You, my fellow students, are working your way innocently through your college careers in anticipation of an eventual good-paying job to hopefully carry you into the almost-disappeared middle class, where you will be able to comfortably pay off the college loans necessitated by the ridiculously high and accelerating cost of an advanced education.

So, are you, the author of this article, saying that somebody or something is going to prevent me from reaching my personal goals?

I sure am.

It appears that there is an unholy, unsavory, unworthy conspiracy afoot involving, of all the strange bed fellows, your newly elected conservative Republican American legislative body known as the Congress skipping along, hand in hand, with our Democrat president to present to us the great bouroui American public an unwanted and harmful gift, referred to in their language as Fast Track.

Unfortunately, in this case, Fast Track does not refer to a bunch of healthy, magnificent equine mammals running in competition on an oval dirt track. Nor does it refer to a group of souped-up magnificently painted, oddly shaped vehicles circling on a hard surface in competition with each other. Fast Track, in this case, refers to giving the president the power to speedily institute another job-killing, international trade agreement, this time with the countries of Asia. This past week, I listened to two well-known Republican congressmen tell me how important this was as a part of national defense.

Let me give you in a simple, hypothetical story how important Fast Track is to the defense of America. South of our school, in an imaginary city called Houston, there is an imaginary area called River Oaks. River Oaks is an area of well-groomed, ostentatious homes housing ordinary American families, including Papa, who after being sent to Rice University got his advanced degrees from Harvard, something his father could easily afford. There he met Mama, also getting her advanced degree, which she used to run her magnificent household, consisting of three children, two now in college, a live-in nanny, a full-time cook, two maids and a handyman/chauffer, while keeping their proper place in society.

Papa went into the oil patch, where he not only earned a great living but watched his ever-producing investments grow magnificently. The great American story. But now, Papa has all this money to invest and he has discovered through his ingenuity that not only will every household in America require a Lime-colored Widgett, but that every person in that household will require his own widgett within the next two years. In conjunction with his brother-in-law from the mythical city of Denver in the mythical state of Colorado, he decides to manufacture these widgetts. And, to build them in a factory in north Texas, where he will employ 1,149 Widgett workers at $18.50 an hour, said workers being supervised, in part, by you an SHSU graduate, bringing your college-learned skills to his plant.

But, stop! Lo and behold, in defense of our great nation, two things are happening, both called Fast Track. In an agreement with Vietnam, Papa is instead able to build his factory in Phenom Penn, and instead of $18.50 an hour, pay 56 cents an hour to the Widget Manufacturers and hire a Vietnamese to supervise the Vietnamese workers. By doing this, our government has protected us from the imminent invasion and takeover of San Diego by the Vietnamese and, just incidentally, shipped all those American jobs to their country, which needs them so badly.

Papa’s brother-in-law, in the meantime, rather than manufacture the needed parts for Widgetts to sell to papa in the mythical state of Colorado, as planned, will now instead garner that raw material in the great and glorious country of South Korea, which only exists through our efforts anyway, where he will be paying his people an exorbitant 72 cents per hour. However, we need the brother-in-law to do this, because by doing this and putting those American jobs in South Korea, he is causing the South Koreans to change their plan to leave the Americans to protect their northern border and invade and take over Salem Oregon and make it a colony of South Korea. And, we all know what a danger that is.

Not a single trade agreement in the past half-century has benefited the American worker and this boondoggle is the epitome of them all. So lie back my friends and enjoy what’s coming to you, because only you can stop it and most of you don’t even know it’s happening to you. At least talk about it with your professors.

Okay, I’m going to step off my soap box for another week, wipe away my tears and pray for the future of all of you. See you next week on these pages.