The Burden of College Costs

By Chase Wheaton

Higher education should be one of the key pathways to increased access and opportunity for every American. It should provide people with the prospect of increased knowledge, training, and expertise so they can pursue their passions and positively contribute to their communities without limitation. It should, at the end of the day, be a gateway to a more equitable and just society. Unfortunately, in the United States, higher education has been a gatekeeper for all of those things, and it is past time for that to change.

More often than not, the extraordinarily high cost of a college education in the United States, especially compared with much of the rest of the world, serves to prevent an otherwise qualified person from accessing higher education, or it becomes a massive burden for the person to carry after graduation. In 2017, the U.S. Federal Reserve estimated that the average debt from college is $32,731 per graduate. Couple that tremendous debt with the high interest rates many students are forced to pay on loans from private lenders that can easily double the cost of a college education, and you have many graduates paying off loans well into their 30s, 40s, even 50s.

That seems more than the lack of access and opportunity to me. It’s an explicit barrier that only the wealthy and privileged can possibly overcome. This barrier only serves to increase the divide in the quality of life that exists between different populations in the United States. Aside from the vast majority of jobs in the U.S. that require some level of education beyond high school, even employers who don’t require college are much more likely to hire someone with a bachelor’s degree than someone without. There are all kinds of studies showing how lucrative a college degree can be, often higher earnings of $1 million or more over a lifetime.

From this disparity, the cycle repeats itself, and those with the ability to pay for higher education continue to earn higher wages and have better access to higher-paying jobs, which in turn makes them more financially stable over the course of their lifetime, which then allows them to send their children to a college or university, and on and on through the generations.

I think the solution is incredibly simple: Cut military spending. Take a small portion of the $733 billion annual Defense Department budget and re-allocate it to the U.S. Department of Education. Time and time again, the federal government has defunded the Education Department to help pay for more defense spending, so why not flip that script? The College for All Act of 2017 introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-WA, estimated that the cost of free college to the federal government would be $47 billion a year. That’s just 6.5% of the entire Defense budget.

Budgets and federal spending reveal the priorities and values of an entity or institution, and right now, the federal government is telling us it cares more about the idea of complete global military domination than it does about providing all its citizens with programs and services that would vastly improve the quality of life for millions of people. As long as the federal government can continue to afford to give $733 billion to our military every year, you won’t be able to convince me that they shouldn’t be able to do one-fifteenth of that to guarantee every American access to higher education.

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The Fascination with Free College

By Charles Dervarics

For people of a certain age (read: young), the allure of free college is almost irresistible. At a time when some private universities charge more than $70,000 annually and top public institutions cost $30,000 a year, the entire process may seem daunting to students and their families.

And that’s before even reading about how the “sticker price” may differ from your final cost (like a car negotiation!) or the merits of online and “hybrid” learning during a pandemic.

One thing we do know: Americans already have a lot of college debt. According to the Federal Reserve, 20% of the U.S. population owes a combined $1.5 trillion in education loans. Not surprisingly, low-income students stand the most to lose. As the U.S. Department of Education notes, a low-income student is four times less likely than a wealthier student to earn a bachelor’s degree.

While free college is not in the massive $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, the issue looms as an upcoming flashpoint for Congress and President Biden. The president has proposed tuition-free public college for families earning up to $125,000 a year. In a recent CBS interview, Biden said he could provide that benefit for $1.5 billion, though his staff quickly backtracked and pegged the cost at approximately twice that level.

Part of the challenge is that, similar to K-12 schools, colleges rely not on the federal government but on state and local funds for much of their budgets. College costs also differ greatly by state. As reported by CollegeCalc, the average public college or university in Pennsylvania charged $23,167 last year. In New Mexico, the average was just $6,807. Does higher cost bring higher quality? And knowing the federal government would soon foot the bill for many students, would states cut their own contributions as a result?

Some lawmakers also want to help recent grads who wouldn’t reap benefits from this Biden plan. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, is proposing to forgive up to $50,000 of a student’s loans, while the White House says it’s open to forgiveness of up to $10,000. Help for graduates now navigating the job market is politically popular, with several polls showing strong public support.

Still another alternative is free community college, so more low-income students might earn a technical credential or associate degree at lower-cost, two-year schools. Biden has talked about this, too, as has First Lady Jill Biden, a community college professor. But here recent data show the devastating impact from a year of COVID-19. Despite low tuitions, community colleges suffered a 10% enrollment decline in Fall 2020, far more than other areas of higher education. Most alarmingly, based on data from the National Student Clearinghouse, freshman enrollment at two-year colleges dropped by a whopping 21%.

When times are bad, community colleges usually do well as the unemployed return to school. But that’s not happening now, perhaps because prospective students lack child care and technology or just don’t like virtual learning.

What’s interesting here is that some states already offer free community college to many students. Tennessee, an early leader, saw an 11% enrollment drop in fall 2020 with African Americans showing notable declines. Leaders cited factors such as economic uncertainty and lack of connectivity and child care. All of which may indicate that, when it comes to education and so many other issues, free isn’t always free.

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The Cost of Free College

By Andrew Boyd

To start where Charles Dervarics‘ column concludes, I‘d submit that free is never free, with the possible exceptions of hope, love, compassion and sorrow. So, let’s dispense with the notion of “free college.”

In the realm of public goods and investments, we don’t say free military might, free infrastructure, or free police protection; but it certainly makes sense to think about education as a public good, although, unlike an interstate highway, most if not all the value of a higher education accrues to the individual in such a way for which free-market mechanisms can account.

In terms of the mechanism, I’d be more inclined to support tax credits and/or subsidies for higher education with associated economic means testing and requirements for some base levels of effort and achievement on the part of the student, not unlike the kinds of constraints we place upon things like welfare and unemployment, although the erosion now on those constraints, I’d propose, has serious and even dire implications for our social and economic well-being.

