Sometimes, actually, more often than not, the “Best and the Brightest” are the worst and the dimmest. And it shows.
I recently finished an excellent biography, Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power by Marc Wortman. The quote in the title of this article is from an interview of Admiral Rickover with a young Navy lieutenant and later president, Jimmy Carter. The now former president said the two men with the greatest influence on his life were his father and Admiral Rickover. Says enough that the quote is also the title of Carter’s autobiography, released just before the 1976 campaign.
From the Rickover bio, in the post Sputnik years he sounded the alarm about American education falling behind other nations in what we now call STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Rickover called for major spending by the federal government to correct this deficiency. He suggested cutting the defense budget 20% to 30% to fund this endeavor (if he thought there was waste in the Pentagon budget in the Eisenhower years, he would be shocked by today’s misuse of the taxpayer’s funds).
Rickover was supportive of then President Carter’s establishment of both “E’s” added to the cabinet, the Department of Energy in 1977, and the Department of Education in 1980. While both men believed in better educating for America’s children, Rickover likely believed it was a national issue that legitimately required federal government involvement.
Carter had more self-interest in the matter. He was an unpopular president coming up for reelection and wanted the largest union in the county, the National Educator’s Association (NEA) backing him up. “In 1976, Walter Mondale promised the union a federal department, and the NEA delivered. At the 1976 convention, the largest group of delegates were NEA members. As then NEA executive director Terry Herndon. ‘There’d be no department without the NEA.’”
The federal government’s incursion into an area handled for generations by the states and local governments cannot be called a rousing success. While the budget for education at all levels K-12 and college has exploded, the cost of education has also concurrently risen. Till the 80s or early 90s, a young person could attend college (at least at state universities) and pay the expenses out of pocket, e.g., working during summer breaks, part time employment during the school year, perhaps some loans or family assistance. That can’t be said today.
For example, I entered the University of New Orleans in the fall of 1983, and full-time tuition was $492.00 a semester, $984.00 a year. Today, the cost is ten times that amount. Louisiana State University, the state’s flagship public college, gouges Louisiana residents for almost $12,000 a year. Granted, a much higher cost of living area, but the top universities in California are costing over 11,000 a year for tuition alone.
Why this explosion in the cost of public universities? Having instilled into our younger generations the false belief you must have a college degree to be successful in America, they have driven up the demand for college. The federal government, all too happy to oblige, flooded the college age population with money in grants and student loans. And universities, with more demand for their “services,” jacked up their cost. Sound like the laws of economics are at work here.
What have we to show for the additional taxpayer money into local education? Well, as schools have moved from teaching facts but now teaching to a test. While this will improve the likely score on standardized tests (which schools show for more funding), “it does not correctly gauge the student’s understanding of a subject.” Also, we are putting out generations of kids knowing “what to think,” not “how to think.” The results are not impressive:
One of the biggest cross-national tests is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which every three years measures reading ability, math and science literacy and other key skills among 15-year-olds in dozens of developed and developing countries. The most recent PISA results, from 2015, placed the U.S. an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which sponsors the PISA initiative, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science.
How about energy? After telling Americans “we must use less energy and pay more for it,” Carter went full force on a “Windfall Profits Tax” (i.e., a 70% tax on oil) to fund “alternative energy” to free us from oil and other fossil fuels. I still wonder how he would replace kerosene, also known as Jet A Fuel.
Thankfully things changed. On day one, Ronald Reagan deregulated the oil market and fuel prices did rise for around six months, then they started to fall. With the exception of some uncertain times (e.g., the Gulf War, the War on Terrorism), oil prices were stable until the mid 2000s. They did rise towards the end of the George W Bush years and continued to rise through most of the Obama years. Fortunately the petulant man-child who lectured us, “we cannot drill our way to lower gas prices,” was unable to stop oil companies from developing hydraulic fracturing (fracking). This made America energy independent for the first time in over a half century, until the beginning of the Biden administration and the War on American Energy.
The point of this? Nothing the federal government puts its nose into will be more efficient or lower cost. Obamacare anyone? Or how about a recent example of how the federal government trying to force people into something they don’t want.
The “Inflation Reduction Act” of 2022 (not sure if that’s a classic version of Orwell’s newspeak or a modern example of gaslighting) included a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicles. To paraphrase Field of Dreams, “If you pay it, they will raise it.” Ford and Chevy simply raised cost for EVs by seven grand. Funny how that works.
Another question, will the buyer want this POS? This devotion to global warming (or whatever it’s called this week) by politicians and bureaucrats in capitals is not being accepted by the consumer. Car companies, under pressure from DC and other governments, are understandable hesitant to go fully into electric vehicles they are not sure they can sell.
The EV Question for Auto Executives: How Fast to Make the Shift?
Traditional auto makers have pledged to gradually transform their vehicle lineups to EVs, but timelines vary. If car makers get ahead of consumers on EV rollouts, that could inflate their costs and hurt sales of gas-powered vehicles, profits from which are needed to fund investments in electrification…
…Car executives from traditional auto makers point to factors partly outside of their control that could slow the industry’s rollout of EVs, including the availability of the key minerals needed to produce EV batteries and the readiness of electric grids…
“…We’re all feeling the pressure,” Mr. (Tom) Doll (chief executive of Subaru of America Inc.) said earlier this month. “We have to make sure that the market is really going to tip toward it.”
Many consumers, particularly those in the U.S., are concerned about range issues, executives and analysts said. And while the Inflation Reduction Act has spurred investment in public infrastructure to let drivers recharge vehicles away from their homes, reliability of existing chargers is spotty…
Range issues? When the F-150 Lightening was introduced, Ford boasted of its 230-mile range. In other words I cannot drive to Dallas from Houston without finding a charger somewhere. That doesn’t count the drain the air conditioner will put on the battery.
If the market doesn’t support the product, the only way to make people buy these vehicles is to make gas/diesel vehicle prohibitively expensive (e.g., high fuel taxes or a “sin” tax on the vehicle itself) or prohibit the purchase all together. California’s suicide march to EVs is a classic example. While Sacramento wants no gas/diesel vehicles sold in the state by 2035, commercial shipping relies on diesel 18 wheelers. California is only banning the sale of these vehicles as of now, not the use in the state. So all they will do is push dealerships and tax revenue to other states (Nevada, Arizona), likely with a mileage tax on top of excessive taxes.
A friend posted on Facebook months ago a meme about electric vehicles, “A solution that won’t work, to a problem we don’t have.” Or to recall the words of the finest president in my lifetime, in his classic speech, A Time For Choosing:
“Governments don’t control things. A government can’t control the economy without controlling the people. When a government does that, it must use force and use coercion to achieve its purpose.”’’
Everything the federal government put itself into over the last few decades has deteriorated. But that will not stop them from using force to put the bureaucrats into education, energy, and other areas they are completely incompetent in.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers
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