This is Viewpoints for Monday, Feb. 20, 2017

Did it to ourselves

Lets talk about Historically Black Colleges and Universities during Black History Month. When established HBCUs, I guess, educated about 85 percent or more of black college students. They produced doctors, lawyers, engineers, business people, professional athletes, pilots and so on. Just like today, most were just as good or better than their counterparts. So what happened? Integration happened and predominantly white colleges needed black students and they started to recruit only the best blacks students. Many now say HBCUs are inferior in athletics and academics, but why?

When you have the best athletes they should have a better chance of going professional and when you have the best minds it should be easier for them to get into top corporations. When your enrollment starts to drops and if you are a state school your funding decreases. You don’t have funding support from students because you don’t have that many in school. On top of that, alumni like to party in the name of their schools but won’t give back in money or time.

These factors make it extremely difficult to complete on the athletic fields, in the classrooms, facilities and staff. Stop blaming the schools and many of the honest people trying to operate them with few resources. We deserted our schools and now we criticize them but we created the situation.

More bathroom battles

I read that the NFL is threatening Texas that it will pull playoff and promotional events from Texas if legislators there pass a bathroom law forbidding men who identify as women from using public bathrooms and locker rooms. This threat mirrors the one the NBA made in North Carolina, as did the NCAA.

This growing trend among the governing bodies of U.S. sports organizations to promote and enable gender self-identity is under-reported, under-investigated and unarguably dangerous to women. Not to mention hypocritical in the extreme. A simple Google search of transgender policies of the NCAA reveals that biological men who identify as women are not allowed to participate in women’s sports teams unless they have undergone at least one year of verifiable testosterone suppression. Yet the NCAA spokesmen make no such requirement of the men whom they are now insisting be given the right to hang out in the restrooms used by the wives, girlfriends and daughters of these same titans of sport.

It isn’t any more complicated than that. The world of big sports has now joined the world of big corporations in forcing the left’s radical agenda of gender self-identity upon America. Gender self-identity, or gender fluidity is, for the uninformed, the insane belief that gender is between the ears, not between the legs. While no one was looking, big corporations and big sports have bought into, and are now promoting this belief. And no public words of protest from any prominent NCAA coach or player are anywhere to be heard. Apparently, obeying the dictates of the radical wing of social progressives is perceived as being more profitable to the NCAA, the NBA and the NFL than protecting little girls and women from the inevitable pedophiles, voyeurs and peeping Toms who will be given public places to prey upon the vulnerable.

Overpaid workers?

A little known fact by the general public is government employees do work. Consider a random IRS employee that has to know as much about the tax code as a $400/hour lawyer. Or an Air Force sheet metal worker that has to be more skilled than someone assembling a brand new Gulfstream. Or a Navy underwater welder. The examples are practically endless. There is incentive for them to leave civil service to go to the private sector. And they do. Yet that work still needs to get done, but replacing that worker is now impossible because of political grandstanding.

A completely unknown fact by the general public and even most government employees is the U.S. keeps a government owned industrial base for national security reasons. Department of Defense folks know this as the “50/50” law, but many don’t understand its purpose is strategic and not some jobs program. Our military cannot be completely beholden to contractors to maintain its trillions of dollars of equipment. That’s just common sense. I’m not picking on contractors, but their primary motive is profit not patriotism. Can you imagine how much overhauling a bomber or battleship would cost if Boeing or Northrop were the only folks with the know-how and could name the price? I can and it would be an order of magnitude more than we’re paying now using our “overpaid” federal workers.

Maintaining our civil workforce is not only mandated by Congress, it’s financially intelligent and strategically necessary. I wish someone would have explained this to the president before he hamstrung the government’s ability to do the work that needs doing.

Where’s the check?

I have a question. Why is it with the emergence of the tea party during the 2010 mid-terms and the subsequent overflow crowds at town hall gatherings around the country, those people were considered patriotic Americans exercising their right under the Constitution’s First Amendment. However, when the tables are turned and “leftists” are doing the same thing, they are called anarchists, trolls, trouble making activists who are only there because people like George Soros is paying them?

I cashed in vacation time to help my wife travel to Washington, D.C. to be a part of the Women’s March as she really wanted to participate. Does anyone have George’s email or phone number so I can get my reimbursement check?

Worst choice

Hold onto your wallets, folks. Health care costs will soon be skyrocketing. With Tom Price as secretary of health and human services, we are in for an expensive ride. He hates Medicare and plans to dismantle it and give seniors a lump sum of money for insurance shopping. He is hostile to women’s reproductive health and believes in “religious freedom,” not contraception. He is obsessed with defunding Planned Parenthood. He supports and has been tasked with repealing the Affordable Care Act with no replacement in sight. He supports big business, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. Tom Price is the worst choice possible for the people.

This story was originally published February 19, 2017 at 9:03 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Monday, Feb. 20, 2017."