Writes Katie:

Thank goodness for your website. I’d still be a foaming-at-the-mouth neocon without you and the Mises Institute. This email is kind of long. I wanted to tell you and the other great writers on your site about what the Pennsylvania governor said today about college prices while on a conference call at our high school.

So–my high school had a conference call today with the PA governor, Ed Rendell. Now, I already knew this guy was a true-blue thuggish socialist, and what’s more, he was holding this conference call to whip up support for his new state/taxpayer/theft-funded “tuition relief” program. Our journalism teacher told us to create a list of questions to ask about the new program. Most people asked if accepting this money would lessen their debt, how much would they receive, the whole “where’s my handout” spiel. A lot of kids did want to know where the heck this money was coming from, since our state has a budget deficit of over ONE BILLION DOLLARS. I submitted the following questions for his review:

1. This new law will not entice anyone, students or parents, to save money for college. The key goal will be repaying it–spending it.

2. This proposal takes money away from middle to higher income parents to pay for lower-income families, leaving the middle class funding the lower class and without any means to send their kids to college with their own money. Is that fair?

3. How many kids whose parents make below $32000 or the “official number” go to college, anyway? Where does the leftover money go?

4. What if your proposed video poker tax does not create enough revenue to sustain the program?

5. Isn’t Pennsylvania already bankrupt or deep in debt? Why in the world would we create new programs, then?

6. We accepted stimulus package money from the national government. Isn’t that law and its hand-out blatantly unconstitutional?

7. It seems the government may have helped to inflate college costs by providing so much financial aid. Colleges are no long responsive to the market, which is why headlines scream every year about skyrocketing college tuition prices. Can cancer cure itself? I don’t think so. Why not cut all financial aid programs to force colleges to lower prices to maintain their business? Then, why not cut all kinds of taxes across the board to put more money back into consumers’ pockets to pay for more education?

Well, the conference call was at four o’clock, and I was the only student able to stay, so I got to ask the governor any question on the sheet. Now, since the questions were pre-reviewed, my teacher and I weren’t sure if he’d even let us ask any of them. We waited through many skim-the-surface kind of questions from other students about how much they would owe after the new program “helped” them and their families, how the state government would pay with it (they would tax video poker in bars–Fast Eddy loves to condemn gambling, then legalize it and tax it to death), and to ask if out-of-state residents could enjoy the same benefits.

My teacher and I were getting ready to pack up and hang up the phone when the moderator said, “Well, we have time for one more question, and this one’s from Katie…”

We both leapt for the phone, and after pressing the speaker button, the moderator said that Rendell wanted to address the first question. I said, “Actually, governor, I want to talk about how government aid inflates college prices. Colleges can keep raising their prices because they know that the government will pick up the tab, and they’ll keep their same profit margins. But no responsible business would raise its proces above what its consumer base could afford! I think we should stop all government aid to make them lower their prices.”

“Cutting aid programs would be disastrous,” Rendell growled. “And colleges depend on the endowments the state gives them…”

“So they’re not profitable? They’re losing money? Every year?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes, they are,” Rendell said. He mentioned public AND private colleges not making any profit whatsoever. “None of the colleges in Pennsylvania are profitable. None.”

I was staggered. How much taxpayer money is needed every year to bail out all of these colleges? What about Grove City College, since they refuse government aid? How much money, exactly, has been wasted on these financial black holes? The conference call ended soon afterwards. I can’t believe Rendell said that. I wonder if it’s actually true, or if he’s lying to support his program. I don’t know.

Sorry again for the long email. I don’t know if this kind of event is crucial or not. I figured I should let some other anti-statists hear about this, though.