What about “the children” …

It’s always about “the children,” isn’t it? 

We can’t deport illegal immigrant parents because of “the children.” We can’t stop unaccompanied minors flooding our borders because of “the children.” Or deny healthcare and other benefits to illegals because of “the children.”

We can’t curtail rampant food-stamp fraud because of “the children.” We can’t force deadbeat parents to pay up for school lunches because of “the children.”

We can’t do a damn thing to control our borders, kick the undeserving off public assistance, and wean able-bodied people off cradle-to-grave addiction to government money because there’s always the possibility it might hurt “the children” in one way or another. 

Children have become the ace in the hole for anyone who doesn’t want to face the consequences of their own actions. Children trump the disabled and the elderly in the hierarchy of victimhood. They are number 1 with a bullet. All anyone has to do is trot out “the children” and politicians of all stripes cave to whatever demands, no matter how ridiculous and unwarranted.    

Illegals and their supporters know this. Social activists know this. The poverty-industrial complex practically wrote the book on this.

I have nothing against children. I despise people who use them as pawns.

Especially their parents.

There is a special place in Hell, I hope, for people who refuse to take even the most fundamental responsibility for their offspring.  Like protecting their children from danger. Feeding their children. Ensuring their children get at least a basic education.

And particularly those parents who use their children as leverage – hostages, really – to gain greater benefits for themselves. Or to avoid the consequences of breaking our laws.  Or as an excuse for their own bad behavior.

I have zero sympathy for the illegal immigrant parents of “dreamers” smuggled in here as children; the parents knew exactly what they were doing. I feel even less compassion for illegals who come here pregnant expressly to deliver an anchor baby they can use to hold off possible deportation in the future. 

In both cases, they are using their children as pawns. That’s despicable. Anyone who does this should be deported as soon as they are discovered – immediately, a year from now, or 20 years or more from now. There should be no time limit. 

Their children might be blameless, but they aren’t.   

However, much worse happens among our own legal citizens.

How many times have we heard of a seven- or eight-year-old shot or run over after midnight on a school night? Then they can’t find the mother, or father, because they’ve abandoned the child to his or her grandparents. Or the stories about a toddler left to die in a hot car while the mother was shopping, or gambling with her boyfriend in a casino, or shooting up God knows where?  Or about one or more disabled children kept in closets or basements and starved while their mothers and their boyfriends collected benefits intended for those children?

Or the recent horrific local story about three-month-old Ayden beaten to death by his father, Larry Perry, because the child wouldn’t stop crying? Quoting from the Orlando Sentinel website: 

“Perry threw Ayden into the bedroom wall two or three times, hitting the back of his head, he later said when he recreated what happened for police. He put Ayden on the bed and twisted his neck, picked him back up, brought him to the living room and dropped him onto the floor. Then he stomped on his face and chest, leaving what the medical examiner said were bruises in the shape of the pattern on the sole of Perry’s house slipper on Ayden’s cheek.”

I am absolutely enraged when I hear stories like those above, and especially this last one. And some still wonder why I believe people should be licensed to have children. 

Although this won’t help bring back Ayden, an Orlando jury just did the right thing and voted unanimously for the death penalty for Perry. Stoning would be appropriate.   

On a less tragic note, but still disturbing, is the trend toward government taking over virtually sole responsibility for feeding school-age children from low-income families. 

I don't want low-income children to go hungry, but this is spiraling out of control.  

It’s not just school lunches, but now breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks. It’s also not just during the school year, either – it’s becoming a year-round thing. This, mind you, is in addition to the SNAP (food stamp) program for low-income families that gives added benefits for families with dependent children.  As a reminder, participation in the SNAP program has increased by 70% since 2008 to a point where almost 47-million Americans now receive benefits.

With so many families now getting SNAP benefits from the government, why can’t so many low-income families provide food for their own kids? And since when is it not the parent’s responsibility to feed their own child?

This is one of the most basic parental responsibilities I would think.

You can’t blame families for taking advantage of this.  Nobody leaves free money on the table; it’s just basic human nature. However, it is addictive and sends the wrong message.    

Let me explain.

If you tell parents that their kid’s school will feed their kid lunch for free, they’ll take it.  The same goes for free breakfast, dinner and snacks – if parents don’t have to pay for it themselves they won’t.  It’s free money, and they can use their SNAP benefits for something else; maybe a fancy birthday cake or other extravagance like porterhouse steaks or snow crab legs. 

Which they will. Just watch the use of EBT cards in your local grocery store or Walmart.

Free food at school becomes addictive. Low-income parents have already now factored that into their household budgets. So when anyone talks about curtailing or tightening qualifications for SNAP, or God forbid, doing the same for free school feedings, there’s an uproar.

You’ll be hurting “the children.”  Because while their low-income families have become accustomed to saving money on feeding their kids to finance a better lifestyle – with the latest smartphones, cable TV and high-speed broadband, and dressing themselves and their kids in the latest fashions – making them pay more to feed their own kids would jeopardize that.

So, in the end, it’s almost never about “the children”; it’s almost always about their parents.

The same money-on-the-table theory applies to health insurance for children as well. You can have a pretty good household income and still get subsidized insurance for your kids.

In New Jersey, for example, for a family of four you can have a household income (HHI) of a bit over $87,000 a year and qualify. That rises to an annual HHI of about $102,000 for a family of five, and about $117,000 for a family of six.  

Candidly, that's far from "poor." 

Why do states do this? Simple. A lot of parents – no matter how well-off – just aren’t willing to cut into their lifestyle to pay for health insurance for their own children. Hell, they don’t even want to pay for their own health insurance, much less their kids’.  

Once again, insuring and protecting the health of “the children” is the rationale. But in reality, it’s just another government-sponsored bribe to get people to do what they should do anyway if they were responsible parents. 

Liberals know that once something is free or heavily subsidized by the government, there will be Hell to pay to ever claw that back. “The children” are just an excuse to keep the free stuff and discounts flowing to their parents. And to ensure recipients of this government largesse continue to vote for those who promise to retain it.  

Curiously, those on the left like to play “the children” card whenever it suits them, but typically support Planned Parenthood – which has made a profitable industry out of aborting potential children and selling their body parts and organs. It's hard to imagine any other organization more clearly not on the side of "the children."  

These same ardent advocates on the left for “the children” are also almost always opposed to school vouchers in any form. This hurts low-income parents who actually give a damn about their kids’ education and want to move them from failing public schools to better and safer charter and parochial schools. But because the teachers’ unions – big contributors to Democrat and liberal politicians – are opposed, school vouchers always face fierce opposition from the left. 

Finally, and perhaps the most egregious disregard for “the children,” comes from our own courts.  Ultra-liberal judges seem to hand out astonishingly weak punishments to parents who repeatedly abuse their own children or allow their children to be abused by others.       

So spare me the moralistic preaching about “the children.” If you are really interested in protecting “the children” then you should address the parents who don’t really give a damn. And the politicians who use "the children" as mere props.  

They’re the ones selfishly using and abusing children.  

There’s nothing lower.