DEFUND ELITES

You can like or dislike the current goings-on in Washington, but you have to admit we're learning a lot of things.  For example, did you know that $2 billion of your taxes each year go to Harvard?  That school has an endowment of what, $30 billion?

                  The number of fingers in the public pie is being exposed by the day, but that exposure also shows how hard it is, or will be, to remove the pork at the public trough.  With every discovery of how many people belly up to that trough my heart sinks that we can ever shut it down.

                  Organic farmers are crying the blues over USDA grant shutoffs.  Colleges are crying that these subsidies fund critical research.  Our civilization would collapse and crumble if these elite centers of learning didn't have this flow of money.

                  What's crazy is that the Trump administration is only cutting off, or threatening to cut off, subsidies to colleges who don't protect Jewish students or who still have DEI departments and woke agendas.  Why?

                  Where is the North Star of public fiduciary responsibility that takes the politics out of this discussion?  Picking and choosing colleges for public largess based on liberal agendas keeps people from having the adult conversation about whether ANY college should receive taxpayer subsidies. Instead of coming to a clear understanding of whether higher education is a responsibility of the government or not, the whole discussion devolves into a petty partisan temper tantrum.

                  With interest on the public debt approaching $1 trillion and eclipsing all other components of the national budget, it's time for serious adults in the room to have a serious discussion about whether colleges should receive any taxpayer subsidies;  period.

                  Forget the partisan pettiness.  Forget the finger pointing.  Like many of these budgetary battles, failing to address the core issue muddies the water.  It keeps the populace in discordant never-never land where foundational principles of liberty and governance never see the light of day.  In the end, it deprives the average person of ever having to wrestle with consistency. and responsibility.

                  Instead of having a public discussion about freedom foundations and the core responsibilities of government, we piddle around puddles instead of draining the swamp.  The way all this college funding debate is going, I'm deeply disappointed and frustrated that nothing big will change.  We'll keep raising taxes, throwing money away, and finally devolve into bankruptcy, both morally and financially.

                  We made a lot of strides in technology without any government funding.  Edison didn't need a grant to invent the lightbulb.  Instead of corporate executives being paid $20 million a year, how about they drop to $1 million and invest the $19 million in research?  If the government is involved in research, it will be politicized and agenda driven.  Plenty of money exists in the private sector to do research; we don't need to impoverish the populace with confiscatory taxes in order to conduct research.  

                  And why are student loans more worthy of public support than entrepreneurial investment in a new energy source, for example? Picking winners and losers in what should be an individual marketplace is a fool's game.

                  Let colleges stand on their own.  If they generate meaningful content that folks can monetize into salaries, great.  If they can't, let them fail.  We need to quit propping up ANY private institutions, from farmers to colleges.  But college subsidies seem the most egregious because they serve the elite and often impoverish societal sectors their graduates control.  

                  Would we collapse as a culture if taxpayers didn't subsidize colleges?