Statistically, Americans with a college degree on average earn twice that of those with a high-school diploma. This, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for CY2019. Of course, if you increase the supply of something (those with college degrees), the price (wage) is likely to fall, so there is the notion of diminishing returns. Also, there’s strong evidence that many people might derive greater benefit from a vocational degree. It took me 10 phone calls this week to find an electrician who would even respond to my work request, and I’ve yet to even get him to show up. You can’t outsource that value to Indonesia or Lethoso, after all.

Ideologically, if we’re prepared to swallow the moral hazard of yet another social welfare program, a.k.a compelled spending (at the threat of harm, which only the government can do) and all the attendant inefficiencies and market distortions, I think it should at least be accompanied by some strategy that ties back to our national economic wellbeing – a degree in underwater basket weaving not being the same, in this context, as one in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

Finally, let’s not set aside the growing menace of our national spending problem and the increasingly unbearable financial burdens we’re placing upon future generations, which at something like $90,000 of public debt per American, might be thought of as a pretty significant offset to the economic benefits of more education. At what point, I wonder, do we have “the talk” about how much of America's productivity should rightly be consumed by compelled spending, propped up by a fiat currency and the utter foolishness of modern monetary theory? A column for another day perhaps.

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Second-Wave McCarthyism

By David Amaya

Many deceptive and divisive strategies, notably twisted lies, were used to achieve the premise we are faced with today: Voter fraud is a severe problem in U.S. elections. Voter fraud is a big problem, but not in the way GOP leaders would have you believe –the allegations are a sign of corruption. Dissecting our shared reality will lead us to our shared truth.

Republican elected officials’ vociferous belief that the election is subject to voter fraud is the pot calling the kettle black. In an attempt to admonish Jack Dorsey of Twitter, Ted Cruz asked the founder in November of 2020 whether he had evidence of voter fraud or not. The question came from Twitter’s decision to flag tweets mentioning voter fraud as misleading during the election season. The Texas senator fails to recognize that he, and the other proponents of the Big Lie (the false belief that voter fraud stole the election from Donald Trump), is that they are guilty of the very charges they place on others. Before questioning whether Dorsey has evidence that there is no voter fraud when he tweets of voter fraud as misleading, Cruz ought to ask himself whether his allegations of voter fraud are grounded in truth. If not, would he hold himself accountable to the degree he would Twitter? The Supreme Court of the United States, and every court below it, rejected the pernicious lies spewed by Republican leaders. What we’re seeing is the spearhead of voter suppression.

If Republicans were serious about voter fraud, they would disown the 45^th President. How did the former president expect to find 11,780 votes in Georgia but without voter fraud? What Trump requested from Georgia’s Attorney General, Brad Raffensperger, goes far beyond the act of voting out of your precinct or ballot harvesting (purported sources of massive voter fraud). Trump asking Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes is not conjecture like the Republicans' allegations. It is a substantiated severe attempt of voter fraud by Republican leaders against American voters.

We now face more than 250 bills in state legislatures meant to make it harder to vote because of this Big Lie. Most of these “anti-voter fraud” bills would affect non-Republican non-Caucasian voters in urban areas the most. The Republican Party is very close to being considered the cognoscenti of voter suppression. Acting out from lies is a sign of conspiracy. More so, passing off these fraudulent allegations as reality to Republican constituents is a red flag of an abusive relationship (see “gaslighting”).

The Republican’s mascot (if we accept their leaders’ falsities of the safest, most diverse, and highest turnout election) should change from the elephant to a snake eating its tail.

The claims of voter fraud are not only wrong, but they are also deranged. How can someone decry voter fraud and commit to it both at once? The discrepancy is confusing and shows why the Republican party needs leaders with competency dedicated to honesty and transparency to their constituents. Accepting any less will perpetuate our house divided; a dangerous strategy to achieve control of our government has led to our Civil War over state rights. We should know better.

History is sure to look unfavorably upon our recent allegations of widespread voter fraud. The last time we had a large-scale campaign that used conjecture disguised as truth as its primary political change tool was the Red Scare of the mid-20^th century. The use of baseless allegations as a catalyst to achieve some political end that goes against truth has a term in America: It’s called McCarthyism.

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Voter Fraud or Voter Suppression?

By Todd Lassa

Should the state of Arizona throw out entire ballots cast outside a voter’s assigned precincts, and should it be allowed to restrict collections of ballots by third parties? Those are the questions the U.S. Supreme Court considered Wednesday in arguments for Brnovich vs. Democratic National Committee, and Arizona Republican Party vs. Democratic National Committee.

The question the Supremes will attempt to answer when the court issues its rulings in the two cases by summer could set a standard for “determining whether a majority would coalesce around a standard for determining whether voting laws and practices violate Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act” of 1965, Amy Howe writes in SCOTUSblog.

The Arizona legislature’s ban on collecting ballots, commonly known as “ballot harvesting,” goes back to 2016. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit struck down the out-of-precinct policy (the Brnovich case) and the restriction on ballot harvesting (Arizona Republican Party vs. Democratic National Committee) as violations of Section 2, which prohibits state ballot rules “that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in one of the language minority groups,” and is one of the only provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act with no expiration date.

SCOTUS in 2013 ruled in Shelby County vs. Holder that Section 5 of the VRA was no longer necessary. That provision required a freeze on voter laws enacted by certain states and municipalities with a history of discrimination (as in Shelby County, Alabama), subject to administrative review, or by the U.S. attorney general (such as Eric Holder in the Obama administration) or in a lawsuit before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Brnovich vs. Democratic National Committee seeks to overturn the appeals court’s rule against legislation that requires an entire ballot, even the votes for state and national races, to be discarded if it was cast in the wrong precinct. The DNC argues that the state provision discriminates against native Americans living in rural and desert areas in Arizona who may have trouble reaching their designated polling place, while attorneys for the state’s attorney general, Mark Brnovich, a Republican, say it affects very few people in such sparsely populated areas, and is designed to prevent fraud in more densely populated areas where precincts are closer together.

