2016 Feb 28^th

If you follow this blog you know that yesterday’s entry did not appear; my apologies. Herewith is what I would have presented: Yesterday the Record-Eagle reprinted an editorial from the Detroit News. The News leans rightward and I am bound to take issue with this editorial. The title is, “Reduce the big federal footprint in education.”

What to cut first? How about Title I, that’s the federal program that tries to level the playing field for poor kids so that they can catch up with kids in better equipped schools. The great majority of federal money for education goes to that program. We also have the school lunch program. I guess the News editorial writer would like to cut back there as well. Maybe the eligible kids could just make their own peanut butter sandwiches.

The editorial goes on to criticize the federal government’s backing of student loans. The editor believes this encourages students to borrow money and colleges to keep raising tuition because students can always borrow more money to pay their tuition. Perhaps the editor believes it is better to stay out of college and stay out of debt. That would certainly produce an electorate susceptible to the first colorful flimflam man to run for public office. Surprisingly, for a conservative newspaper, the editor does not understand that colleges are businesses. If they don’t attract enough students whose tuition covers the colleges’ fixed costs the college eats its endowment and then disappears. Colleges spend a great deal of money to get applications from qualified students. Even small colleges not on the national radar will spend two to three thousand dollars for each new student. Those new dorms and new student unions, with their bowling alleys and other recreational facilities, have to be paid for and the payment comes from tuition money that has to be increased every year to pay for these goodies, Without the goodies the students will go elsewhere and the college will go under.

(A much worse situation exists with health insurance: Most people have a deductible for their doctor visits and for their drug purchases. You have a 20 dollar copay for your drug purchase; if the drug you buy costs 50 dollars or 200 dollars why would you care? Why should you; you’ll pay 20 dollars regardless of the cost to your insurance company. Next year they will raise their rates but that is then and this is now. The News editorial seems interested only in education.)

The editorial ends by claiming that “…governors know how to reduce costs…and implement these concepts.”  Governor Abbott from Texas called out his national guard because he thought a training exercise for federal troops was going to result in a takeover of Texas. This is also the state that insisted that their history books be rewritten to show that the Civil War was not about slavery…in spite of the fact that the state’s secessionist declaration plainly states that it was. In Michigan the honcho behind the Flint water disaster, Darnell Early, was removed from his position by Governor Snyder and made the honcho of the Detroit public schools. He resigned from that job as soon as it was clear he would be subpoenaed to testify about the Flint’s water disaster. He is refusing to testify about that under his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Yes sir, just leave education to the states.