In the last week the local businesses were busy accepting high school and college students as minimum-wage employees for the summer. It happens every year at this time. And guess what? In August there is a big drop in jobs. Wanna guess why? No one gets "credit" for those numbers.

People are catching onto the concept that with a good working knowledge of English and communication and critical thinking skills (and anyone in this university today also has to show competence in four basic computer literacy areas before graduating) they can often get a job in which the employer will then train them to the specific tasks. A lot of employers find that a good starting place when hiring. But all fields across the board see this increase.

People will go to many lengths to go back to school. Drop the surprise and disabuse yourself of the idea that going to school implies affluence. It implies good sense and usually a major downsizing in lifestyle, student loans, grants, moving back home, part-time work, non-traditional study times (with 24-7 libraries that is possible now) and a real drive to succeed.

Thanks to Reagan, much of the federal money that went out into the communities in an equitable manner through agencies around the country to aid large numbers of people was lumped into "Block Grants." Reagan said he wanted to downsize federal government, so this was one way he did it. Block grants are still around today, and they give a lot of power to discriminate in each state to the party in power that doles out the cash. It has always been an argument about state's rights versus fair access to those federal dollars by all citizens. Ever since Reagan made that one little change, a lot of the access vanished. Now Bush is pushing all of his faith-based funding because guess what? The infrustructure is no longer there in the community for the poor and others who need help.

When Reagan left office, there were more federal employees than when he was first elected. So much for that electioneering dogma. As maligned as federal employees were, he couldn't live without them either.

SRS