The assault on democracy and rationality isn’t just at the federal level.
At the start of every session, the culture warriors in Indiana’s terrible legislature introduce all kinds of wacky and extreme bills. Some of them are so wacky and so extreme that they go no farther. They don’t even get committee hearings.
Of course, lots of perfectly reasonable measures–even obviously excellent ones, if sponsored by Democrats–also go to the bill graveyard.
Media folks who cover the statehouse have learned not to take bills seriously until there are indications that they have some chance of actually passing. That should be our reaction to House Bill 1136, which has received a good deal of publicity and generated significant anguished pushback. H.B. 1136 provides that, if more than 50% of students who live within a school corporation’s boundaries are enrolled in a school that isn’t operated by that school corporation, “the school corporation must be dissolved and all public schools of the school corporation must be transitioned to operating as charter schools.” The bill establishes a new governing board and procedures for dissolving and reorganizing the school corporation.
I tend to lump this bit of legislative nastiness (it’s clearly aimed at urban schools that serve minority and low-income kids) in with the other looney-tune measures that will go to the big bill cemetery in the sky, but it does trigger several of my pet peeves, the most “peevish” of which is lawmakers’ persistent war on public education.
Before I focus on recent evidence bolstering my argument that vouchers are simply a way to evade the First Amendment and allow legislators to send tax dollars to religious schools, I need to focus on a preliminary pet peeve: the public discourse that makes no distinction between charter schools and the private schools that accept vouchers.
Charter schools are public schools. They operate under restrictions that don’t apply to private schools (like the Constitution). Overall–depending upon their sponsorship and management–their performance has been positive. That’s overall, but–just as with traditional public schools–there are exceptions. (Most of the problems, according to what I’ve read, have come from charters managed by private, for-profit companies.)
Voucher-accepting private schools are another matter entirely, as I have repeatedly documented.
Pro Publica recently added to the huge volume of data on that subject.
In an article titled “On a Mission From God: Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools,” the report focused on the religious underpinnings–and successes–of the voucher movement. The article highlighted three conclusions.
The Ohio Model: Rarely seen letters show how the voucher movement started in the 1990s as a concealed effort to finance urban parochial schools and expanded to a much broader push.
Helping the Affluent: An initiative promoted as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids — is increasingly funneling money to families who already easily afford private school tuition.
The Voucher Deficit: Expanding programs threaten funding for public schools and put pressure on state budgets, as many religious-based schools enjoy new largesse.
I really urge you to click through and read the entire hair-raising report, which documents the real purposes of educational vouchers: they are tools meant to enrich religious institutions and the well-to-do, and undermine separation of church and state.
The risks of universal vouchers are quickly coming to light. An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab. Many private schools are raising tuition rates to take advantage of the new funding, and new schools are being founded to capitalize on it. With private schools urging all their students’ families to apply, the money is flowing mostly to parents who are already able to afford tuition and to kids who are already enrolled in private schools. When vouchers do draw students away from public districts, they threaten to exacerbate declining enrollment, forcing underpopulated schools to close. More immediately, the cost of the programs is soaring, putting pressure on public school finances even as private schools prosper. In Arizona, voucher expenditures are hundreds of millions of dollars more than predicted, leaving an enormous shortfall in the state budget. States that provide funds to families for homeschooling or education-related expenses are contending with reports that the money is being used to cover such unusual purchases as kayaks, video game consoles and horseback-riding lessons.
Strategists behind this effort started with targeted programs that placed needy kids in parochial schools. Then they fought to expand the benefits to far richer families — “a decadeslong effort by a network of politicians, church officials and activists, all united by a conviction that the separation of church and state is illegitimate.”
So much for that pesky Constitution…
EVERYTHING Republicans touch dies. They have NEVER wanted public schools because those educated kids learn that scamming by politicians is mostly centered around Republicans. If their history/civics teachers weren’t football coaches, they learned about why the Great Depression happened, why the real estate scam bubble exploded in 2007 and a host of other idiotic economic proposals by Republicans that fail miserably … ALWAYS.
Todd and the like can rant about the uniparty all they want, but it is the Republican party that, in the overall view, is more damaging to our democracy and economy than any other. You can look it up as you read the Constitution.
The exploits of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo make interesting reading. In the future, history will report on the exploits of the Maga empire, which is now under MTV (Musk, Trump, Vance).
The Maga tribe conquered and now rules a territory called the Red States of the former United States, though they influence the Blue States as well.
Their strategy is to modify the former united states’ constitution, laws, and regulations to suit MTV and the ruling oligarchs.
It’s sad to watch the Constitutional liberal democratic republic disabused and shattered.
It’s all about legal segregation and greed. It’s also about controlling the minds of our young people. If you watch the documentaries about the early days of Christian Nationalism, the Southern Baptists and Evangelists were worried that secular schools were creating secular minds that dismissed the ancient myths of gods in the sky, orchestrating life on Earth.
Now we know their end game in teaching young minds that God is in charge of all this and even a dastardly man can be used to bring them to the Promised Land. LOL
I can’t wait to see what they have for scientific-based universities nationwide. All the professors teaching Marxism better beware as the school presidents turn on them after these religious-schooled kids blow the whistle on their professors. Parents and students will be front and center protesting outside the school president’s office and residence.
