C is for clueless

Oh, what a magical, fairy-tale kingdom our county commissioners inhabit! For those of you poor saps who will never find your way there, let me be your guide. The enchanted paradise, where commissioners C. Paul Smith and Kirby Delauter reside, lies just beyond your reach. It is a glorious land of plenty, where your salary as an attorney or construction magnate is more than ample, and you have no need of a second household income. It is right at the corner of telling other people how to live and being utterly oblivious to their reality, their struggle, their truth.

Based on the recent comments from these two commissioners, it looks like bridging the budget gap was only one motive for the BOCC decision to relinquish the Head Start program. The other impetus appears to be an all-out assault on working mothers, based on some sort of twisted “family values” ideology… and the mistaken belief that Head Start is a daycare program.

The commissioners seem pretty confused about this. The fact is, the mission of Head Start is not to watch over kids and babies while their mothers go to work, but to assist in the development of social and cognitive skills in 3- and 4-year-olds who need additional support to get ready for school. Most Frederick County Head Start centers operate only 4 hours a day. The program is for stay-at-home moms (and dads) as well as working parents.

Even setting aside this much-overlooked (but highly relevant) fact, it’s a make-believe fantasy that all our problems will be solved if mothers will just stay married and stay home with their children and not hold jobs outside the home. I can think of about 38 different circumstances where it would not be advisable or possible for a woman to stay married. Like when there is emotional or physical abuse in the home. Like when a father abandons the family or dies unexpectedly. I hear it’s pretty hard to stay married when that happens.

A lot of parents would like nothing better than to stay home with their young children. Unfortunately, in today’s economy, most families cannot survive on one income—regardless of their “sacrifices.” For example, how does a mother stay home when her husband is in the armed forces, deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan? The annual pay for young enlisted personnel, including the hazard duty hike, is about $150 above the federal poverty level for a family of four. The pie-in-the-sky being touted by the county commissioners provides very little actual nutrition for the children. Those are empty calories.

Further setting aside the preposterous notion that the role of women should be confined to domestic engineering and child-rearing, it’s simply nuts to think that “strengthening marriage” could somehow eliminate the need for government support of education, as the commissioners seem to suggest. Is everybody supposed to home-school their kids? Is the next move to relinquish funding for Frederick County Schools? That would certainly make a dent in the budget.

These guys are totally clueless. They need to get their heads out of the clouds, get back in touch with reality, and do the job they were elected to do.