Link Card Accepted at Market Day

       For those of you from another state, Illinois uses something called the Link Card in place of food stamps.  This saves people who need government assistance from the indignity of not using a credit or debit card, like everyone else.
       Since, despite the taxes we pay, we don't have enough money for the schools to use on things they should have, we have Market Day sales.  I will not take anything away from Market Day.  I have tried many of their items, and found them mostly superior in quality.  This post in no way maligns or impugns (those words look weird, don't they), the products or character of the Market Day company.
       By now you're wondering if I've lost it.  How can these two items be tied together.  Link cards and Market Day.  One is a pay in to the system, the other a pay out.  Well my gentle reader, there is a way these two things are linked. (pardon the pun)
       The flyer sent home with my children for, Market Day, states that they will be accepting the Link card as a form of payment.  This is yet another example of Illinois circular reasoning.  And it's circular math.
       We under-fund schools so they need to have fund raisers.  We give people Link cards with some of the tax money that could otherwise have gone to schools.  (OK, its mostly lost as graft, but bear with me.)  They are then allowed to use those Link cards to purchase food from Market Day, with proceeds going to the previously mentioned, under-funded schools.  Like all perpetual motion machines this one will not stay running long without an outside force providing additional energy.  That would be our tax money; which feeds this great wheel both top and bottom.
       I will not speak out against Link cards here.  (That is another post.  They are readily abused)  I will certainly not speak out against Market Day.  I will say that it makes no kind of sense to allow Link cards to be used for Market Day purchases, since by their very nature, their products are priced higher than necessary.  Else there would be no proceeds to forward to the school system.
       While I would love nothing more than to rant against the people abusing their state paid food plan, I cannot.  Not out of any sense of sympathy for them, but because they are not operating outside the rules that were set down.  It's cheesy, no doubt; but completely legal.  And really, why shouldn't we all be abusing the state's coffers.  Our "Leaders" do.

       Off topic: the President's recent comments about being in favor of Gay Marriage are as insincere as they are brilliant.  I say insincere because if he were in favor, he would have spoken out months ago, when fist asked.  Instead, he waited until it was politically expedient.  Which is why it is brilliant.  He won't lose any votes for saying he is in favor of it.  However his opponent, in an effort to differentiate himself, immediately went on record against it.  This will cost him votes.  Brilliant, but insincere.