Previous analyses of “by the numbers” can be accessed by entering the phrase in the search box above. This is where we look at the numbers to truly find out how good, not likely, or bad, most likely, the American political class is doing in managing our tax dollars, protecting our freedoms, and resolving major issues that affect all of us.
1) As many know, within two months of becoming President, Biden has created another illegal immigration problem at the southern border with thousands of people piling up and assaulting that border. For those that are actually able to illegally get into the country and who are taken into custody, the Biden administration has decided that it would be a good idea to put these illegal immigrants in local hotels, feed them, give them medical care, and make sure they are comfortable.
The cost of this effort is now estimated to be in the $86 million range. Meanwhile, around 550,000 Americans are homeless, about 18 million Americans are often under food stress, and millions of American have lost their jobs because of the pandemic. But rather than direct $86 million in taxpayer wealth to these needy Americans, Biden has decided that hotel accommodations for those illegally entering the country is a higher priority.
As we have discussed before, on average it takes about $2.94 to provide a homeless American a decent meal. Thus, by the numbers, that $86 million Biden is spending on housing and feeding illegal immigrants in hotels, could have been used to give every homeless American three good meals a day for about 53 days, or just under two months. What a sad state of priorities, as always, when it comes to Washington politicians and the welfare of Americans in need.
2) We have often discussed the stupidity of the “defunding the police” movement. Every place it has been done has seen a dramatic increase in crime and violence, as the numbers show:
- Kevin McCullough wrote a defund police analysis for the Townhall website back in July, “Six Cities, Six Weeks, Six Hundred Murders.”
- He highlighted what happens when Democrats who are in control of major U.S. cities go too far when it comes to blaming all police officers for the bad behavior of a few and cause respect for all police officers to go down the drain.
- New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has been a big advocate of defunding the police and his actions and the actions of the city politicians have resulted in a defunded police force which has led to city murders being up over 21% and city shootings being up over 46%.
- Los Angeles politicians defunded the LAPD budget by $150 million which helped the city experience a 250% increase in murders and a 56% increase in shootings on a June, 2020 year over year basis.
- Chicago’s Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has led the charge in her city to cut police funding while seeing the city experience over 1,500 shootings through the middle of the year, or about 350 more than the first half of 2019.
- Chicago murders were around 254 by mid year, up over the same period in 2019.
- In Washington D.C., homicides were up 13% by mid- 2020 vs. mid-2019 and yet that city’s political class is looking to cut the city’s police force budget by $15 million.
- In Philadelphia, homicides were up 25% by mid-year, shootings were up 67%, and armed violence crimes were up 29% as the city’s politicians looked to take $19 million out of the police force budget.
- Baltimore has always been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, currently riding a five year streak with at least 300 murders a year.
- They set their own all time murder record in 2019 at 348 and yet the murder rate in the city in 2020 ran higher than the 2019 record rate.
- And, of course, the city’s politicians want to reduce their police force budget by $22 million.
- Other news sources report that the circus that is Portland, Oregon has drastically reduced its police force budget while seeing a 255% increase in city murders and a 173% increase in city shootings.
3) The EDChoice organization, an organization dedicated to supporting educational choice and charter schools, recently published some distressing numbers concerning public education in this country. We have talked about this massive problem before, how the current education practices, and teacher’s unions, in this country are short changing and severely under educating the kids in this country. The numbers are quite depressing:
- All levels of government in this country spend about $621 billion a year on public education.
- This comes out to about $12,000 per student per year.
- But despite this amount of spending, the education results have not been good.
- Since 1992, the reading proficiency of high school seniors has decreased 7 percentage points.
- High school math proficiency levels have not changed over the years.
- 82% of U.S. high school seniors graduate on time but only about one third of them are ready for college from a reading and math proficiency perspective.
- According to US News and World Report, math and reading scores for fourth and eight graders have dropped since 2017, especially reading.
- 25 out of 34 nations recently surveyed have high school graduation higher than the U.S.
- The number of K-12 students in U.S. schools has increased 96.5% since 1950.
- However, the number of teachers has grown over 250% and the number of non-teaching school employees is up a whopping 386%.
Not good numbers from EdChoice which is why we need to change the way we educate kids in this country and break away from the currently failing approach and financing of public education.
Consider the following numbers not covered by their analysis:
- The Federal Department of Education’s fiscal 2021 budget is $66.6 billion.
- The Department was formed in 1980 under the Carter administration.
- Thus, it has been around for about 41 years.
- It's probably a safe bet that it has spent about a TRILLION dollars over that 41 year time period.
- And for that TRILLION dollars we have a mediocre, at best, public education system, that far under performs other nations that spend far less on government entities and per student costs.
- Consider this hypothetical number calculation: there are about 130,930 schools in this country.
- If we could magically distribute that annual $66.6 billion Department of Education budget to each school, each one would receive over $500,000 a year.
Public education in this country, as administered by American politicians, has been an expensive, wasteful, and under performing endeavor. The numbers do not lie and they show that a different approach is needed, whether it is more charter schools, more teacher and administrator accountability, or the dissolving of the Department of Education and let those resources go directly to the schools and the local school boards rather than being sent to Washington and wasted there.
That will do it for this set of numbers: Biden values and pampers illegal immigrants more than needy Americans, defund the police results in more crime, and we pay a lot of taxpayer money for less than stellar education results. The numbers do not lie even if politicians do.
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