress, but, we still had to find a way to educate all the children who spoke other languages. All this took a lot of money. We provided breakfast, lunch and an afterschool snack. We had to purchase all text books translated to Spanish for each Spanish-speaking student. I was teaching in the number 1 ranking per capita income county in the United States and every school in the district utilized three, four or more mobile classrooms to accommodate the overcrowding.

This was a difficult and expensive challenge. It took long hours of planning and extra training. I feel we did a pretty good job, under the circumstances. Our local schools would do as well or better with extra training, multi-linguistic teachers, and lots of money. But remember, this ESL program was handling only legal immigrants and a limited number of illegal immigrants.

With the “Open Borders” advocated by our Democratic Congress, managing the influx of thousands of non-English speaking children would be unbelievably incredible and would need a restructuring of our present public-school system. We must be aware that many other than Spanish-speaking countries are beginning to attempt to join the illegal migration into the United States.

Before you vote, at least, consider the ramifications of just these two planks in our Democratic congress’s agenda.

They will find a way to give all the illegals coming across our borders, social security, free medical, free education, free college tuition (now in California,) food stamps, housing supplements and driver licensees.

Why are they so intent on doing something that will have the effect it will on our national structures and economy? Votes, of course. Along with everything else, these folks will be given the right to vote if the Democrats are in charge.

Please, give your vote some thought.

CAROL DRAKE MAJORS, who lives in Newsoms, is a retired Army colonel. Contact her at 654-6368.