Democrats are more typically concerned about voter suppression in crowded urban areas where the majority tends to favor their party. Much of ex-President Trump’s gripes about the November 3 election were the result of late-counted votes in cities like Milwaukee and Philadelphia that came in after 3 a.m. and flipped the tally from his early lead for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, for example, that came from counting sparse rural areas first.

In Tuesday’s hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts noted the 2005 report on federal election reform from a commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, which “said that absentee ballots are the largest (source) of potential voter fraud” and recommended eliminating party workers picking up and delivering ballots.

Jessica Amunson, attorney for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, argued that minority voters in Arizona “rely disproportionately on ballot collection,” according to the SCOTUSblog report, and that the state was trying to limit “participation of Hispanics and Native Americans, in particular.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Arizona Republican Party attorney Michael Carvin why his client was at all interested in keeping the anti-ballot-harvesting law on the books.

The Ninth Circuit’s ruling “puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” Carvin responded. “Politics is a zero-sum game, and every extra vote they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us. It’s the difference between winning an election 50 to 49 and losing.”

The Brennan Center, a left-leaning organization, tracks voting legislation across the country and reports as of February 19, 2021, legislatures in 43 states have carried over, pre-filed, or introduced more than 250 bills that would make it harder to vote – more than seven times the number of restrictive bills as compared to roughly this time last year.” The bills most likely to pass are in Republican-majority state houses, and the connection to President Trump’s repeated warnings months in advance that he could only lose re-election if there is widespread voter fraud is obvious.

The most high-profile example of such legislation is what Georgia’s Republican-led General Assembly passed Monday evening, just four months after Joseph R. Biden became the first Democrat since 1992 to take the state’s Electoral College votes, and two months after Democrats won runoff elections for the U.S. Senate.

Georgia’s legislation, which must still pass the state’s Senate, requires additional identification for absentee voting, restricts ballot drop-boxes and limits weekend days for early voting prior to election day. Democratic opponents consider the latter provision extraordinarily discriminatory because it would restrict voting after church hours on Sundays, a tradition in the Black community known as “souls to the polls.” According to The New York Times, about 88% of Black voters chose Biden over Trump, and more than 90% of Black voters chose Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff for the two Senate seats, thus giving that party control of the chamber.

To counter Republican efforts to tighten voting procedures, the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday, March3, passed HR 1 along party lines, with all 220 Democrats voting in favor to 210 Republicans’ opposed. The For the People Act, designed to restore and strengthen original provisions of the 1965 VRA, seeks to require automatic, same-day and online voter registration, restore voting rights to citizens with prior convictions, strengthen the mail-in voting system and institute nationwide early voting. It complements the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which proposes a new formula to replace the pre-clearance formula Shelby County vs. Holder removed so “states that have repeated voting rights violations over 25 years need special permission to change rules.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence criticized HR 1 in his first commentary Wednesday for The Heritage Foundation’s e-newsletter, The Daily Signal, as an 800-page election overhaul “that would increase opportunities for election fraud, trample the First Amendment, further erode confidence in our elections, and forever dilute the votes of legally qualified eligible voters.” The bill’s single goal, Pence continues, is “to give leftists a permanent, unfair, and unconstitutional advantage in our political system.”

The House passed the John Lewis Act last year, but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused a single hearing on the bill. Democrats will need to kill the legislative filibuster to have any chance to pass either bill in the Senate this session, and their success or failure in the upper chamber almost certainly will affect each party’s success or failure in the 2022 and 2024 elections.

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Elections Need Safeguards

By Bryan Williams

Let’s face it, last November’s election was odd. Ballot harvesting, ballot drop boxes that were official and unofficial, same day voter registration, early and extended voting, and claims of widespread abuse, conspiracy, and fraud by Donald Trump and most of the Republican Party made it so. I am not saying that there was widespread fraud (though I am sure there was some - elections are a human enterprise and are never perfect), I’m saying it was odd. Several oddities did occur, and now there are a rush of bills in several states to try and make our elections less odd.

As a Republican, I believe that voting should be open and easily available to every American who is legally able to vote. I am even for expanding the times polls are open to make it easier for folks to show up and vote.

For the first time in my working life, I was not able to make it to the polls during the regular Tuesday hours in 2020 because I had to work and there was no way I could get to my precinct before it closed. So I personally delivered the ballot I received by mail before election day to the only authorized and official ballot drop box in my county, the one inside the county building downtown. I sympathize with those voters who work on Election Day and can’t make it. In California, by law your employer is to give you one hour to vote during your work day. Even this provision didn’t make it possible for me to vote in-person on election day, so I understand we must give voters alternative ways and dates to turn in their ballots.

But would I have turned my ballot over to a stranger or an organization, especially a political party? I used to be a part of my local Republican county committee. No way, not ever, would I relinquish my ballot to anyone other than a poll worker, or at the elections department downtown. Ballot harvesting is ripe for abuse and should be prohibited or at least reformed in a way that allows for strict accountability.

Same-day voter registration is another bad idea. Consider it practically, instead of ideologically. Do you really expect a government agency to be able to efficiently and appropriately process your voter registration the very same day you vote? I bought a car in August of 2020, and I didn’t get my license plates or registration card until the middle of December. I received the bill for next year’s registration before my actual plates arrived! Just like folks should be given more time to vote outside of Election Day, election workers should be given more time to process registration cards to ensure it’s a real person signing up and assigned to the correct precinct.

