Winning the Future – Or Sabotaging It?

What is happening in Texas and in the U.S. Congress, it is a study in contrasts - and similarities.

The question is whether the actions proposed on each side will either “Win Our Future” – Or sabotage it. Here are some headlines that lay out the cold facts and hard truth that we face as a nation, and as a state:

“US FALLS IN WORLD EDUCATIONS RANKINGS - now ‘Average’ “

“US LAGS IN LIFE EXPECTANCY GAINS”

“ TEXAS RANKS LAST IN NATION IN % ADULTS WITH HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS”

"USA STUDENTS FALLING SHORT in SCIENCE -

“ TEXAS RANKS 50th AMONG STATE IN PROVIDING HEALTH

CARE COVERAGE AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES TO CHILDREN”

“THREE OUT OF FOUR APPLICANTS ARE REJECTED BY OUR MILITARY DUE TO OBESITY, CRIMINAL RECORDS AND LACK OF A HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMA”

So what is our solution? The goal of Global American is to regain and retain No. 1 in the World.

In the middle of the biggest economic crisis in Texas history – a record $15 to $30 billion shortfall, the first order of business for the GOP dominated Texas legislature this week was….Voter ID!

This is the Governor’s No. 1 declared emergency after a sweep election? Today Texas ranks 50^th (dead last) in providing health care coverage and mental health services to children. Texas has more fatalities from child abuse and neglect than any other state in the nation. Texas’ solution? Laying off 80,000 teachers – our state’s brain trust --cutting health services for children and ending the TEXAS Grants that has provided financial aid to new college students. According to Steve Murdock of Rice University, these statistics “do not bode well for our future.”

Is this the nation’s role model of success? How will cutting 25% from health and education services for Texas/American children who lag every state in the nation help us compete with the world whose math and science skills are better than ours?

How will dropping 200,000 more children from pre-K help Texas - or our nation - develop the next generation of highly skilled workers and competitive citizens to achieve world leadership in a global high tech 21^st century? Or do we just dominate the burger flipping sector?

Cutting education in this new world economy –where the national winner is the one with the newest, best technology-- is like committing economic suicide. Without a laser focus on education America risks becoming a nation of burger flippers losing out in a world of PhD’s who will be inventing new 21^st century technologies. China now has the fastest supercomputer in the world. Complacency and misguided priorities are not our friend. The USA is even throwing out PhD’s our universities train – so they have to leave the U.S. - and compete against us instead of helping us maintain our high-tech edge.

Did you know that less than 1/3 of our Congress reps have a passport? That means they have not been outside the USA. That means they have no idea of what is really going on in other countries we are competing with. Until I went to China, I had read books. None of it prepared me for what I found. That means that our own Congress reps don’t understand the huge advances being made in places like China and India that are catching up --and passing us-- in high technology, or how a trade war is not in our best interest (every $1 billion on our exports is another 50,000 jobs in USA).

On Saturday’s Global American radio program, we discuss how to return America to No. 1 (it will take a global strategy). We will talk about how failure to invest in American cutting edge technology and the education needed by our citizens to invent and manufacture tomorrow’s products could kill off what future we have. We are fiddling while our own Rome burns.

Texas No. 50 in the percentage of people with high school diplomas is not going to put Texas in the lead in the future any more than it will help the USA that our education system is now ranked just “average” according to the OECD. “This is a wakeup call for America” says Arne Duncan. That’s mild. I call it American economic suicide.

Listen in Saturday at 9 am Central on Business 1110 AM, streamed on www.BUSINESS1110KTEK.com (or 24/7 under ‘Favorite Programs’ podcast on www.GlobalAmerican.org) -- see if you don’t agree with some of my proposed solutions -- that we need to get our priorities right, assume some personal responsibility, and not discard our national brain trust of teachers which undercuts the next generation of Americans. We are at a national crossroads, made all the harder now that our status as the world’s No. 1 creditor nation was lost a decade ago.

Texans and Americans could be devastated by short sighted actions on our part at this crucial juncture. Listen as we discuss solutions – including things like tax reform, on Global American radio.