When I was in high school, I began attending Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix. This was before dual enrollment became commonplace. Yes, I’m that old.
Why did I go to community college while still in high school? I wanted to study philosophy. I also enrolled in literature, political science, and English composition, eager to learn from professors who had devoted their lives to teaching.
A good education should answer two questions: How will I make a living? And what makes life worth living?
I’ll never forget the first day of my first philosophy class. The professor asked a simple question: What is the good for human beings?
Not merely one good among many, or what makes you happy this afternoon. What is the highest good for human beings?
We offered answers. A Socratic dialogue followed. The professor challenged our assumptions, pressed us to defend our reasoning, and showed us weaknesses in our arguments. I left with more questions than answers, but I had discovered something extraordinary: I wanted to know the truth about the good life.
That was my introduction to community college: dedicated teachers, serious questions, and an education that awakened the mind.
About 25 years into my career as a university professor, I now have two sons taking community college classes. I want them to have the same opportunity. But community colleges face serious challenges. Enrollment fell 22% between 2010 and 2023 — about 1.7 million students — according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Recent gains have not erased that decline.
That brings me to an election many voters overlook: the community college governing board.
In Maricopa County, three candidates are running together as Change4Maricopa: business executive John David Crow for an at-large seat, entrepreneur Ryan Caracciolo in District 4, and Susan Winder, an educator and administrator with 35 years of experience, in District 3. Their campaign emphasizes affordability, workforce and health care training, and restoring community college football. Not all three races appear on every voter’s ballot.
Their candidacies draw attention to four problems that governing boards nationwide should confront.
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Community colleges exist to offer affordable education. That requires something universities are not always known for: careful spending.
An August 2026 California state audit found inadequate reserve policies at several community college districts. Four of the six districts reviewed held reserves above their own limits or the statewide median, yet none of those with high reserves had formal plans to use the money to improve student outcomes.
Governing boards should be able to explain how expenditures improve instruction, student success, or career preparation. Ideological programs deserve the same scrutiny as every other expenditure. DEI initiatives should not get a free pass because administrators regard their objectives as virtuous.
Fiscal responsibility means remembering whose money is being spent and why.
For too many students, the familiar college story is four years of study, a mountain of debt, and a diploma that leaves them wondering where the jobs went. Community colleges can offer another path.
A student interested in becoming an electrician, nurse, welder, medical technician, or semiconductor specialist should be able to identify the qualifications, complete an affordable program, and enter the workforce. Employers know what skills they need and can help colleges design the training.
But I do not want community colleges to become mere job-training centers. A good education should answer two questions: How will I make a living? And what makes life worth living?
We should not sacrifice either question to answer the other.
Another question governing boards cannot escape: What values guide education?
For decades, Americans have been assured that public education can set Christianity aside and remain neutral. I call that the myth of neutrality. Christianity was pushed out, but competing ideologies did not stay at the door. Marxist assumptions and political activism filled the supposed vacuum.
Christians should not have to abandon their convictions to participate in public education. We should reject the claim that education can be separated from questions of truth, goodness, and, ultimately, God.
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Consider the persistent gap between young men and women in higher education. According to research published in July 2026 by the American Institute for Boys and Men, 43% of women ages 18-24 were enrolled in college in 2024, compared with 34% of men.
The causes are complex. But I doubt that lectures depicting young men as the problem make them eager to enroll. Some may simply vote with their feet.
A young man interested in advanced manufacturing should see a route from education to employment. So should one who wants to work in health care. Colleges should invite young men to develop their abilities, not treat them as presumptive offenders.
What are community colleges ultimately supposed to accomplish?
I return to the professor who asked us about the highest good. He helped me imagine an intellectual future I had never considered, and that experience helped lead me to a career teaching philosophy.
Other students find their calling in nursing, engineering, construction, business, or technology. The paths differ, but education should give them hope by helping them discover and develop their abilities.
The people elected to governing boards now will shape those opportunities for years. Their races seldom command headlines or millions in campaign advertising. They still deserve your attention.
Community colleges can be great again. Do not stop at the top of the ballot. Keep going — and vote for conservatives who understand what these colleges can be.
A generation was promised a simple path to the American dream: Earn a four-year degree, get a good job, buy a house, start a family. For many Millennials, the diploma arrived. The rest of the bargain did not.
Now student loan payments compete with rent, mortgages, and the cost of raising children. Graduates work in jobs that never required the credentials they borrowed money to obtain. Meanwhile, socialism has reached its highest positive rating since Gallup began tracking it in 2010. Who sold Millennials the original promise?
You were lied to by leftist universities that gladly took your money and left you in ruin.
Gallup’s September report found that 43% of Americans viewed socialism positively, up from 39% in 2025. Among adults ages 18 to 34, the figure was 57%. It is an extraordinary development. If government-backed higher education helped saddle a generation with debt, why would more government look like the solution?