Voting is a right. It should be easy. But make it secure and minimize the number of hands that handle a ballot – the voter, and the local elections officials.

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Dangerous Make-Believe

By Stephen Macaulay

It is absolutely appropriate that CPAC was held in Orlando, the city that has even surpassed Anaheim in its association with the Magical Kingdom. Walt Disney World is the most popular amusement park on earth, with some 58-million annual visitors. . .a number that collapsed as a result of COVID-19. However, given the reaction of an audible number of attendees who booed the announcement at CPAC that because they were in someone else’s facility they had to follow that host’s rules, and the rules included wearing masks to help mitigate the potential spread of the virus, they probably wouldn’t mind a ride on Splash Mountain, even if they were doused in foul water.

Mask-free or die.

It is all too easy to see the cartoonish golden statue of Donald Trump that was made — where else? — in Mexico, a statue that had CPAC attendees posing with just as they would with Mickey, in relation to a cautionary tale from Exodus 32: 1-6. The worship of an idol. Aaron had told the Israelites that the golden calf had delivered them from Egypt. It didn’t.

And Trump has delivered his people from what?

There are some 10.1-million people unemployed in the U.S. right now.

There are some 512,000 dead Americans — Americans — from COVID-19.

Did that Golden Idol cause the unemployment, cause the deaths?

Look at it this way: Both started under his watch. He claimed the former was going to “just disappear.” He made mask-wearing a political, not a medical, thing. He knew that a bad economy wasn’t going to be good for his brand, so despite advice to the contrary, he claimed COVID wasn’t a big deal, which led to more people getting sick, more people dying, and more businesses going out of business.

Chant though they might, it doesn’t change the facts. But facts are, as we’ll see, troublesome for some people.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in New York City. She was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018, representing the 14^th congressional district, which encompasses part of the Bronx, Queens and Rikers Island. She is a Democrat.

It is about 1,755 miles from the Bronx to Austin, Texas.

When the winter storm that set Texans back, way back on their collective boot heels, Ocasio-Cortez went to work and raised some $5-million for affected Texans.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX, went to Cancun.

So what did Ted Cruz do when he spoke at CPAC?

Among other things, made fun of Ocasio-Cortez, who had posted a powerful Instagram Live video predicated on her life experiences and what she experienced during the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6.

Ocasio-Cortez raises $5-million for people far away from her district.

Cruz goes on vacation while the people in his state struggle.

Regardless of what you think of the political points of view of either of these people, ask yourself one thing: Which of the two is a serious leader, someone who would have your back?

Ted Cruz, a man who ended up carrying water for the man who described his wife as being unattractive and who accused his father of participating in one of the biggest crimes of the 20^th century, is clearly not serious. Nor does he seem to care about anyone other than Rafael Edward Cruz.

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The unacronymic name of CPAC is “Conservative Political Action Conference.” It is organized by the American Conservative Union.

Edmund Burke is the father of modern conservatism. Or maybe that should be real conservatism.

Consider this in light of what happened in Orlando:

“But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths.” ― Edmund Burke

Conservatism is about things like morality, good conduct, a free-market economy, and limited government. And these people are all juiced up about Donald Trump.

How do you square that circle?

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According to the website for the Missouri secretary of state, Missouri is known as the “Show Me” state for the following reason:

“The most widely known legend attributes the phrase to Missouri's U.S. Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver, who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1897 to 1903. While a member of the U.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs, Vandiver attended an 1899 naval banquet in Philadelphia. In a speech there, he declared, ‘I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.’”

One way of looking at this is that the people of Missouri believe in facts. That evidence matters more than what people claim.

“I stood up and I said, I said, we ought to have a debate about election integrity, said, it is the right of the people to be heard. And my constituents in Missouri want to be heard on this issue.”

That is what Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, said in his CPAC 2020 comments.

Since Trump lost the 2020 election there has been a whole lot of rhetoric about how the “election was stolen.”

Where’s the evidence?

Show me.

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Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, who is rumored to be a potential 2024 presidential candidate attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci at CPAC.

"As conservatives, we often forget that stories are much more powerful than facts and statistics," Noem said. "Our stories need to be told. It is the only way that we will inspire and motivate the American people to preserve this great country."

It is convenient that she’s not big on facts.

Few would argue that California has been an unfortunate hot spot for COVID-19.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California has had 8,784 cases per 100,000 people. It has had 131 deaths per 100,000 people.

Of course, that’s a Blue State.

So how is South Dakota doing?

12,693 cases per 100,000 people.

213 deaths per 100,000 people.

Yes, Noem, facts and statistics ought to be avoided in favor of stories because they sure as hell are damning.

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Read the full list of CPAC’s presidential candidate straw poll — click on Forum.

It’s Trump’s Party and He’ll Run in ’24 if He Wants to

By Todd Lassa

Judging from the crowd reaction at the 2021 CPAC “America Uncancelled” gathering, and from the large-ish group of the former president’s supporters outside the Orlando Hyatt convention hall, Donald J. Trump has already won the 2024 presidential election, just as he “won” last November.

“I will continue to fight right by your side,” Trump told the adoring crowd at the beginning of his nearly two-hour speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. “We’re not going to start a new party. We have the Republican Party. Wouldn’t that be brilliant? Let’s divide our vote. We’d never win again.”

This was the Sunday evening keynote, if that term applies to a speech in which ex-President Trump returned to familiar gripes and lies, specifically a repeat of how he really won a “stolen” election last November.

He called out the U.S. Supreme Court twice, at least, for refusing to hear challenges to the election results, including Texas’ suit against 18 states whose Electoral College votes went to Joseph R. Biden.

