What Is Wrong with the Department of Education?

4,800 staff members here spend $80 billion a year

Why does the lamestream media huff and puff every time a candidate makes the quite sensible suggestion that the Department of Education be shut down or, at least, reduced in size? After all, as National Review has noted, the department “was created as a straight political payoff to the teachers’ unions by President Jimmy Carter (in return for their 1976 endorsements). According to the National Center for Education Statistics, DE’s original budget, in 1980, was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars), and it employed 450 people. By 2000, it had increased to $34.1 billion, and by 2007 it had more than doubled to $73 billion. The budget for fiscal 2011 was $77.8 billion, and the department [by then employed] 4,800.”

What do 4,800 plus DE employees do, as they spend the equivalent of twice what Obama’s “Buffet rule” tax would raise in one year? My one-hour lunchtime search of Google could not produce a list of departments by number of employees and budget. But here’s some anecdotal news that they are wasting plenty of taxpayers’ money:

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced from Richmond March 31 that the state had succeeded in overturning a $55,000 DE fine levied on Virginia Tech in 2008. The reason for the fine? Apparently, the bloated staff at the department has developed strict guidelines on how campus officials must communicate emergency conditions to students, and Virginia Tech failed to follow these federally dictated standards during the 2007 shooting which left seven undergraduates dead. However, when Cuccinelli went to court to defend Tech, the chief administrative law judge of the U.S. Department of Education found that the university had complied with federal law in its response to the campus shootings, and as a result, he vacated the DE fine against the university.

In short, some bureaucrat at the Department of Education decided from his/her desk in Washington that it was correct and useful to harass Virginia Tech in the wake of the most terrible tragedy to ever befall the university community. This decision led to a colossal waste of time and money—at DE, the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, and at Virginia Tech. It’s a good case study in what happens when the federal government bureaucracy mucks around in local affairs that should not concern them.

This Is Fun! Calculate Your Fair Salary as a 'Stay at Home' Mom

Hey! I've been underpaid  for decades--at least according to the Stay at Home Mom Salary Calculator  posted at salary.com in response to Obama spokesman Hilary Rosen's bashing of Ann Romney. Come to think of it, while I was holding down a six-figure job at home, I was also getting my #$* out the door every morning (thank you, Bill Maher, for that lovely formulation) to earn a considerably smaller "at the office" paycheck. Hmmmm... Does Ann Romney service as first lady of Massachusetts meet Maher's standard of "getting her #$* out the door"?

Could it be that six decades of progressive, increasingly radical-leftist anti-family policies from the Democratic Party since World War II have been the real "war on women"?

Women Beware: The Democrats' Brave New World for Families

 Morning Joy by Alexis Marie Lahaye

 What Democrats don't understand: Families Need Mothers

"Try to imagine what 'living with one's family' meant."

They tried; but obviously without the smallest success.

"And do you know what a 'home' was?"

They shook their heads.

--Chapter 3, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

White House advisor Hilary Rosen’s consternation-producing comment that Ann Romney “has never worked a day in her life” serves quite efficiently to remind us of the radical-left-progressive ideal of womanhood championed by the Obama administration: Borrow tens of thousands to complete that college degree, sleeping with any man who catches your eye along the way; abort those pesky nuisance pregnancies; marry a suitable man (or not, if you prefer IVF);  suspend contraception just long enough to conceive (or not, if you want to hire a surrogate); have your baby (or not, if pre-natal testing determines it’s a girl, and you and hubby want a boy); find a daycare center that fits within your budget (remember, you have to figure in the costs of your colorist, car detailer, and personal trainer); and get the heck out of the house as soon as possible.

That is, of course, if you pull down a six figure income as a Democratic strategist like Rosen, or earn $316,000  a year selling the University of Chicago Hospital’s plan to dump its charity cases elsewhere, like Michelle Obama. If you are one of the 52 million working women in the United States whose family income is below the median, it’s much more likely that you are out cleaning other people’s houses,  doing other people’s cooking ,  and raising other people’s children, while your children stay at home, sometimes alone.

Either way, the degradation of the wonder of motherhood and the work of the so-called “stay at home mother”  has been a documentable disaster for the American family. 

For an uplifting look at things from the other side of the ideological spectrum, see Under the Gables: Dedicated to Discussion of Women and Their Work.

Is Your Congressman on the Socialist Party of America Membership List?

 Historically speaking, the socialists haven't done too well as concerns economic affairs. Leaving aside Barak Obama's dismal record, let's consider how much of the problem resides in the legislative branch of our government.
The Socialist Party of America boasts that the following members of the House and Senate are card-carrying members. Do you think they are doing a good job?


Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)
Vice Chairs
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)
Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)
House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

Why Is America Going Broke?

Last week, my congressman, Rep. Frank Wolfe (R-VA), circulated an open letter to his constituents warning that America will soon be officially bankrupt. His letter included the alarming statistic that, on the current trajectory, by the year 2028, every single penny of federal government revenue will be eaten up by entitlement payments (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and so forth) and interest on the national debt. Nearly half that national debt, Wolfe noted, is currently owned by China and Saudi Arabia—perhaps not countries to which we wish to be financially beholden. You can read the full text of his open letter here.

Wolfe suggests a serious reevaluation of entitlement payments and I concur. However, to consider entitlements, we must also consider the cost of goods and services that are purchased with entitlement funds. A principal of these is medical care, accounting for a gigantic chunk of the federal budget at this time.

Here I offer a bit of anecdotal evidence that medical care costs are completely out of control: a line-by-line accounting of the bills generated by the health care establishment when I simply checked in with the rheumatologist about chronic pain and joint swelling in my left-hand ring finger:

--Visit to doctor’s office (10 minutes): $325
--X-ray (a technology developed in 1895) of my hand: $793
--Charges by a radiologist to look at the X-ray: $160
--Prescription: $418
TOTAL: $1696

Enough to very comfortably feed, house, clothe, educate, transport, and entertain a middle class family of four for a week or more. But clearly not enough to finance their health care, since each has 10 fingers and 10 toes.

I welcome comments on where to begin to understand and tackle the behemoth of American health care costs.

The Basis for Equality Among Men

Stained glass window in the Franciscan church of Szombathely, Hungary depicts Kolbe as a Nazi concentration camp prisoner

I struggled all during the presidential campaign to explain to family members and coworkers why I am convinced that the Democratic Party is on the wrong track when it comes to economic progress for America and her citizens.

This remarkable little essay from Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Conventual Franciscan priest who was martyred at Auschwitz, really hit me in the eye at the tail end of this year’s presidential campaign. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a prisoner with a family in a group of Auschwitz inmates chosen to starve to death after a fellow prisoner disappeared from their barracks; after leading the dying men in prayer and meditation, he was finally killed by the Nazis with an injection of carbolic acid.

This compact and direct refutation of President Elect Barak Obama’s “redistribute the wealth” approach to economics was published as part of The Kolbe Reader: The Writings of Saint Maximilian M. Kolbe (Libertyville, IL: Franciscan Marytown Press, 1987).

When he sees the luxurious residence or the charming country house of a wealthy person, a poor workingman often asks himself: Why is there such inequality in the world?”

How many volumes have been written about equality among men! How much blood has been spilled for this idea! And yet, in spite of it all, we still have the rich and the poor…

Let us imagine that one day all the inhabitants of the work world would assemble to put into effect this sharing of all goods; and that in fact each person, granting that the world is very big, received an exactly equal portion of the wealth existing on earth.

The what? That very evening, one man might say, “Today I worked hard: now I am going to take rest.” Another might state, “I understand this sharing of goods well; so let’s drink and celebrate such an extraordinary happening.” On the other hands, another might say, “Now I am going to get to work with a will so as to reap the greatest benefit I can from what I have received.” And so, starting the next day, the first man would have only the amount given him; the second would have less, and the third would have increased his.

Then what do we do? Start redistributing the wealth all over again?

Even if everybody began to work right away with all his might and at the same time, the results would not be identical for all. There are, in fact, different kinds of work which are unequally productive; nor do workers enjoy the same identical capacities. This leads to a diversity of results achieved, and consequently to differences in people’s profits.

What would have to be imposed so that, once the division of goods was accomplished, people could continue to live on a basis of equality in this sense? All workers would have to perform the same tasks, all possess equal intelligence and ability, have similar professional training, the same degree of health and strength, and especially the same desire to put forth the necessary efforts. All of this is quite utopian.

To continue the argument, even if there were only two persons in the world, they would not succeed in maintaining absolute equality; for in the whole universe there are no two things completely identical in every respect…

In spite of this, the human mind still desires to bring about certain equality among men. Is there any possibility that this can happen? Yes, no doubt. Every man, whoever he is, whatever he possesses and whatever he is capable of doing, owes all this to God the Creator of the universe. Of himself man is nothing. From this point of view all of us are absolutely equal.

Furthermore we all possess free will, which makes us masters of all our actions. This too constitutes the basic equality of all men on earth. But the use made of our free will is not the same in all cases; it depends in fact on each man’s own determination, on the extent to which he makes use of this precious gift; for not all do so in the same degree. It follows that not even after death will perfect equality be achieved; it will not in fact exist, because every man will receive a just reward or punishment according to his deeds, good or evil.