In 1963, 75 cents of every public education dollar was spent on ’student services’ - teacher salaries, books, classroom materials - and the remaining 25 cents was spent on ’administration, facilities, support services’. Fifty years later, that ratio is reversed. 75 cents of every public education dollar is spent on just about everything else but the education of our kids. Where does the money go? The list is long and full of surprises. The usual suspects are present - unions, government contractors, school board insiders, lobbyists. They have the political and administrative muscle to ram through spending plans that run counter to the students’ best interests. The spending snowball usually begins with “Let’s build a new high school” - a surefire way to load up the gravy train and get the parasites circling like vultures.

Today’s high schools rival college campuses for size, facilities, construction quality and materials, electronic and lighting technologies, operating costs and maintenance. Many have Olympic swimming pools, Broadway-style theaters, collegiate-level athletic facilities and cafeterias that rival those of the Fortune 500. All of these facilities are overpriced, overbuilt and extraordinarily expensive to operate. Everyone involved in the process benefits from this except, of course, the taxpayer. The students are for the most part oblivious to their surroundings. So, who exactly benefits from this state of affairs?

Let’s begin with the school board. It’s usually packed with people predisposed to favor public employee unions, government contractors or public financiers, either through outright ignorance or because they were voted in with their support. There is no real oversight of school boards, and no legal means to compel them to be circumspect with taxpayer money.

School construction is very expensive. In fact, it’s the most expensive type of building in the US except for nuclear power plants. And no one knows why. But, because that local high school is going to cost $100 million (how did they know that going in?), bond underwriters are flying in from all over the country to shock and awe the school board with their financial prowess. Obviously, no school district can afford to build a high school with available cash. So, they will issue bonds, guaranteed by the local taxpayer, to create a 30-year mortgage. The firm that creates those bonds and sells them to investors will pocket nearly $10 million for its efforts. Not bad for 90 days work. And yes, the local taxpayer will be on the hook for it.

Schools take up lots of real estate. Usually, it’s very expensive real estate located on a main thoroughfare. That means brokers, developers, landowners, insurers and yes, teacher pension funds, vie for the opportunity to sell land to the school district, simply because the sale price will be above market, and will have traded hands several times before the sale. It’s an opportunity to play favorites, broker influence and who knows what else.

Then there’s the planning and architectural work. Once again, engineering firms, architects, interior designers, furniture companies, consultants, technologists and a whole gang of specialists buzz around trying to get a piece of the work. There are hearings, planning sessions, bidding, re-bidding and awarding the contracts - all of it an opportunity to waste money and peddle influence.

Moving along, there’s the construction itself. Savvy government contractors are adept at padding the bill, running up change orders and working the price variance in commodities like gypsum and concrete to their advantage. They are committed to using union contractors wherever possible, which also adds to the cost and pads the build schedule. But hey, what’s the problem? It’s free money.

And finally, after all the computers are installed, the refrigerators are humming and the desks have been unpacked and arranged, the students file into their new school. Is the education they’re getting any better? No. Have the teachers gotten any smarter? No. Has the curriculum improved, has the selection of books been carefully vetted? Of course not. So, $100 million later, our kids are as poorly served as they were in the previous facility. The only difference is that lots of people made lots of money off the backs of the taxpayer.

Barack and Michelle Obama chose not to send their daughters to Washington DC public schools. Not surprisingly, Barack Obama adamantly opposes choice for children attending DC public schools, characterized as the nation’s worst public school system. This is not an unusual stance for a Democratic politician. The Democratic Party in general doesn’t want any choice in education, reflecting the wishes of its major constituents - teacher unions, public employee unions, socialist activists and the ACLU. For those unfamiliar with the true mission of the ACLU, removing parental choice and parental influence in education is one of its highest priorities. ACLU members are and always have been dedicated to a socialist agenda. The ACLU is and always has been wedded to the Democratic Party.

Therefore, Democrats are unfailingly opposed to any reforms of the public education system or any serious competition. Charter schools have found Democratic politicians to consistently adversarial. Further, a good many Democrats are supporting a nationwide ban on home schooling because it poses a minor threat to the hegemony of the union-controlled public system. As test scores sink, truancy and dropout rates increase, the National Education Association and its rival American Federation of Teachers can only offer a single solution - more money. This despite the fact that the US spends more than twice as much as the next biggest spender, and still ranks 55th in scholastic achievement globally.

Teacher unions, academics and schools of education ignore calls for reform. Study after study has shown that the techniques and fads embraced by public educators and many college professors are flawed, stupid and wildly inappropriate. And still, the education monopoly plows forward, confident in its political heft and gamesmanship.

One need only to watch as DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee attempts to reward good teachers and fire incompetent teachers. The firestorm has now involved not only teacher unions and the ACLU, but Congress itself, simply because the chancellor wants to strip tenure away from truly bad teachers. But, why should elementary and secondary public school teachers get tenure when 60% of college professors don’t have tenure? In fact, tenure doesn’t even belong in public schools in the first place. The concept of tenure was developed in the late 1800s to protect the religious beliefs of a college professor, can you believe it? And here, teacher unions have applied tenure to the protection of incompetent, even dangerous, teachers who are screwing up our kids. And the Democrats back them 100 percent.

Democrats have no problem backing the teacher unions and the ACLU. After all, incompetent teachers create ignorant citizens. Ignorant citizen don’t discriminate between BS and reality when it comes to political discourse. Ignorant citizens can make their way to the voting booth as easily as informed citizens. Unions provide shuttle buses for the ones who can’t find voting booths on their own. For Democrats, a screwed up public education system is all upside and no downside. It perpetuates and grows a solid, consistent voting bloc. Could it be that Democrats are so cynical and self-serving that they are perfectly willing to ruin millions of lives, destroy this country’s future and impair opportunity for the sake of power? You betcha.

The Producer or Parasite? blog, website and all of its features are aimed at the general public - those who have only a mild interest in politics, society and where this country is headed. The goal is to get these Americans a bit more involved in the political process or to at least be aware of what’s going on. Although political wonks, junkies and insiders are more than welcome, there are plenty of other sources more focused on specific issues and more scholarly in their approach. Producer or Parasite? is not and will never be a think tank or conservative news outlet. That’s not the mission. Rather, this blog and website is here to ask questions that John Q. Public might have and then answer it in a way John Q. Public can grasp. It becomes a question of balance: where to set the bar so that every reader gets something out of the posts and weekly columns. What’s becoming obvious is the huge gap between the politically aware and the average American.

A recent study concluded that most Americans know little about the Constitution, that there are actually three branches of government, or that Presidents can’t declare wars or make treaties. And, too many Americans think the electoral college exists to prepare a citizen for public office. Further, most Americans cannot name the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader or the House Majority Leader, much less understand what they’re really up to. We’ve voted in a new President based on sound bites and saturation advertising. Europeans are laughing at us. Terrorists are sharpening their knives.

How did Americans become so utterly ignorant of their situation? Theories abound, but it’s probably just a result of the extraordinarily poor education received in public schools compounded by a media culture that doesn’t value academics or critical thinking in any form. Actually, it’s rather ironic: the failure of public education actually protects and enriches those most responsible for that failure. Ain’t America great?