He repeated his attacks on Democrats, this time amping up the rhetoric such that they aren’t merely promulgating socialism but full-on communism. Trump slammed President Biden’s “failed” first month in office for many issues, including the dismantling of the former president’s draconian immigration policy and immediate stop on construction of the southern border wall on Mexico, making this policy look like the corollary to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which he spent four years unsuccessfully trying to kill.

Trump promised to challenge the 10 Republican representatives in the House who voted to impeach him last January (singling out Liz Cheney, the “warmonger” from Wyoming) and seven Republican senators who voted to convict him last month, in their next primaries, and crowed about how his endorsement of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, (whose mention garnered a healthy round of “boos”) pushed him to re-election victory.

In the end, former President Donald J. Trump lit up the crowd with this: “We have to have triumph. We must have victory. That is exactly what we will do. We will go on to victory. We’re tougher than they are. We’re stronger than they are.”

“And then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House,” Trump continued. “And I wonder who that will be. … I wonder who that will be. … Who, who, who will that be.” It wasn’t a question.

It most likely will not be Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, who appeared in the opening hours of CPAC last Friday to joke about how nice is was to be in Orlando, though “not as nice as Cancun.”

Cruz did not make CPAC’s straw poll of 2024 presidential nomination candidates, which Trump captured with 55% of the vote, The Hill reports. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis was next with 21%, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem grabbed 4%. And 95% of CPAC attendees said they want the GOP to continue Trump’s not-consistently conservative populism. (Click on Forum for the complete straw poll results.)

Which raises the question of how much of today’s GOP CPAC represents. Interviewed on CNN after Trump finished to the sounds of The Village People’s “YMCA,” (Fox News followed the speech with highlights of the speech), the ex-president’s national security advisor from 2018-19 and former Fox News contributor John Bolton, described the former president’s speech as “like watching an old movie, very stale … or TV reruns.”

Of Trump’s straw poll showing of 55% Bolton said, “that is a pathetic figure. I would expect 90%. That is an indication of how much he’s fallen already.”

How much has Trump fallen? On one hand, CPAC’s traditional role as representing the right edge of the Republican party could be seen as a misrepresentation of Trump’s continued popularity within the party (several pundits have remarked that Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, has won the straw poll in the past, twice). On the other hand, no former Republican president has ever before bothered to even show up for the event a month after his successor’s inauguration.

It seems to all come down to what happens in the next 21 months. If Trump’s candidates beat “un-loyal” Republicans in next year’s congressional primaries, and then go on to beat Democrats in the November 2022 mid-terms, Trump might be on his way to a third presidential nomination. If none of that happens, McConnell and the traditional Republicans may prevail.

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Read the full list of CPAC’s presidential candidate straw poll — click on Forum.

CPAC is Bargain Basement Wholesale Politics

By Andrew Boyd

The only thing more stomach-churning, to me, than retail politics is wholesale politics, and CPAC is bargain basement in every respect, with a double dose of bombast and the gross absence of humility or measured speech that infects every corner of the body politic today. Giving it as much ink as I’m about to do here is a thoroughly detestable exercise, but that’s the assignment.

First off, CPAC polls are not terribly predictive of real outcomes, so proceed with caution. Yes, Trump pulled 55% of voters in the straw polling, twice that of second-place finisher Ron DeSantis and 13 times that of third-place Kristi Noem. Trump made it clear that a third-party candidacy is not the offing, for him at least. Blessed be he who refuses to commit political suicide. Trump, being transactional by nature, knows better.

It’s still Trump’s party, as I’ve previously argued, though one might wonder in what kind of shape Trump will be, physically and psychologically, four years hence, when his likely opponent would be Kamala Harris, who never saw a lie she didn’t consider first in terms of its political utility, which makes her just another D.C. bed bug.

More likely, to my mind, is a Ron DeSantis-Kristi Neom ticket. Other front runners might include Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley. Challenges from the anti-Trump pseudo-conservative wing of the party would include Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney. As of today, however, I’d say, there is no path to nomination that doesn’t run through Trump. Even swampy swamperton, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has tacitly acknowledged as much.

More interesting to my mind is the ranking of issues in said polling, with election integrity (62%) running well ahead of more traditional kitchen-table conservative pain points like border security (35%), the economy (32%), gun rights (26%), taxes (22%), national security (20%) and abortion policy (16%).

For my left-leaning friends, this probably reads as the triumph of misinformation and QAnon-style conspiracy theories. I’m not of the belief that Trump was necessarily denied a landslide victory, but I am not afraid to assert that our election process is a shit show, systemically not up to the standards set forth by the likes of post-war Iraq. Maybe that purple dot thing isn’t a bad way to go, kind of the club stamp of democracy.

Four years may seem a long way off, but it’s really not, and I fear that we’re marching toward a political abyss; that the failure of our politicians to address well-founded concerns surrounding mass mail-in voting, error-riddled voter rolls, the death of voter ID, and the plainly extra-legal actions of state election officials and absence of legal remedy for same (thanks for nothing, SCOTUS) represents an existential threat to democracy and our peaceful co-existence; for if a plurality of the voting population does not believe in the essential propriety of national electoral outcomes, in a country so politically and cultural polarized, the cancer of political violence and mass social unrest will metastasize.

It’s high time that the adults in the room, if they exist, take a step back from the uber-cynical, morally bereft trench warfare of institutional party politics and mainstream media shout fests (yes, I’m including Newsmax and Fox News) and consider how we work together to keep this thing from going altogether off the rails. And don’t look to CPAC or its leftist equivalent for answers. You won’t find any.

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Read the full list of CPAC’s presidential candidate straw poll — click on Forum.

