AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UTAH LEGISLATURE: WHERE ARE YOU NOW THAT WE NEED YOU?

BACKGROUND:

Our preoccupation with current financial capital crises causes leaders to overlook the bigger crisis in America's human capital. Leaders commit hundreds of billions of tax dollars to various and dubious financial / banking enterprises. Meanwhile, state legislatures cut outlays for public education.

Robert Reich put it this way in a recent Marketplace editorial:

“Education is largely funded by state and local governments whose revenues are plummeting. As consumers cut back, state sales taxes are shrinking, and as home values decline local property taxes are taking a hit. Three-quarters of our states are facing budget crises. As a result, schools are being closed, teachers laid off, after-school programs cut, so-called ‘noncritical’ subjects like history eliminated, and tuition hiked at state colleges.”

Our actions resemble bad absurdist theater. We bail out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. And it has not work yet. Simultaneously, we squeeze the main sources of our human capital.

America’s future competitiveness and living standards depend on our peoples' skills, their capacities to communicate, write, solve problems, and innovate — not their ability to borrow money.

Human capital has its roots here. Financial capital moves around the globe at the speed of an electronic blip. Although banks froze global capital markets, Asia’s big money, the MiddleEast’s big moolah will return eventually, whether or not our government bails out.

Without adequate public funding, our supply of human capital will shrink further. Funding is everything whether public or private: without it, we will not attract talented people into teaching, keep classrooms small or help our youngins learn well-rounded curriculums.

In the 1970s, when I attended university, any bright kid could get funding for college. The federal government sent me checks with monotonous regularly year in, year out, year in, year out. Thanks in large part to the plutocratic attitudes of the Bush Administration, no child of a millionaire will get left behind, no matter how stupid he or she might be.


MY FIRST POINT:

Explain to me for the record why we bail out Wall Street and not our nation's public schools and colleges.

Utah needs to create a central banker for Utah’s human capital -- someone who warns us (as loudly as Ben Bernanke did) of the dire consequences to people and the local work force if we don't come up with the dough.



SECOND BACKGROUND

The Regents approved the creation of a state-sponsored Utah Valley University on 1 July. Now just when UVU needs funding at this crucial delicate point in its development, legislators prepare to bail out emotionally and financially.

We Utahns dutifully paid our taxes year in and year out. Now when the crisis comes and we really need state resources as backup, the legislature says to us, “Too bad, we don’t have the money. Tough luck. Tough it out.”

Legislators should not hide behind the lame excuse of mathematics to reduce funding higher education. Legislators have traditionally found it easy to cut here, because people generally dislike teachers and equate education with bloated bureaucracy.

Rumors abound in my UVU English department of 15-plus percent budget cuts. I have seen the legislature play this game before; I for one will not fall for it this year. When the legislature cuts “only” 9 percent, it tells teachers that it has been generous and good. No educator or teacher should accept any sort of cut with rejoicing or thankfulness.

UVU students have been good. I seriously doubt if any of our students created bogus financial products. Nor did they as a group make bad loans. The students deserve bailouts as much as the lenders. Students need all the services they can get in this crisis.


MY SECOND POINT:

Legislators must find ways to keep UVU financed, even if this means lobbying the Obama Administration and Congressional representatives for funding.


MY THIRD POINT:

The legislature should not hide behind the laws of mathematics as an excuse for downsizing government just as the poor need resources and backup. In this crisis, the legislature should increase funds for the programs that help the poor and needy.

The governor and the legislature should start lobbying Congress and the Obama Administration. We have bailed out people who behaved badly and dishonestly in the financial institutions. Now its time to protect and bail out the needy of human capital.