Facebook Doodlings - Why is it the job of the Feds to rehab 35,000 schools? - Granite Grok

Facebook Doodlings – Why is it the job of the Feds to rehab 35,000 schools?

Yet another instance of spending time writing somewhere else instead of writing here, so, am double purposing yet again.  This thread from FB was from Sept (yeah, catching up as always) when Obama wanted to spend $25 Billion (more of what we don’t have) to rehab up to 35,000.  Once again the question must be asked (yes, edited to be more bloggish):

Why is it the Federal Govt’s job to “rehab 35,000 schools”?

If the local communities have so bungled their OWN infrastructure so badly, why is it that the rest of us have responsibility to fund it just because Obama says so? Where’s the accountability in that?

And the last part of that is couched in those terms because education has generally been a local activity and not a federal one.  Here in NH, it IS local – every year for the last six years, I have reviewed my town’s school budget as part of my hamlet’s Budget Committee (which actually prepares the budgets that all of the town’s voters vote up or down).  As part of doing that, I have learned the hardware that tax monies get sucked out of the local scene, filter through the DC bureaucracy, get strings attached, and then a relatively small percentage comes back to the folks that forked it out in the first place.   You can be sure that this “free money” as everyone else is kowtowing to get (under the rubric of blatant greed of “if we don’t take it, someone else will” – just like kindergarteners who are afraid they won’t get their Twinkie snack).

Well, it seemed to one commenter that the right answer was “Sure!”;  after all “because nobody else wants to do it”?  In other words, if the locals decide to do nothing, then his implicit answer is the Feds must do it by default.  My retort was:

You think the Feds should because the locals won’t? Shouldn’t the Feds be smart enough not to fall for that Tom Sawyer fence whitewash trick?

Yes, I started to get a bit hot under the collar as I have with others – it seems with folks like the commenter, their expectation is that the Feds are supposed to right all ills – when the locals are judged to have not done the job, it has to be made right by spending other folks money.  Wrong answer, as it penalizes those communities that ARE doing the right things.

In my hamlet, we have conserved the well being of our infrastructure in town – we have been frugal with taxpayer monies and have reined in spending on extras in order to fully take care of what we should. And the only School folks that had been let go were, up to now, more of the Admin types because of our falling enrollments (and now starting to let teachers go because our enrollment has gone from 1500 kids to closer to 1200).

The same commenter then goes to the same well again:

If the federal gov’t offers funding for improvement projects, will you reject it?

Yes, I would vote no. In fact, I have voted no as I am a believer in that if we wouldn’t spend money on something, why should I expect some far-off taxpayer pay for it?.  If they aren’t willing to pay for their own project, why should I pay for it? And I have learned the hard way is that ALL Federal money comes with strings attached…and some of those are very expensive to meet.  Examples here in NH is that there were a number of state level highways that were repaved NOT because they needed them, but because the Feds just threw the money at the State which said YOU HAVE TO SPEND IT on asphalt. And some of those that were repaved (like near the NH Motor Speedway where the NASCAR races are held) had just been redone  a couple of years previous.  Wouldn’t it have been better to have redone the “red flagged” bridges here in NH?  I thought so, and so did a lot of others, but the Feds are not flexible.

Now, I’ve had my “discussions” with him before – nice guy, but misguided.  But what he came out with next was a WHOPPER:

Our economy is driven by money being spent on both necessary and unnecessary projects by both public- and private-sector spenders. Austerity is sinking our economy.

 It is one thing for private folks to foolishly spend their money. It is NOT ok for others to spend taxpayer monies foolishly and then expect ME to paper over that. Taxpayer money should NEVER be spent unnecessarily!  I should have stopped there, as it then went a bit off the rails:

 What if “private folks” is your employer? Or a military contractor? Or a bank?

So what? It’s still THEIR money, not mine. Yes, if they spend it foolishly, my job might be at risk. That’s the risk *I* take by working there. Look, life is a risk and nothing is for sure.

Well, the commenter has a habit, a bad habit if viewed as a failure to stay on topic or a great habit if seen to be losing – and that is to change the flow of the discussion.  Like now and vamps into the assumption that some things have to be done by ALL of society and ignores the original implied question of “Constitutional”?  In other words:

I wouldn’t be foolish enough to suggest that life can be free of risk. I just believe society works better (i.e., an optimal portion of the population prospers) when certain things are regarded as whole-society needs and processes. Education and health care are among them.  Every state in the union benefits from an educated American population. Every state is at risk if any state fails to educate it’s population…educate them as well as possible for the benefit of the society as a whole.  I think you would agree that defense must be regarded as a whole-society need and process, right, Skip? I mean you wouldn’t advocate leaving the nation’s defense up to the individual states, right? In a world in which economic competition among nations is increasingly intellectual, I think we need to regard education the same way we regard defense.

