• Registered: 03-28-2009
  • Posts: 257

Topic: "Cartoon" - Just a Flesh Wound

You've just got to check out this cartoon which was published in the Huntsville Times, at: http://blog.al.com/jdcrowe/2009/09/flesh_wound.html It says it all.  It and the accompaning article was mass mailed to our Madison County folks.     

JD Crowe 9/24/09  (cartoonist):
"And now for something completely different ... a currently hot Alabama issue illustrated with a classic Monty Python theme.PACT has taken a barrage of hits and is hobbling around on one leg as Alabama lawmakers are claiming, "It's but a scratch!" The parents and grandparents who paid into the financially challenged program are also hopping around ... mad as wet hens. They paid into the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition Program expecting to reap the rewards of new century higher education for their children at last century's prices. The program started in the early 90's, and many folks jumped in immediately.


From today's Montgomery Press-Register editorial:
At a recent meeting in Mobile sponsored by the group  Save Alabama Pact, participants described the sacrifices made to ensure their kids and grand kids could go to college. 
Mobile resident Ian Gaston bought into Pact's promise that it would deliver "tomorrow's education at today's prices."
"I paid in advance for four years' worth of college for my grandson, and that's what I want." he said. "They can take it out of whose ever pot they want. It's all the state of Alabama."
Lawmakers better stop running around like chickens with their heads cut off and fix this thing. Don't make us turn a killer bunny rabbit loose on you."

Madison County members, please, please do all you can to help us find new members.  Go to savealabampact.com and post your thoughts and opinions.  Talk to the PTA.  Talk to your child's teacher to see if she/he would forward a message home to the parents.  We're also attaching some rather gaudy flyers (my home-made version, not very esthetic, but  designed to "catch the eye" LOL).  Please print them out and place them whereever you can get permission.  If you have any further ideas to raise our membership, please pass them along.  Also, if you have any message you want all Madison County members to see, let me know and I'll send it around. 

It's for the children!

Donna Peacher
dhpeacher@gmail.com or 852-7817

Last edited by dhpeacher (09-26-2009 4:36:46 pm)

  • Registered: 06-26-2009
  • Posts: 28

Re: "Cartoon" - Just a Flesh Wound

Kudos to Ian Gaston for saying exactly what we all need to be saying every chance we get: "I paid in advance for four years' worth of college for my grandson, and that's what I want." he said. "They can take it out of whose ever pot they want. It's all the state of Alabama."

Exactly.  We didn't "invest" our money, we pre-paid the state for college tuition.  The STATE screwed this up by concocting  a scheme of entrusting our kids' college tuition with third party, unaccountable investors.   Contract holders had absolutely no say in how this program was run or what was done with our money.  We have annual statements that reiterated the terms of what we'd purchased, with no indication whatsoever that it might not be there when we need it.

Tell the citizens of the state of Alabama - our elected officials screwed up.  They designed a program that took huge amounts of money from your fellow citizens to pay in advance for college for their kids - and then they lost it in a stock market gamble.  If anybody is being "bailed out" it's your elected officials, not the contract holders.