Useless Government

~Opinion/Editorial~ EDITORIAL

I have a conflict. I don’t much like Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s new Education Secretary. I sued her once.

She and her sleazy husband, Vince, owned a circus called World Wrestling Entertainment. When I did a silly ABC news video on how the matches are staged, one of their 280-pound actors beat me up. A wrestler said Vince told him to do it.

But now, I like what Linda’s doing!

As Education Secretary, she’s telling students to pay back their loans, saying, “There’s no such thing as loan forgiveness. It just gets transferred to someone else. That’s just not fair!” It’s not. Yet students got used to not paying. Today, most don’t pay their loans back.

The Biden administration encouraged that. Even after the Supreme Court struck down his student loan forgiveness program, Biden tweeted, “They didn’t stop me,” and kept cancelling student debt.

But why should college students, who are, on average, richer than other Americans, get free money? Truck drivers don’t get loan forgiveness for buying their trucks. G o v e r n m e n t backed student loans are welfare for the better off.

Colleges abused the handouts by raising tuition about three times faster than the rate of inflation.

Students and parents rarely complained, or even asked, “Why is tuition (at some schools) $60,000!?” They didn’t push back because taxpayers pay so much of the bill.

Colleges chase that taxpayer money by offering kids ridiculous perks like the “jungle retreat” and “in-house day spa” at the University of Missouri.

A university official even bragged to my producer, “It used to be ‘reading, writing and arithmetic. We’re now the fourth ‘R’ -- recreation.”

Other schools chase taxpayer money by offering courses like surfing (UC Santa Barbara), Lady Gaga (University of South Carolina), zombies (Columbia College Chicago), taco literacy (University of Kentucky) and How to Watch TV (Montclair State University).

Fun!

But why should taxpayers pay for that!?

It raises a more basic question: Why is there a federal Education Department?

There shouldn’t be. It’s largely useless.

More people realize that today. During Trump’s last term, I asked his first Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, if she would abolish the department. “No,” she replied. “There are important roles to play to ensure students are not discriminated against.” How times have changed.

In The Free Press, she writes, “Shut down the department ... (It) no longer needs to exist.”

Trump says he wants to shut it, but Congress probably won’t give him the votes, and teachers unions fight to keep the federal money flowing, shouting that closing the department “will destroy families, communities and students!”

Gullible media agree. A CBS news anchor claims, “The department helps 26 million kids in poverty and 7.5 million kids with disabilities.” “It’s not doing any of those things,” says education policy researcher Corey DeAngelis in my new MAGNOLIA GAZETTE “ERROR OF OPINION MAY BE TOLERATED WHERE REASON IS LEFT FREE TO COMBAT IT” ...THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1801 LUCIUS LAMPTON, M.D., Editor-in-Chief MARK I. LAMPTON, Business Manager ALYCE SIMPSON, Managing Editor NANCY MORRIS, Office Manager, Osyka Reporter, Publisher’s Assistant NANCY LEBLANC, Contributing Editor JAMES HARRIS, Contributing Editor DAVID MORRIS, Contributing Editor CARROLL CASE, Contributing Editor DWALIA SOUTH, M.D., North Miss. Correspondent MELISSA JOHNSON, Social Editor STANLEY HARTNESS, M.D., Natchez Trace Correspondent SCOTT ANDERSON, M.D., Fine Arts Editor TOMMY YOUNG, Sports Photographer CHARLES W. “TREY” EMERSON, M.D., Poetry Editor LUCINDA LAMBTON, European Correspondent BENNETT SIMPSON, Digital Editor FREDERICK W. REIMERS, Outdoors Editor FORD DYE, M.D., Oxford Beat Writer TERRY JACKSON, City Editor JIM MCELWEE, County Editor JUDY CAUSEY LOVE, S.E. Alabama Contributing Editor MAC GORDON, SOWEGA Bureau Chief CRAWFORD D. LAMPTON, Gazette Photographer GARLAND D. LAMPTON, Gazette Autos Editor CATHERINE BROWN, Columnist BECKY NELMS CURRIE, Political Editor/Photographer (Ming Dynasty Cotillion Queen) IN MEMORIAM: Literary Ed. Richard C. Wood (1925-2014) Louis J. Lyell, Contributing Editor (1925-2023) Guy Geller, Contributing Editor (1936-2024) Tommy Covington, My Mixed-Up Files Editor (1943-2024) Published by THE MAGNOLIA GAZETTE PUBLISHING CORPORATION on Thursday of every week at 280 Magnolia Street, Magnolia, Miss, 39652 Phone (601) 783-2441 Fax (601) 783-2091 Email address: magnoliagazette@bellsouth.net nancymgazette@gmail.com Office Hours: Mon., Tues., Wed. 9-5 Established December 7, 1872 by Captain J. D. Burke Periodical postage paid for at Magnolia, MS Post Office Member, Mississippi Press Association Member, National Newspaper Association