The financial burden is real. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported $1.65 trillion in outstanding student loans in the second quarter of 2026. In a separate Federal Reserve survey, 23% of adults with student loans reported recent difficulty making payments. Even a manageable loan bill is money a borrower cannot put toward a down payment or a family.
But why did so many people borrow so much for credentials whose value varies so widely? Because Americans were repeatedly told a four-year degree was the necessary ticket to adulthood.
Parents heard it. Guidance counselors repeated it. Politicians promised greater access. Universities gladly collected the tuition, helped along by a federal lending system that made borrowing easier today and paying the bill a problem for tomorrow.
And some of the professors who taught students to distrust capitalism were only too happy to work within this arrangement. Universities expanded administrative operations while students took on mounting obligations. The people selling degrees should have been the first to explain what those degrees could actually buy.
The gamble persists for younger graduates. Federal Reserve research using 2023 data on graduates ages 22 to 27 found an underemployment rate of 9.7% for nursing majors, compared with 56.5% for liberal arts and 67.2% for criminal justice. Underemployment here means holding a job that typically does not require a college degree. These graduates are working, but many are not using the expensive credential they were told they needed.
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What did the colleges tell their applicants about those odds? If an 18-year-old is asked to borrow tens of thousands of dollars, the institution ought to disclose the likely costs, earnings, and risks. A degree is an investment only if the buyer has a realistic picture of the return. Universities should face the same scrutiny over misleading promises that we expect of any business.
Students also deserved a serious account of the alternatives: trade schools, apprenticeships, community colleges, military service, and employment without a four-year degree. These are legitimate paths to adulthood, not consolation prizes for people supposedly unfit for college.
There is a cultural problem, too. On too many campuses, students are trained to interpret society through oppression, power, and inequality. Let them study those arguments. But also make them confront the best defenses of markets, private property, entrepreneurship, and the limits of government. A university should teach students to examine competing ideas, not recruit them to a fashionable orthodoxy.
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Professors who preach against capitalist exploitation might begin by examining the financial incentives of their own institutions. Some feed students a steady diet of anti-market rhetoric while they borrow heavily for degrees with uncertain returns. That is champagne communism for the faculty and a monthly payment for the graduate.
The irony is hard to miss. A generation taught to question capitalism and burdened by debt from a government-supported lending system may now look to government for relief. But another subsidy does not require universities to tell the truth about what they sell. Nor does it hold anyone accountable for promises that proved empty.
Accountability begins with honest disclosures in university advertising and recruitment. I am working on that problem through the Intellectual Nutrition Label project. If a school makes demonstrably deceptive promises, lawyers and class-action lawsuits may have a role. Institutions that charge families so much should not be exempt from answering for what they represent.
The lesson for Millennials is all too clear. You were lied to by leftist universities that gladly took your money and left you in ruin. It isn’t too late to see the leftist worldview for what it is: the road to serfdom. It’s time to hold the universities that pushed these lies accountable.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) says Republicans have "done nothing to make life more affordable for the American people" and instead have "made life more expensive." That’s a remarkable accusation from a party that presided over a historic jump in consumer prices and continues to defend policies that add to the bills families pay.
With the November midterms approaching, Democrats want voters to blame Donald Trump for the cost of groceries, rent, power, and gasoline. They should first account for the prices Americans inherited when Trump returned to office — and for the costs imposed by Democrat-led states.
Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.
Start with inflation. The Federal Reserve aims for 2% annual inflation over time. Even when inflation slows, prices generally keep rising. A smaller annual increase does not reverse the larger increases that came before it.
According to the consumer price index, overall prices climbed about 21% during Joe Biden's presidency. They rose roughly another 5% between January 2025 and August 2026, the latest available monthly data. Inflation has not stopped: The August report put the 12-month rate at 3.4%. But the distinction between the rate of inflation and the price level explains why families still feel the squeeze from the Biden years.
Household essentials tell the story. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded increases of more than 20% in grocery prices and residential rents during Biden's term. Electricity costs rose by roughly 30%. Slower subsequent increases leave those earlier jumps in place.
At the pump, the weekly national average hit $5.01 a gallon in June 2022, during Biden's term. It peaked at $4.50 so far in Trump's second term, amid disruptions to oil supplies due to the Iran war. Nominal term averages have run $3.46 under Biden and $3.43 so far under Trump, according to federal energy data.
Still, the household costs Democrats now denounce were already elevated when Biden left office. The party cannot credibly campaign as though American families began paying those bills in January 2025.
State policy makes the contradiction sharper. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors stricter immigration enforcement, estimated in 2023 that illegal immigration imposed a net fiscal cost of $150.7 billion a year on federal, state and local taxpayers. The report raises a question Democrat officials cannot dismiss: Who pays for education, health care, and other public services as migration increases?