Yes, Vern, this is all constructed by the uniparty and the media. The oligarchy loves religion because it helps them control the people. If people fear a wrathful god, they can be led anywhere. Some of the more ignorant ones will even send money, hoping they can pave the way into heaven for them. The Democratic Party hasn’t resisted because they’ve been stupified by “school choice” or “parental choice.” Who can argue against that?
The press could destroy the whole school choice propaganda within a few months, but they will not do it. The independent ProPublica could be pasted on the front pages of all the newspapers in the USA, but it won’t happen.
Speaking of lame press, I noticed SoftBank from Japan will be working with Trump. For those who don’t know, because the lame media keeps it quiet, Softbank owns Gannett and was allowed to keep its name. The press always refers to Gannett-run newspapers. A Japanese conglomerate owns IndyStar, The StarPress, five other newspapers in Indiana, and The USA Today. All of them will be working with Trump, and so will the Democrats, Vern.
The best thing about Trump and Musk is their ignorance of how the uniparty game is played. Trump has an idea because he’s buds with the Clintons, but he always says the quiet part out loud. We’ll get plenty of clues about how things operate in this pathetic oligarchy in the coming days, including the uniparties performances. 😉
Did Biden give a preemptive pardon to Liz Cheney, daughter of a Republican war criminal? “I believe in our justice system, but I need a blanket pardon for my whole family for any crimes they may have committed the past decade.” ~ #GenocideJoe LOL
Todd, if I were Biden I would’ve given blanket pardons to everyone in the country who isn’t a MAGAT. Do you doubt for a minute that the “Biden crime family” would be under “investigation” by Comer and Jordan? They wouldn’t find anything, but that doesn’t matter, as long as they can make the family’s lives miserable and cost them a ton in legal fees.
I would like to give kudos to Bishop Budde. At long last we have found a Christian Christian who is unafraid to confront the dragon. It makes me proud to be an Episcopalian. Last night I actually sat and watched Rachel Maddow – something I almost never do – to see the interview with the bishop. It might be a fluke, but she said she hadn’t had any direct death threats, but she has heard from several people who wish she were dead.
there is no pardon system,except for the xceptional. as in a legal sane country.
ive been had by the madistory minn scam. no violence just a hobby grown my own. 1992. at 38. first timer. mmmmm, pardons for the rich,etc. and of cousre some poor soul who died long ago. if this country ever had a mind beyond distroy or command someone/something, we’d be better off. Hunters pardon,good, heres a guy who will need a gun everyday because of what this country has become. theres no secret to this, its just blaintant screw you because i can..
Hey look – Victor Davis Hanson. wrote about all of you.
https://victorhanson.com/the-addicted-petty-and-hysterical-left/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3GyHglyOFQIKiwzb_xJz1UPBqVuzb7hVTRFWGTrRXFHPDpAdv2C4QE2l8_aem_Hm1NymB9MgJUxVnmFaT04w
The reason religion does not belong in schools is because of how many religions there are! Some Christian people tend to act like everyone should have a Christian education. What about the Buddhists? What about those that believe in the Koran? If we are going to be “fair” then we need to include everybody. Oh wait, as a Christian you don’t want to do that? You don’t think that’s right? Then how are you not a hypocrite? Can you imagine what a fit the Christians would have if people decided to raise their own children as pagans in a pagan school?
Religion does not belong in schools. Then it’s fair to everyone.
I have never been a pioneer
Because I love my safety and comfort, I understand the perils of living and avoiding the front lines. Life has to balance risk and reward, threats and opportunity. Where is the sweet spot?
As I can see from my perspective, we are the safest, most comfortable humans ever, primarily due to the explosion of human knowledge in my lifetime.
I believe the sweet spot, the balance considering both safety and comfort, is being near enough to the front lines intellectually but back a bit so that I can do my things for comfort without taking financial risks.
I don’t believe DNA carries intelligence, but my culture growing up taught me to be curious about everything, always with an eye out for what I didn’t yet know as motivation to learn more. That led me to become an applied physics scientist, AKA a mechanical engineer, with a lifelong predilection for creating and designing stuff that works.
Enough about me. Let’s discuss how the human population lives in an eight-billion-node supernetwork.
We are more than a supply chain of learners and teachers due to the gift of a temporary presence while living. We are born in a place-moment of spacetime, we learn our culture, including everything above, we scoot here and there commuting between home and work, we travel, and then we die in an entirely changed place-moment of spacetime.
As the movie said, you and I live in a multi-dimensional matrix of possibilities with a bit of spacetime to change life and be changed by life between a spacetime place-moment called birth and another one called death.
Considering politics here and now, we recently elected a new government led by MTV (Musk, Trump, Vance). I fear that it will change the future of human safety and comfort for many of earth’s eight billion humans and change, yet again, the center of world civilization that keeps moving around the world as different cultures come and go in historical prominence. Africa begat Asia begat Europe and Australia and South America begat North America begat?.
Maybe back to Asia (When does Africa get another turn)?
Why Asia again? Vision. While MTV is closing doors to the rest of the world, Asia is opening doors. Everything is connected in the human matrix. From the human perspective, everything always changes in spacetime.
Energy constantly motivates universal matter to change in spacetime.