You may know that Mark T. Esper is the name of the latest U.S. Secretary of Defense. What you may not know is that back in the day, before he became a lobbyist for a defense contractor that does a lot of business with the Defense Department, Mr. Esper was a soldier in the 101st Airborne Division.
The 101st Airborne Division is stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Mahaffey Middle School is at Fort Campbell. It was built even before the time that Mr. Esper would have been in the 101st Airborne Division. So it was there when he was there, in all probability.
Mr. Esper did not go to Mahaffey Middle School, though, and so far as we know, none of his children if he has any went there either. That may be Mahaffey Middle School's loss. But it is not their only loss.
Mahaffey Middle has needed renovations since the George W. Bush presidency. In 2007, a teacher at that school testified:
Garbage cans catch water from a leaking room while a broken heating and air-conditioning system produces sauna-like conditions in some classrooms, while other classes have no heat.
"The problems persist today," soldiers serving at Fort Campbell have disclosed. Aging School Loses Funding to Border Wall, by Helene Cooper, NEW YORK TIMES, Friday, September 6, 2019, p. A1 (the New York Times may charge for any online access), posted online with the headline, No New School at Fort Campbell: The Money Went to Trump's Border Wall.
Nonetheless Mark T. Esper approved taking all $62,600,000.00 of its construction budget away, to help pay for an unauthorized border wall with monies dedicated by Congress -- and previously, dedicated by the Defense Department that Mr. Esper now heads -- to projects like the Middle School attended by children of the 101st Airborne Division.
Duty. Deference. Money.
Disbelief.
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