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Housing supplies another pressure point. A September 2026 Brookings study estimated that the post-pandemic immigration surge raised rents in receiving metropolitan areas by 1.4% to 1.6%. Policymakers who expand immigration without making room for more housing should expect renters to notice.
Electricity offers an even clearer test of state choices. An analysis publicized by the American Energy Alliance found that rates rose 32.4% from 2014 to 2024 in states that backed the Democrat presidential nominee in 2020 and 2024, compared with 18.5% in Republican-voting states. States with mandatory renewable portfolio standards also saw larger increases than those without them. Voters should ask what those mandates cost.
When House lawmakers passed legislation requiring state utility regulators to consider shielding ratepayers from new data-center infrastructure costs, Senate Democrats blocked its advance. Families watching their power bills climb deserved a better result.
Taxes provide another point of comparison. Visual Capitalist's analysis estimated that a New Jersey resident would pay about $1.36 million in federal, state, and local taxes over a lifetime, equal to 48.2% of estimated earnings. Eight of the 10 highest-tax states in that ranking had Democrat governing trifectas in 2026. The concentration is striking.
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New Jersey, my home state, levies the nation's highest top corporate income tax rate, 11.5%. Burlington has announced plans to shift its headquarters to Philadelphia, and Samsung has announced a headquarters move to Texas. ExxonMobil moved its legal domicile to Texas. Lawmakers should consider what those departures say about the state's tax and regulatory climate.
The state's employment figures offer another warning. New Jersey's initial estimate of 25,600 jobs lost in July was subsequently revised to 21,900. Officials have reason to examine the burdens they put on employers.
Americans have also seen welcome gains. The Census Bureau reported that real median household income reached a record $87,460 in 2025, up 2.6% from 2024, while the official poverty rate fell to 10.2%. Median income for black households rose 4.8%.
Democrats are free to make their case that Republican policies have made life more expensive. Voters should require them to answer for their own record: the price surge under Biden, the tax burdens in Democrat-led states, the cost of energy mandates, and the fiscal consequences of immigration policy.
Americans did not forget what groceries and rent cost four years ago. Democrats should not expect them to forget who held power when those prices took off.
The Federal Reserve has raised the interest rate as fears of inflation persist despite economic optimism from President Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, the Fed voted unanimously to increase interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, the first rate-hike since 2023.
'We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World.'
"Economic activity is expanding at a solid pace. While uncertainty remains elevated owing, in part, to geopolitical developments,domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong, and capital investment is robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little," a press release from the Fed said.
"Inflation remains elevated. Today's policy action will support a timelier return to the Committee's 2 percent goal. The Committee will deliver price stability."
New Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh voted to increase the rate even though Trump has repeatedly called for rate cuts to keep the U.S. economy growing.
The latest jobs report released two weeks ago showed impressive gains in August and revealed that reports from previous months had been revised upward.
In response to the jobs report, Trump posted, "Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE — IT’S A BETTER CREDIT ... Very simple! We should have the LOWEST RATE of any country in the World."
He even threatened to "STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT" if the Fed failed to lower rates.
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The White House did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
The rate-hike is the first major Fed move under Warsh's leadership. Trump nominated Warsh to replace Chairman Jerome Powell, who officially stepped down in May after repeatedly butting heads with Trump, especially regarding interest rates.
Trump even took to calling Powell "Too Late," claiming that the then-chair's failure to lower rates was stifling the American economy. Trump blamed Powell's obstinance on "gross incompetence, total dishonesty, or both."
For his part, Warsh has been tight-lipped about his plans at the Federal Reserve, claiming back in August that he prefers to have a "good family fight" about interest rates and other decisions rather than tip his hand ahead of time.
Wall Street has mainly responded favorably to the rumors about the impending rate increase. The NASDAQ and S&P opened Wednesday with gains, while the Dow Jones opened slightly down. Immediately after the hike announcement, all three markets were in the green.
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You can have very low interest rates, and you can have debt-driven inflation. You just can’t have both at the same time. That is the reality President Trump refuses to recognize.
At the core of the president’s half-baked plan to resuscitate the economy is a return to the good old days of near-zero interest rates.
The Federal Reserve can set the short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond markets will continue to rebel and reflect reality.
“We should have the lowest interest rates anywhere in the world,” Trump said last week in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.
“In the old days … if we announced good numbers, interest rates went down. Now, if you announce good numbers, interest rates go up because they’re so afraid of inflation.”
It’s hard to make sense of that statement, but it reflects a grievance Trump has voiced consistently. He wants endless spending for his projects, he doesn’t want the inflation it causes, and he wants to pay near-zero interest on the resulting record debt. Don’t we all?