Texas Goes Off-Grid

By David Amaya

Amid President Biden’s plan to boost America's dependence on renewable energy, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a retaliatory executive order. It directs “every state agency to use all lawful powers and tools to challenge any federal action that threatens” natural gas in the state. Only three weeks after Abbott’s attempt to strengthen the natural gas industry’s defenses against federal oversight, the state’s entire energy grid nearly collapsed. Sources reveal that Texas was minutes and seconds away from a complete shutdown that would have lasted for months.

Several state leaders gave excuses as to why the state’s vulnerable power system failed millions of Texans. Gov. Abbott blamed non-renewables for the outage though 26 of the total 30 gigawatts lost in the blackout were traced back to natural gas. Former Republican Gov. Rick Perry stated that Texans would rather lose power than be part of the national grid system, as the state recorded several fatalities from hypothermia, including the death of 11-year-old Cristian Pavon. Despite being warned of the grid’s vulnerability in 2011, Texas took no action to weatherize the equipment. Texan leadership, in private and public sectors, failed us.

It is time Texas reframe climate change policy as infrastructure policy. Infrastructure policy includes more than merely weatherizing energy equipment; It calls for the mitigation of the severity a polar vortex has on roads and property by reducing carbon emissions. Texas has its energy grid system to show off its exceptionalism, but those days are now over. Think of millions of Texans observing how the free-market failed them. Depending on what Texas does next, the federal government may need to intrude and be part of the solution that regulates the industry.

Texas may well have looked at California to develop a Plan B for its constituents in the event of a blackout. California forces its energy providers to have a reserve of electricity for this exact reason. Not only that, but California is also part of a broader national energy-grid that allows them to borrow energy from other states. Texas has no such security. It relies on free-market competition to resolve these changes in energy demand. Texas, like California, must force the energy sector to come up with safeguards; the state has enforcement power for a reason.

Texans survived nature’s cold shoulder and the folly of Texas leadership. Despite the differences in each state’s party politics, California and Texas both have experience with large-scale energy blackouts, which feel like the beginning of a new era of energy security for the entire country. When reality transcends the need for performative politics (i.e., focusing on the national anthem in football games instead of urgent issues), nature’s forces remind us that party ID alone won’t help us adapt to changing climate. Informed and responsible leadership will. A reconciliation between energy practices that sets aside cynicism for uniting cooperation is desperately needed. As Texas has come to understand, electricity is as important to our society’s foundation as democracy.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

Texas and California are Polar Opposites on Energy Regulation

By Todd Lassa

The Texas legislature has begun a comprehensive investigation on What Went Wrong, a week after a severe winter storm pushed its power grid within “minutes from failing” with three hearings by four state House and Senate committees.

More than 13 million state residents suffered no heat and electricity in sub-freezing temperatures as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas issued rolling blackouts to prevent a total collapse that experts say could have left the state without power for months.

Critics of Texas’ independent streak blame a policy that prevents the state from “borrowing” energy from neighboring states, in order to avoid federal regulations. Equipment at natural gas, coal and nuclear facilities became frozen and broke down, Time magazine reports, adding that after the last Texas freeze that caused blackouts, in 2011, federal regulators recommended the state weatherize energy equipment, including pipes, valves and other things necessary to keep the grid operating. When power in the state was back up again, many consumers were hit with energy bills of $10,000 and more, the result of unregulated price spikes by ERCOT for energy providers.

Perhaps trying to divert attention from the real problem that was affecting millions of Texans, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott blamed the state’s wind turbines that failed due to iced-up windmill parts and solar panels that collect no sunlight when it’s not sunny. (34 gigawatts were down in Texas on February 15, with wind representing just 4 gigawatts of that total.) Fox News’ prime time commentators directed blame to the “Green New Deal” proposal by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, to combat climate change, even though it remains only a proposal.

The energy crisis in Texas draws comparison with rolling blackouts in California last summer and fall, which were the result of extreme weather on the opposite end of the spectrum. California’s “first rolling blackouts in nearly 20 years,” according to the Los Angeles Times, affected less than half a million homes and businesses on August 14, for between 15 minutes and 2-1/2 hours at a time, with 321,000 more customers experiencing eight-minute to 90-minute blackouts the next evening.

Extreme heat and forest wildfires across the state caused the blackouts, and because neighboring states also suffered record high temperatures, California was not able to buy power from them.

California energy officials “didn’t line up the right sources and didn’t take climate change” causing the extreme temperatures “into account,” according to the LA Times.

As usual in politics, it comes down to following the money. Either state could proceed at considerable cost building out renewable energy sources with the hope the burgeoning industry will create new jobs, or continue to protect relatively cheap, relatively reliable fossil fuel sources and maintain that industry’s level of employment.

It raises the issue of regulation vs. de-regulation – and even the question of what regulation is for a public utility.

Fortunately, we have a left-column pundit from Texas, and a right-column pundit from California, to sort this all out.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

•Email comments to editors@thehustings.news

Texas Faces California’s ‘Green’ Energy Supply

By Bryan Williams

Welcome to the club, Texas! California has been mismanaging its electrical power grid for going on 20 years. How can the two largest states in the nation by population, both with vast natural resources and human ingenuity fail their residents like this? It is 2021. Citizens should not be without electricity in the United States because of political and managerial problems.

That Texas is red and California is blue is also a conundrum. How can both political parties (California has been run by Democrats for nearly a generation -- Governator Schwarzenegger acted like a Republican for all of two years or so -- but that’s for another column -- and Texas, dominated by Republicans) get this so wrong?

I can’t speak to Texas’ woes, but I can to California’s. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis rushed in where only fools dare tread back in 2001, and actually put the state into the electricity buying business using taxpayer dollars, in order to stave off erroneous shortages of electricity due to market manipulation of California’s electricity supply. By the late 2010s and early 2020s, California’s electricity problem developed different causes with the same results: Millions left without power in the state that gave us the iPhone, PayPal, Tesla, and is home to Alphabet/Google, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Stanford University (that is to say -- places with LOTS of smart people.

