Free money for those who didn't earn it

From the Cop side: Many, many, many years ago, before I became a Cop, I went to Kollege to get me an ed you ma kation.  I was only able to obtain this enlightenment because I had spent a few years in the service of Uncle Sam in the US Army. 

My dee gree was in what they call the Administration of Justice…which sounds pretty cool unless you knew the real reason I went to college and chose this program.  My buddies from High School, who stayed home while I went off to Germany, told me all about this program.  They said the classes were pretty easy and you learned cop stuff.  Sounded cool to me.

Out of the four of us in that old group, I am the only one who ended up getting a degree and the only one who went into Police work.

But really none of that is what I decided to write about today---this was just some background info to give some kind of credit to what I used to think about crime and society….which was somewhat changed over 32 years.

What I was told in school was that in our society, “most” of the population is good.  This is true.  What cops have done for years is spend about 90 % of their time when dealing with true crime that was caused by 5 to 10% of the population.  I know some days it seemed like I only saw the worst of society…and took them to jail when required. 

However, in the last few years, I found that some of these numbers have changed in some places.  These are places where there is economical problems…sometimes not because there are few jobs, but because there are few people who want to work.  Why should they?  They can sit on their ass in the apartments that are either free or low rent.  They are handed free money and food stamps.  They can sleep until noon, then get up and go look for something to drink or smoke and steal….why on earth would they want to work? 

Then one thing I saw happening…is recruiters from the local community colleges would go into these neighborhoods (after noon of course) and tell these people about how they can get more free money by going to college.  The recruiters may have been trying to help these bums get off their ass and get an education and perhaps learn a skill so they could get a better job…but in so many cases all the welfare bums heard was “….sign up for so many units and you can get state/federal aid for free.” 

I am not making this shit up.  I talked to the folks who worked in the admissions offices and the offices where they gave out the finical aide…even they, who were very liberal were complaining that these bums were coming in and demanding the money.  They were told to go sign up for classes, and walked over to the admissions folks and “demanded” that they sign them up for however many classes they need to get the free money---that they were entitled to. 

The admissions folks would try to explain that the student had to figure out what classes they wanted and qualified for…and the welfare bums would just say: “put me in any class I can get into so I can get my money.”

For this college I’m talking about, they typically had about 10 workers to process “free money” for students.  At the same college to process the paperwork for the Veterans, they had ONE person.  The Vets had to talk to a class counselor, set up a specific program and take classes and PASS them, or they go cut off.  So the vet’s paperwork had to flow through ONE person, then hopefully all was filled out right and then get sent to the VA office in the area…and hope the person processing it was doing the right thing…and IF everything worked out right and the stars aligned the right way, the Vet would get their EARNED school assistance money before the semester was over.  In many cases, they waited months to get the money they had EARNED.

Meanwhile, the welfare bums wake up at noon, show up the 3^rd or 4^th day of the semester and demand somebody fill out all the paperwork and give them money that they never earned. 

That’s your tax dollars being spent at California Community Colleges….  I worked everyday of my life from the age of 16...and many times I worked more than one full time job. 

Edit update: What I forget to say in the first posting of this was: Most of these bums who showed up for free education money only went to class the first few weeks of the semester.  Once they were "locked in" to being paid, they stopped going to class---but still got paid.  They could typically get away with this for 2 semesters, then get cut off.  A typical Vet going to college on the GI bill got paid late and if they didn't show up for class, they not only got cut off, but had to pay back the money.