Texas Flushing Money Down the Toilet While Slashing State-Funded Services

From the Dallas Business Journal:

Legislators have earmarked more than $3 million to $5 million for the UNT downtown Dallas law school, but the funds have yet to reach final approval and anything could happen, Jackson said.
...
University officials could start construction immediately after final approval is given and the facility could open up to students by August 2013.

There's plenty of law schools in Texas, but apparently the Texas legislature is still okay with wasting the state's money building another one.

Granted, in a state of 25 million, this only represents about $0.20 per person. But hey, that's $5 million that could go into road construction, or cancer research, or training people for jobs that 21st century America actually needs instead of building a school that cannot, in any way, compete with SMU and the University of Texas for Dallas' legal affections and will most likely wind up transferring wealth to educators by dumping debt onto 20-somethings who haven't gotten the memo that the legal field is dangerously over-saturated.

But hey, who am I to judge since Texas is in such great financial shape? Oh, wait. Maybe it's just me, but if your state is slashing education and pension funding, the last thing you should be doing is setting aside money (so much as a dime) for a frivolous law school.

No one's ever accused the post-secondary education complex of not having clout. But the incongruity of building another law school while slashing the elementary and secondary education budget would be quite droll if it weren't so damn ridiculous, socially-damaging, and ultimately sad.