Powerline: The U.S. Department of Education employs 4,400 people and has a current budget of $70 billion. How many children does the department actually educate? I am sure the round number approaches zero. I’ve had a few opportunities to ask liberal audiences aghast at Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos and alarmed at proposed budget cuts for the department to name one single thing a past secretary of education or the department has done that has had a meaningful effect on public education, and I can hear the crickets chirping while I await a response. I sometimes offer, “What about No Child Left Behind”? Most people on the left hate it (because it involved standards and testing), even though they can’t say very much about why (because it is an embarrassment to oppose standards and testing openly). Sometimes to twist the knife, I ask people to name three previous education secretaries. Hardly anyone can do it. Yet the Department of Education is a political sacred cow. It apparently runs on the principle of No Bureaucrat Left Behind (or Unemployed). Should be called the Department of No Education.
Likewise we could do with some close scrutiny of the Department of Energy. Now 40 years old, just how much energy as the Department of Energy produced? It’s input-to-output ratio may be worse than the Department of Education. more
One of the most useless and wasteful agencies in the federal government. If it disappeared next week, only its employees would notice. Getting rid of DOE would save the taxpayers tons of $$. They throw away tax $$ on stupid hopeless ‘renewable’ energy nonsense like biomass and tidal energy, and they create a lot of spreadsheets and push around a lot of paper and blow a lot of hot air at meetings and conferences. Get rid of it.
Education was much better before the Dept. of Education. Eliminate it now!
Don’t forget how hard the work must be to take taxes from us, lop off most of the money for salaries and fringe benifits for the bureaucrats, and then return what is left, with strings, back to us to use for our local educational pursuits!
A bureaucracy is far more powerful than Sauron’s One Ring: once it has been made, not even the Fires of Mount Doom can unmake it.
The Dept of Energy is also a part of the National Nuclear Safety Administration(NNSA). A big part of it, so not really useless on all fronts.
The budget should be $00.00 and 0 employees.
Having been employed in the education industry for the last 15 years, I have my opinion that I’ve shared here many times. The Federal DOE is dangerous. I mean “stealing the mind and spirit” from our children dangerous.
As in any industry, job or company, there are terrific people (teachers and non-teaching staff) that carry the burden of a collapsing system. I don’t know how they do it.
But out of the few that are exemplary, a smaller number of them are conservatives that want nothing to do with the agenda pushed by their peers, bosses and State/Federal DOE.
Liberals took the long view when they devised plans to take over education as well as government, news media, culture and entertainment. I don’t think we have enough time to do the same. Their intention was to take control; they weren’t concerned for the well-being of others.
We need to take back control now. Our concern IS the well-being of every human (our vulnerable children, specifically). We don’t want to lose anyone to the vile left.
$16 Million per employee?
That’s some vastly overpaid maggots, there!
Spreading their vile, evil, stultifying ignorance into every corner of America.
The real question is: “Why do we endure it?”
Cuz we’re already a bunch of ignorant sheeple, maybe?
One of the more successful destroyers of Freedom and Liberty, out there, it appears.
izlamo delenda est …
Trump should ask Secretary DeVos to come up with a five page report on what the department does and how it’s critical to the running of the country or the quality of education. Then ask for a paper on how it can be shut down within one year with whatever duties are actually necessary devolved to the States or to another Department. She (and her staff) could also write an additional 5 page paper on why it’s critical the department remain whole. Then circulate all three papers among all Members of Congress and the Governor of each State and make them public. See what the feedback is. It’s likely it would be in favor of devolving to the States and that would give Trump cover.
If you really wanna improve education “in the worst way” just use the federal government. If you want to develop energy resources “in the worst way” just use the federal government.
I remember many years ago when California schools temporarily ditched teaching phonics in favor of the whole method of reading. We went to back to school night for our kids, and the teachers all admitted off the record that they still taught phonics so the kids would learn to read.
That told me more about the education bureaucracy than anything. Return education to the locals.
@ scr_north
Sounds really good. Maybe your idea needs to be put in more than one ear in D.C.
How does one get traction for a quality idea?
The DOE represents mission creep on steroids. They had one job: US energy independence. They have spent 40 years playing pocket pool and dithering. Their investments of our tax $$$$ into moronic dreamy nonsensical idiocy like solar panels, biomass (these morons think they can grow mold on the side of a building and we can harvest it at a net energy gain), and wind have been criminal. We are on the verge of energy security with hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — with DOE contributing a few peanuts to these innovations. Time to call mission accomplished and shut it down. It is useless and it is part of The Swamp. Boy are their employees in Fat City — great facilities, plenty of $$, and no pressure to produce one damned useful piece of anything. SHUT. IT. DOWN.