What a waste of American brain power

Been there...done that. I've lived and worked in Atlanta, Atlanta University, and Washington, D.C. All are full of hard working and dedicated individuals who would benefit by some real leadership and management skills, and a smart mission statement to provide unity of effort. Add in factors like poor education at all levels and little overseas experience and respect for other ways of living and thinking, and it seems we Americans have reached a crescendo of wasteful abuse of our best asset, our American brain power. And this abuse has been going on for a long time, like for at least half a century.

It is not limited to the present federal government in D.C. Rather that seems to be a culmination of past decades of advancing mismanagement, acceptance of failure, repeating past failures, and a simple ignorance of confusing monetary obligations with actual results. Blame our education system for our present day leaders if you will. And after all we Americans do have good intentions. And in fairness, we voters have had a lot to due with this present state, too. Even parents paying money get some recognition, too.

Four things gall me these days.

First is that the USA military has somehow let itself get hoodwinked into nation building in the middle east and the many tribal areas there. I got into the turf on this one too, when one of my GaTech students filled a State Department quota a few years ago (they could not fill it). He was a DOD fellow at the time (a Marine), and went to Afghanistan for a deployment from his chicken farm in Georgia. We could sure use his expertise up here on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, but our "leaders" decided otherwise.

Second, I am galled by our infatuation with the Ivy League Schools. One person I know related that a Mechanical Engineering Degree from GaTech took a lot more work than getting an MBA from Harvard. Yet I believe our Federal government still has a preference for hiring Ivy League types. Now I also think the moms and dads of such Ivy League students are sharp, but I question how much of that "sharpness" gets passed on to their kids; and then why they even get a preference over some other American, like a Utah State grad? Like the title suggests, we have a lot of brain power in our wonderful country, and it ought to be rewarded. Even common sense says that is to our advantage.

Third, a lot of our smart young Americans also work to our advantage at levels below the Federal level, and should be rewarded as such. Now whether it is monetary rewards, or just voter rewards, well that is a local decision (like state, county, city, or school board). After all the mission is to benefit our future, and our Family's future in this wonderful Country. Hopefully, and somewhere along the way, even the light bulb will go on for our present local leaders recognizing and rewarding success.

Fourth, and finally, our "reporting" tends to be skewed towards and by our education system. That education of those Americans tends to focus on the various wonderful means to employ the media assets. Along the way things like "old fashioned reporting" seems to be denigrated, and even having "producers" decide what to "report" is different from even three decades ago. And all I want to do is think I know the news. Said another way, somebody else's idea of their opinion now printed on the front page as news vice on the editorial page is something I won't pay for, or even read on the internet. I would rather go to the local Hardee's in this case. Or Plan B is that I read open source news reports from other newspapers, not in the USA. Now that can be an eye opener.

So, bottom line, we have a lot of sharp Americans growing up, and I sure hope we older people help put them in the right place to benefit ourselves, and our Families. This sure sounds like a bottom up approach these days.