Perhaps in another lifetime, God will create such an innovative world. In this one, when you have protracted inflation and must sell endless Treasuries to service the debt, you cannot offer near-zero interest to buyers of that debt — especially at a rate below inflation.
We had multiple periods of near-zero interest rates this century, including during COVID. We also spent trillions of dollars we did not have during Trump’s first term and Biden’s presidency. That helped fuel the inflation surge of 2021-22. Prices have continued rising even as the inflation rate slowed, while the debt keeps exploding. Year-over-year inflation has now remained above the Fed’s 2% target for 65 consecutive months, with most months above 3%.
Far from being “artificially high,” as Trump contends, rates have been held artificially low. After the federal funds rate peaked at 5.5% during the inflation fight — a historically unremarkable level — the Fed cut rates six times beginning in 2024. The effective rate now stands at 3.63%, below the long-run average.
So what did the bond market do? The 10-year Treasury yield is roughly as high as it was when the federal funds rate peaked in 2024, and the 30-year yield is at levels not seen since 2007.
The Federal Reserve can set short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond market will still reflect fiscal reality. There is no way around crushing debt other than cutting spending.
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That was on vivid display late last month when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instituted a “twist” operation: The government bought back more long-dated Treasuries while relying more heavily on cheaper short-term bills and notes to finance the deficit and the purchases themselves. The goal was to reduce the supply of long-duration debt, support bond prices, lower long-term yields, and exploit the fact that short-term rates remain below 10- and 30-year yields.
The response from the bond market?
After a few hours of lower yields, by the next morning they were back near their pre-announcement baseline.
The 10-year yield is now around 4.75%, higher than at any point since April 2007. Back then, the effective federal funds rate was 5.25% — 162 basis points above today’s rate. The bond market is telling us that long-term rates are not high because the Fed forgot how to cut. They are high because investors demand compensation for inflation, deficits, and debt risk.
There is a simple reason the Fed can no longer wave a magic wand, return rates to near zero, and service the debt on the cheap as it did from the post-9/11 recession through COVID. On September 11, 2001, gross federal debt was about $5.77 trillion, roughly 55% of GDP. In April 2007, before the financial crisis, it was about $8.84 trillion, or 63% of GDP. Today it exceeds $40 trillion and is roughly 123% of GDP.
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The long-term trajectory is even worse, because faster debt growth creates a vicious cycle: Treasury needs more buyers, inflation and fiscal risk force yields higher, and more existing debt rolls over at those higher rates.
After an election fought in part against Bidenflation, nearly $4 trillion in new debt has been added since January 2025. Across Trump’s two terms, roughly $11.7 trillion of gross federal debt has accumulated. There are still more than two years left in his term, and there is no serious plan to bend the trajectory.
Naturally, all this new debt is being accumulated at higher interest rates. But the sheer magnitude of the debt also makes Trump’s dream of permanently cheap money impossible.
We all share Trump’s desire to service the debt on the cheap. He probably should have thought harder about that desire when he pressured Republicans in March 2020 to shut down the country and then pass trillions in new spending. Unfortunately for him and his delayed second term, what goes around in debt comes back around as inflation and higher interest rates.
The first major decision at the Federal Reserve under new Chairman Kevin Warsh has come and gone, but little has changed.
On Wednesday, the Fed announced that the interest rate would hold at between 3.5% and 3.75%, despite calls from Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan and others for a "modest" increase.
'We will deliver price stability.'
The decision was released at 2 p.m. ET, revealing that Warsh and eight other committee members had voted in favor of a fifth straight hold on rates, while three opposed.
Shortly after the announcement, Warsh spoke publicly.
"The economy is showing impressive resilience," Warsh said. "Even with recent shocks, the trends are positive and reveal solid growth. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little."
Warsh also admitted that "inflation remains elevated relative to the committee's 2% goal," but promised: "We will deliver price stability."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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President Donald Trump has pushed for years for the Fed to lower interest rates. "Interest Rates too high!" he posted on Truth Social back in May.
On Monday, Trump said of Warsh: "Kevin’s fantastic, but he’s got a board, and the board members are very political. He wants to do the right thing. I know what he wants to do. But you need the consent of some people that have perhaps bad intentions. Rates should be lowered."
Trump nominated Warsh to be Fed chair back in January, and he was confirmed in May. Warsh replaced longtime Chair Jerome Powell, who repeatedly butted heads with Trump over interest rates.
Trump nicknamed Powell "Too Late" and called him a "DISASTER" because of his reluctance to lower interest rates.
"Jerome 'Too Late' Powell wants to stay at the Fed because he can’t get a job anywhere else — Nobody wants him," Trump wrote in April.
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'As President, it is my job to ensure the laws are faithfully executed, including by firing subordinates who cannot be trusted to tell the truth and follow the law.'
The White House can fight the negative effects of the Fed’s rate hike with policy decisions that will make a measurable difference soon.
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