Once again, we see the “national collective” has priority over the local decisions and the local entities.  As long as the intent is there, everything is just dandy (not the results, just the intent).   While the commenter was correct, that defense of the nation is one of the Constitutional duties of the Feds and not the States, so I’m fine with this. However, Schools have historically been local affairs here in the US because the Constitution does not list it as one of the enumerated powers. The Feds should limit itself to what it is supposed to do – and be GREAT at doing those things. Like any bureaucracy, the more it takes on, the less well it does them all. Our strength is not in centralizing everything into DC, but in its distributed nature via Federalism. If the Feds screw something up, we all suffer as we do not have the freedom to separate from that screwup. If a State screws up, only that State suffers and the rest of us are fine. Conversely, if a State does something really well, the other States can use that as a successful template and replicate it. Remember, it was the States that created the Feds and not the other way around.

Well, then the pushback against Federalism (which is what I describe above) began as he took exception to the idea that if  a State’s leaders were to make bad ?decisions, they should be held blameless – and rescue the poor unfortunate citizens that lived there (er, and just happening to forget that it was those same citizens voted to put those same people into the leadership positions):

My point, Skip, is that this is not true of things like education and healthcare. All states benefit from a healthy and educated American population. All states are at risk if any individual states fail at these tasks.

It’s true (obvious, in fact) that things were very different in the 18th century. We need to prepare for the 21st century.

 

and then when it was pointed out, continually, the commenter tried to use the “but all the other kids are doing it” defense of having the Feds involved by pointing out a whole lot of other things that the Feds are doing that are “extra-Constitutional”

…or the air force, or air traffic control, or the FCC, or any number of other things that people in the 18th century didn’t anticipate. Follow the link below for a list of things that exist even though they’re not in the constitution.

Like many that believe that the Constitution has about run its course, he fails to realize that technology (being in the technology field, I think I can adequately comment upon this) is not what the Constitution is about.  Rather, it is about keeping human nature in check as it expresses itself via politics and government.  While we talk about checks and balances in government, those strictures were placed not to just keep the different parts of govt in line but to keep flawed people from being able to game the system.  And I did point out some things for his above argument:

Actually, the Air Force would be, as it is part of the military – for the defense of the country. As far as many of those things that you list – ATC can be privatized (it is in Canada). The FCC could as well (and would prevent the meddling it is now doing). You make the large mistake that just because a technological advance has been made that it ipso facto obsoletes the Constitution. Your argument means…well, not much in advancing something to which I haven’t completely divined.

And then he really shows his colors:

LOL! Yeah. Let’s privatize the FCC and the FAA! Yeehah! If we do ATC the way Canada does, can we also do healthcare the way they do?

I’m not saying technology justifies abandoning the constitution, Skip. I think you know that. I’m saying we shouldn’t be shackled by the constitution and, as you know, the founders didn’t want us to be. We need to address education as a national priority because, if we don’t, we simply will not be able to compete in the 21st century.

And THAT took my breath away!  The Constitution WAS written to do exactly that – to shackle the decision making process and make it harder to get things done unless things are such great ideas that they wouldn’t flow through easily.  And it was meant that when bad ideas were being pushed (bad being defined as a substantial minority being against bad ideas passing into law).  I found it quite ironic that in talking about rehabbing schools, the physical schools, and that he was advocating for better schools, he actually was presenting a real good example of where our Civics education, among others, has been taught so poorly.   He can’t back up the latter part of his premise. As to the first, the Constitution was meant not to shackle you and I as private citizens but it WAS meant to constrain what the Federal government should do. Has it been followed? No. Is that all right? No, and I think that if some of the cases now wending their way to the Supreme Court (Obamacare, off-shoots aimed at Lochner), the ills done by the FDR era Supremes may yet be undone.  But I was stunned in that he believes, like many Progressives, that there is no point in being shackled to the letter of a document that was written more than 200 years ago.  I challenged him on that point, as in “If they really believed it, why would they have bothered to write it, or why didn’t they put an expiration date in it (“hey, 250 years from now, start over!”)”?  And he did back down:

As I said, I’m not talking about abandoning the constitution. I agree with you that that would be insane. The point I’m making is that its intent must be adapted to the times. We can’t adhere to every letter of it. That would prohibit things like the air force.

Regarding the federal government’s responsibility for national defense, I believe ensuring that our population is well educated should be regarded as part of our national defense. Defense might have been strictly a military consideration in the 18th century but I don’t think that’s still true.

Now, I disagree with him, and it is a serious but friendly disagreement – he is not a raving Anarchist or Progressive like a Chuckie Schumer .  But it is still sad to believe that so many believe like him “hey, it sounds like a good idea, or that the times demand it, so let’s bend the intent of the Founders to justify what we think is right”.

Instead of “what was the original intent and why are we ignoring it?”  Why do we persist on ignoring what worked for well over a hundred years (until the Progressives started to unlink those self-same checks and balances)?

>