Every August, I repost a piece of satire I wrote several years ago. I ask, “What if fortunes were reversed?” when funding public education and the military.
Since it was first published, the current situation has become significantly worse. According to a recent study by the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, “state funding for the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools has barely increased, by an average of just 1 percent a year after adjusting for inflation. During this same time, state spending on tax breaks and subsidies for private schools has gone up by over $7 billion – a 408 percent increase – adjusted for inflation.”
Funding for K-12 public education has long suffered from class and racial discrimination, since a significant proportion of local school districts’ budgets come from property taxes and local and state taxes. We’ve known for years that residential zip codes —where a child grows up— are “more predictive of social mobility and economic fate than any other national metric.” Local public school boards have become a flashpoint for the cultural wars.
In Texas, a social studies textbook claimed that “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.” The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards on African American history claim that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” Currently, Presidential candidate Donald Trump has pledged to abolish the Department of Education, sweeping away provisions to protect the rights of minority students of all sorts who have historically been denied proper education as a fundamental human right.
Of course, you can always get your kid a backpack with a built-in Kevlar bullet-proof shield. “Give your kids the peace of mind you deserve!”
What follows is my yearly reflection, “Reversal of Fortunes: What if schools enjoyed pork-barrel largesse and the military depended on corporate charity?”
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A daydream
What if schools enjoyed pork-barrel largesse and the military depended on corporate charity?
One recent slow morning in August, the grocery stores’ circulars in the newspaper caught my attention. And I wondered how things might be different if certain fortunes were reversed. Instead of “back-to-school,” it’s “back-to-basic-training” discount offers. Imagine the following:
- At Ingles, earn $1,000 for mops for the Navy and boots for the Army when you use your Advantage™ Card. And keep your eyes out for our “Box Tops for Top Guns” special deals to ensure cockpit decal maintenance.
- Whole Foods’ brand purchases ensure a steady supply of camouflage face grease for our special forces. Don’t forget to relink for special deals at Lockheed Martin. SEAL Teams count!
- Bi-Lo offers tools for troops. Each of the more than 800 U.S. military bases outside the U.S. has benefited from this unique program, netting more than $9 million in free equipment for every branch of the service.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, these headlines from major media outlets:
- Fox News: “Whining base commanders grousing again about how much personal money they have to spend decorating barracks.”
- NBC: “Congressional leaders unable to round up votes necessary to defeat another multi-million dollar ‘supplemental’ educational appropriation. The Minority Leader of the House of Representatives claims the Department of Education budget is already ‘bloated’ with unnecessary pork.”
- ABC: “Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee hearings underway for alleged corruption in ‘no-bid’ contracts to fulfill private companies’ ‘end-of-grade testing’ services.”
- CBS: “Pentagon brass say ‘bake sales no way to adequately fund quality national defense.’”
- Associated Press: “Investigative reporter uncovers widespread complaints by Marine officer corps that merit pay is tied to low combat injury reports and exaggerated readiness testing.”
Oh, I almost forgot—the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the plan to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal will cost a half-trillion ($500,000,000,000).
The Department of Defense will need to up its game to raise these funds. There are plenty of options. Here are a few suggestions for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
- Mobilize designated Girl Scout cookie sales and ramp up lemonade stand sites.
- Produce special star-studded concert fundraisers at the Grand Ole Opry, Carnegie Hall, Preservation Hall, and the Hollywood Palladium.
- Offer corporate naming rights to the 440 military bases in the U.S. (A few international conglomerates might be interested in the same for the 800 or so U.S. military bases abroad.)
- Create a lottery for active duty non-commissioned personnel: Winners of thousand-dollar bets get to eat in the officers’ dining room for a month.
- Launch a GoFundMe campaign, marketed by billboards, public service announcements, and social media ads. Rent out National Guard armories for square dances and local cornhole competitions.
- Put in rows of seats in a B-2 bomber for billionaire joyrides. Strip the Nimitz aircraft carrier to a skeletal crew and rent out the remaining bunks as a family cruise option.
- Offer weekend packages at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune shooting range for weekend warriors to hone marksman skills with automatic rifles and machine guns. (Participants must provide their own ammo.)
- Offer late-night drone parties at Randolph Air Force Base, with free bourbon and joy stick access to unmanned combat aerial vehicles to fire off one or more Hellfire missiles anywhere in the world. ($150,000 per shot, plus drone fuel cost.)
- For those on a budget, rent seats on a U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter (barf bags at no additional cost). Or ask President Biden to host major political donors on Marine One chopper party day trips to Camp David. (Barf bags are extra, and you must tip the pilot.)
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This was written with thanksgiving for the teachers and educational administrators who know that knowledge is more than information, character is not subject to cost analysis, and learning potential exceeds the boundaries of test results. Don’t just thank a teacher. Argue for a different definition of national security.
Curator of prayerandpolitiks.org, an online journal at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action, and author of, most recently, In the Land of the Willing: Litanies, Prayers, Poems, and Benedictions. He was the founding director of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America and founding co-pastor of Circle of Mercy Congregation in Asheville, North Carolina.