Why? Because for years our politicians have replaced reliable electrical production with renewable resources like solar and wind to save us from the evils of CO2 pollution. When the sun is shining and the wind is blowing, California is a net exporter of electricity. But the sun sometimes is hidden behind clouds, and the wind doesn’t always blow. Meanwhile, the state’s nearly 40 million residents need more and more electricity to power those iPhones, Teslas, and all those Chromebooks (made by Google – one of which I am typing on now) that millions of kids need to be taught at home due to COVID school shutdowns. A brilliant, potential solution to California’s unstable energy supply is to use old electric car batteries to store excess electricity from solar and wind farms, but those “battery farms” are still years away. Really, how will that look to have stacks and stacks of greasy old car batteries next to those gleaming solar panels?

At the same time, baseline electricity production like (brace yourselves - I’m going to say something controversial) clean nuclear power is being shut down all over the state. Why? Because anything nuclear must be bad (right?), and because of short-sighted politicians in Washington, our nuclear power plants aren’t allowed to recycle their fuel like those in Europe, so we have to store spent nuclear fuel rods in pools of water in open air. Brilliant!

As for natural gas power plants, they emit too much CO2, and use fossil fuels to make electricity, though the California plants make more than enough energy from this to feed the entire state. What about hydro-electric power? Here’s another clean, renewable source of electricity, right? More and more of these century-old plants are being decommissioned because California’s left-leaning politicians are worried about their effect on fish. Meanwhile, California ratepayers (who pay the highest rates in the nation) get to sit in the dark and the heat, and now, the smoke. Now, California utilities are allowed to shut off power for wildfires sparked on land that state and federal political officials have for years failed to clear out. Meanwhile, those same politicians have failed to hold our electric utilities accountable for running the shoddy equipment that can spark fires, in the first place.

So to repeat, welcome, Texas! One question: When can we shut down the politicians and get back to the basics of providing electricity in the richest state in the richest nation in the world?

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•Read Stephen Macaulay’s commentary on President Biden’s supply chain review — Click on Forum above.

One Step Forward, Two Back

By Stephen Macaulay

Although there are certainly metrics associated with bringing kids back to the classrooms across the country, a country where the COVID-19 numbers are beginning to decline — but decline from a high place to what still should be an inconceivable place, were it not that we’ve become inured to large numbers (it is still a really big number, folks) — it seems that the anecdotal is important in thinking about this issue.

Kids and teachers are human beings, which is something that can be readily overlooked when they are turned into metrics. And let’s not forget about the other people who make schools operate, whether it is the absolutely important janitorial staff or the bus drivers or the school administrators. There are plenty of people who are involved that transcends the teacher-pupil ratio.

So, the anecdote.

I have a niece who is a third-grade teacher in Southwest Michigan. Before the pandemic, her parents, who live in Southeast Michigan, would periodically travel west, not only to see their daughter, but to bring her essential school supplies that they bought because (1) they knew their daughter, who was also buying things like paper and pencils, wasn’t exactly making a whole lot and (2) the school district didn’t have the funds either. As you may have learned of late, Southwest Michigan is an area where there isn’t a whole lot of interest in things like tax increases, even if it is for school children.

Teachers, like my niece, want to teach. They didn’t go into that profession thinking that they’re going to get rich. And as my niece has discovered, part of her income is going to support her students.

My niece has been back in the classroom for several weeks now. Whereas in a pre-pandemic year she would go in on weekends to decorate the classroom with educational materials, now she goes in on weekends to assure that there is proper spacing and to do some additional Lysol wiping.

Clearly, priorities change.

Although the school district she teaches in is literally about 10 miles from the Pfizer plant where the vaccine is made, she has yet to get her first shot: it will happen next week. It will be a Moderna jab. Do you want to know what my niece says is one of her biggest challenges while teaching during a pandemic?

“The kids want to hug one another.”

Yes, we’re talking about people here.

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While the U.S. is deservedly renowned for many of its universities, when it comes to primary and secondary schools, things aren’t so swell.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) runs the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which “measures 15-year-olds’ ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.”

How well did U.S. middle schoolers do compared with those in other parts of the world in the most recent survey (2018)? Thirteenth place.

China, separated into four divisions for the survey ((1) Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; (2) Singapore, (3) Macao and (4) Hong Kong) are in the first four positions.

To get a sense of performance, the students in the B-S-J-Z grouping scored 555 on reading, 591 in math and 590 in science.

In the U.S. those numbers are 504, 502 and 505.

Which ought to be an argument that we need to get students back into classrooms ASAP.

But here’s the thing. While it can most certainly be argued that local districts have local concerns and consequently don’t need some Big Government program to tell them what to do, the dirty little secret that doesn’t seem to want to be acknowledged is that: The pandemic is something that no one—local, state, regional, national—knew how to deal with. There is no handbook with protocol in it.*

Note how the CDC keeps changing its recommendations. It isn’t because it doesn’t know what it is doing. It is because things keep changing.

It is absurd to think that a school superintendent in any district in the country — to say nothing of the teachers, bus drivers, custodial staff, etc. — is a skilled epidemiologist who knows everything that one needs to know to keep people from being sick.

This takes the know-how of people who deal with these life-and-death situations on a daily basis.

Yes, there is huge frustration on behalf of parents who want their kids back in schools.

But to rush things, to think that bad things won’t happen simply because “damn it they won’t” will likely move things one step forward and then two in reverse.

And that surely won’t help the next ranking for the U.S. in the OECD global survey.

