Did the councilman on the radio appoint someone who refuses to stand and pledge allegiance to the American flag to a very important local government position? 

Is this the same councilman who continues to say stop blaming careless parents for delinquent kids. (He wants to blame society instead).

Is this the same councilman who says he can see why crime is being committed by young folks, because they have no opportunities. ( When did the military stop accepting people?)

Is this the same councilman who says if all a person can do is work at Taco Bell and make minimum wage, then he understands why people turn to crime.

( I Guess he has never heard of starting at the bottom and working your way up).  

Until this person starts to understands the word "responsibility",  I call on all citizens to boycott all of his radio show sponsors by shopping somewhere else. 

Anthony Johnson 

East Brainerd

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Joining the military today is not like it was during the Vietnam war and prior, Mr. Johnson. Where the military sometimes actually went into jails and prisons to recruit, these days the military wants these seemingly perfect individuals - at least on the surface perfect. Individuals who never so much as cracked a nail, or at least never got caught cracking one. Not that they never committed anything wrong, some just never got caught at it and, if they did, they had the means or the right connections to get it taken care of.
 
Many of these young people you're talking about have arrests on their records. Now, I know you'll probably say it's all their fault. But, these days something as minor as having unpaid traffic fines can disqualify someone from being allowed to  join the military. A criminal record, even a minor one, the chances of joining get even dimmer. It isn't that these individuals are more likely to commit crime than say someone in your East Brainerd community or one like yours. The laws that are strictly applied in their community aren't always applied in a community such as  yours or mine. Because of that, they're just more likely to be arrested because of the communities where they live, and the mindset of others about those communities.
 
In my own community I might get away with driving a vehicle with tinted windows. At least a certain segment of my community can. That certain segment can stand outside and drink a beer without being bothered too. But then just one community over from where I live an individual with tinted windows is more likely to be stopped, which is more likely than not to turn into an arrest for something, anything. Standing outside with a beer is likely to turn into an arrest based on the open container law. Those things aren't likely to be enforced in your community, although they are against the law.
 
Then there's another community over from the one I speak of where the likelihood of being stopped and arrested for some minor or even non-existing offense doubles, perhaps even triples. These communities I speak of are economically depressed areas, where the citizens make easy targets for both criminals and the law. The law doesn't want someone that can keep them tied up in court. There's no money to be made from someone in a position to fight a charge.
 
It isn't that these individuals are lazy and don't want to work either. The problem is through multiple arrests(often for minor offenses that later become major) and unpaid fines, they've been made unemployable. Not many employers will touch them. Even many temporary services will not consider hiring a person with an arrest record. And the little jobs they do have doing odd jobs or working at some fast food restaurant are likely to be taken away during minor traffic stops on some trumped-up charge such as having a loose aspirin in their pocket  or some vitamin that's found on the floorboard they failed to pick up and is not in a marked bottle.
 
It's easy for someone on the outside who has never witnessed the problems up close or been affected to suggest all the individual has to do is "work harder" at pulling themselves up.  Or to just show some "responsibility." But the issue is more complex than that. What if every time you made and before you could get it home to take care of your family, there was a bully standing on the corner always waiting to take it away. And the law said the bully was in his right to do so. That you had no recourse. How long do you think it would take before you just simply threw up your hands and just say forget this. What's the use in even trying? 
 
Like the criminal who choose his victims wisely, at times so does the law. The criminal doesn't choose just any victim. He usually tunes in to a weakness. So does the law. The weakness in many of these targeted communities is they don't have the means to defend themselves. Just like the victim overtaken by a criminal.
 
Brenda Manghane~Washington