Those $1,600 plastic stool caps are not the only expensive item in the U.S. military. According to the Armed Forces Journal, it now costs the government $226,000 a year to educate a single cadet at West Point, with comparable sums spent at the other service academies. At that rate, even Harvard, Yale and Princeton seem pretty plebian.
At about the same time that figure was published, the Pentagon announced the following: ”Grumman Aerospace Corporation, Bethpage, New York, is being awarded a $12,815,200 funding modification to definitize an existing letter contract to a firm fixed-price contract for 50 universal exciters for the EA- 6B aircraft.”
The taxpayers might not mind the high price of military education if the curriculum included a course in English. And if that announcement means what it seems to–that the Pentagon is paying out $12.8 million for a contractor to rewrite a letter–maybe a few more courses in basic math wouldn`t hurt either.