*Although it is worth noting an advisory group that was established by George H.W. Bush in 1990, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wrote a document in August 2009, “Preparations for 2009-H1N1 Influenza,” to help mitigate the effects of the swine flu epidemics. And prior to Obama leaving office a 69-page report, “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents,” was developed by the National Security Council and presented to the executive branch — and was reportedly — and evidently — ignored by the Trump administration.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.

The School Opening Conundrum

By Charles Dervarics

A few years back, I visited a high-poverty middle school during a lockdown, with students confined to classrooms and the doors closed. It also was a 90-degree day in an old building without air conditioning. Observing a math class, I couldn’t help but notice how the teacher had strategically placed 19 small and medium-size fans around the room, generating air flow to take advantage of the one open window. Clearly, she had faced similar challenges before, probably using her geometry skills for the best fan placement.

While this visit took place before COVID, I sometimes think about that school – still open during any normal academic year – when considering how fast schools should reopen in 2021.

With medical facilities and some colleges open for months now, conventional wisdom says it shouldn’t take that long for most K-12 schools to offer more than remote learning. With PPE, partitions, masks, and a goal to vaccinate teachers, it makes sense to offer in-person learning especially for low-income youngsters with the least technology access and the most chance of falling behind. But just as achievement among schools can vary greatly, so do the facilities and crowding that teachers and students have to deal with on a daily basis.

National debate on this issue has erupted anew now that President Biden has pledged to reopen the majority of schools during his first 100 days in office. But that plan is putting the president in crosshairs with some teacher unions, who warn of the risks posed by overcrowding, substandard ventilation systems and lagging vaccination rates.

Similar debates are playing out across the country, as typified by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s long battle with the Chicago Teachers Union on school reopening. And in San Francisco, the city just sued its own school district, citing a lack of planning and vision to get back to in-person instruction.

Meanwhile, Republicans have remained largely unified in calling for schools to re-open. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, recently called remote learning a “pale shadow of proper schooling” and said the science shows that schools can offer in-person instruction. Earlier this month, the House GOP tried to require schools to provide a reopening plan before getting funds from last December’s COVID relief bill. Democrats rebuffed that idea.

This GOP message plays well with its base. In some communities, it’s not uncommon to see residents who have replaced their Trump 2020 signs with signs pushing for school re-openings. A Republican push on this issue also may help recapture the attention of suburban parents weary of the school-at-home trend.

According to Burbio, a research and data company, about 39% of schools are currently open for traditional, in-person learning. That leaves the administration until late April – the end of Biden’s first 100 days – to reach the 50% mark.

On Feb. 12, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also offered a possible way forward. The agency outlined a series of steps to promote safe school openings, including use of masks by students, teachers and staff, social distancing, handwashing, strong cleaning and maintenance practices and speedy contact tracing in response to COVID cases. With the school year more than half over, those guidelines may arrive just in time.

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•Address your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Low Risk to School-Age Youth vs. Being Deprived of Learning, Socialization

By Andrew Boyd

I met recently with a friend and colleague whose spouse and he made a decision some years back to pursue public schooling for their two young children, despite having the resources to have put them into private institutions. They are preparing now to graduate their son to the public middle school, which is not as well regarded as was the elementary program; however, they imagined that their son, and a couple dozen of his friends and their parents, could do some good in helping this school to advance and grow.

Then, the pandemic. Then two weeks to slow the spread. Then national lockdowns. And as our great national nightmare dragged on, many of those same parents have decided that they will be enrolling their kids in private institutions going forward. Add this little story to a growing pile of evidence favoring the argument that the extended national lockdown, in particular as it relates to schools, has been a complete disaster of both economic and social policy.

The costs of these policies are far-flung and harder to measure in the near-term relative to the daily updates on COVID infections and deaths, and as we all know, if it bleeds it leads, the ever-present failure of journalism to take its responsibility seriously. Add to that the disease of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has run wild through our political, social and media institutions, accompanied as it is by all loss of perspective, which only compounds the problem: That is, our inability, as a people to engage in reasoned, rational and thoughtful discussion of deadly serious issues. In such environs, all suffer, but none so much as the children, deprived of learning, socialization, protections from abuse and despair. One can hardly imagine the scale of this tragedy.

Now, as both COVID and TDS ebb, we see all kinds of interesting after-effects, including the breaking of bonds between staunch Democratic, even leftist, institutions such as the Chicago mayor's office and San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the teachers’ unions. Said unions will not escape unscathed, as the masses take note of their moral depravity, abject cowardice, and total lack of commitment to the children they purport to serve. So, too, with that megalomaniacal, Emmy-award nominated, dare I say Trump-esque simulacrum of a human being, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D-NY, who may yet get his just desserts if Joey from Scranton lives up to his promise of a depoliticized DOJ (not holding my breath, exactly).

Need I revisit the science as it stands today (understanding evolves, you see)? The almost statistically insignificant danger to our children from COVID, the presence of a 95%-effective vaccine, soon to be broadly administered to “essentials,” or the countervailing dangers presented by this sham that is virtual schooling? Surely, all reasonable and reasoning people are beginning to see the need for change and fast. That, at least, is my hope.

We all have a stake in this, unquestionably, so the fact that I have three school-age children grants me no special ownership of the issue or moral high ground. My children, as best I can tell, are extraordinarily well-adapted, loved and supported, and the damage to their lives is arguably minimized, but I can see in their eyes a pressing sense of loneliness and a creeping despair. It’s not just COVID we’re fighting here. It’s the tragedy of the human condition and the ever-so-thin layer of social organization, friendship, support and shared sense of purpose that keep us all from the edge of the abyss. We must work now to repair and uphold these structures, lest we lose a grip on the whole damned thing.

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•Read Stephen Macaulay on Trump vs. McConnell, and Bryan Williams on censured Republican moderates ; Click on FORUM.