Liberal Education Still Important

With all the talk today about education, no one talks about the importance of a liberal education.  Despite the Conservative hatred of the word liberal, it means "free."  It is the education that free men should have in order to be able to govern themselves.  In the old days, when voting was limited to white men who owned land, they were the only ones who needed a liberal education.  Now that everybody can vote, everybody needs a liberal education.  We were close to that goal in the 1960's with the rise of cheap state universities and community colleges, but as governments have gone bankrupt, that ideal has disappeared.

Instead of seeing education as a resource that should be widely available, it is a commercial enterprise that is expensive, even for no-name colleges and universities.  Thus it has become all about money, not about learning.   All the students and the professors care about are salable skills.  Universities have become trade schools rather than centers of learning.

The Denver Post ran a front page article on higher education Sunday, but it was all about money -- funding for education.  Doing a search of the page, I did not find a single reference to the liberal arts, which was the most important role of a university a few decades ago, and certainly a hundred years ago.  Higher education has changed, and not for the better. The "bottom line" was that it's looking more and more like the State of Colorado will soon quit funding higher education entirely.

Romney VP Hopefuls Are Fiscal Failures

Two frequently discussed vice presidential hopefuls for presidential candidate Mitt Romney are Rob Portman and Mitch Daniels.  Both were the principle budget strategists for George W. Bush as heads of his Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels was head of OMB from 2001 to 2003; Ohio Senator Portman was OMB director from 2006 to 2007.

Daniels oversaw the post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq without raising taxes.  He publicly estimated the cost of the Iraq war at $50 to $60 billion. A recent Brown University study has estimated the direct cost of the Iraq war at around $750 billion.  Wikipedia says that on Daniels' watch, the US went from a budget surplus of $236 billion to a deficit of $400 billion.  Wikipedia says that on Portman's watch the US public debt increased by $469 billion.

Both of these Republican budget directors follow in the footsteps of David Stockman, Reagan's OMB chief from 1981 to 1985.  Stockman successfully led the fight for Reagan's huge tax cuts, but after cutting revenues, he was unsuccessful in cutting federal expenditures, thus beginning the series of huge budget deficits that persist to this day.  Stockman doubled the national debt from $1 trillion to $2 trillion during his tenure.  The current national debt is about $15.5 trillion.

Jobs Bill and Facebook

I am worried that there is some connection between the recently passed Jobs bill and the Facebook IPO.  Facebook has been the poster child for huge IPOs that give preference to insiders.  Facebook was limited by the old restrictions of privately held companies.  It's not clear whether the new Jobs bill will change its situation. It may be too big, maybe not.  It's already in the situation where the number of shareholders of record is limited, but the actual number of shareholders is much higher.  Goldman Sachs counts as one shareholder, but it can hold shares for its preferred clients, raising the total well beyond 500 or whatever the limit was.  Even if this law does not directly affect Facebook, it will affect new IPOs, and while it may marginally aid new businesses, it will enormously aid rich Wall Street insiders.  At the same time, as the NYT article points out, it may increase the risks of bad investments in questionable companies by small, unsophisticated investors.  I would like to know what Elizabeth Warren thinks about the bill.  Is it good for America?  Is it good for the middle class (or what's left of it)?  Or is it just good for the super rich, especially those who live in Silicon Valley?  Unfortunately I do not trust Obama to do what is best for the middle class (and the country).  He has sold out to the super rich.

Sen. Bill Frist and Denver Hospitals

I have been upset for some time about HCA's takeover of a number of Colorado hospitals.  HCA is owned by the Frist family, whom Sen. Bill Frist represented in the Senate.  Health care is a mess; hospitals are making fortunes, and Bill Frist's is one of them.  Rather than using his expertise on health care to improve it while he was in the Senate, he used it mainly to enrich himself and his family.  Although he was Senate leader, he is remembered mainly for his provide-medical-care-at-any-cost argument to keep Terri Schiavo alive.  Frist is an example of what is wrong with the American health care system, and he was a leader in the Senate.  What is good for his wallet is not necessarily good for the country.

Now, Frist's for-profit HCA plans to take over many of Colorado's not-for-profit hospitals, creating concerns that the hospitals will no longer be run for the public benefit.

On the other hand, a Catholic-conected hospital systsem, SCL, plans to expand in Colorado, raising questions about whether the hospitals taken over will provide for the full range of women's health services that they provide now, since the Catholic church opposes contraception, abortion, etc.