I assume there are sincere people (mostly, but not exclusively, male) who bought into the myth that prohibiting abortions was all about “saving babies.” In the wake of actual bans, the incredible dishonesty of that assertion has become harder to ignore.
The avowed “pro life” activists have been conspicuously silent about the fact that– In the wake of the Dobbs decision–in states like Indiana that have stringent bans, women have died or suffered extreme medical consequences in greater numbers than before. While most women already knew that the purported “pro life” concerns about “life” didn’t extend to the lives of women, those activists have been equally silent about the sharp rise in infant mortality. As the linked report shows, in the year and a half following the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, hundreds more infants died than usual in the United States. The vast majority of those infants had congenital anomalies, or birth defects, and it is likely that a number of those babies experienced painful deaths.
The refusal of ideologues to understand that abortion availability is an essential part of healthcare has meant that women suffering miscarriages have been denied adequate and timely treatment, and that pregnant women who very much want to carry their babies to term are having difficulty finding an ob/gyn to provide prenatal care and deliver those infants. The state’s abortion ban has led to a decline in OBGYN residency applications–a decline likely to worsen the already alarming shortage of maternal care providers. A patient in Northern Indiana died last year from an ectopic pregnancy because there was no ob-gyn to treat her.
None of which seems to bother the “pro life” Micah Beckwiths of the world.
Now, it turns out that the medical consequences of these bans–their very negative effect on actual lives–extends far beyond reproductive medicine. According to the Indiana Capital Chronicle, the bans are also interfering with the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. In the wake of Dobbs and state bans, finding a local provider for breast screenings has become far more difficult. Planned Parenthood clinics that used to provide those screenings have closed and staff shortages at other sites have increased as medical personnel leave states with bans. The remaining health care providers are overwhelmed.
One in 3 oncology fellows surveyed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology says abortion restrictions hurt cancer care, and more than half of fellows said they are likely to consider the impact of abortion restrictions on care when deciding where to practice. Although many states like Indiana allow exceptions when the termination of a pregnancy is necessary to protect the life of the pregnant patient, the rules on how to apply these exceptions are unclear. In Ohio, two cancer patients were denied treatment until terminating their pregnancies under the state’s 6-week ban, forcing them to seek care out of state. As these bans persist, more Hoosiers will face similar situations—many of which may go unseen.
Early detection through routine screenings plays a critical role in improving survival rates, as 1 in 8 women in the U.S. will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. But when health centers are forced to close, those lifesaving screenings disappear too.
How “pro life” are the pious ideologues who talk endlessly about the “pre-born” but refuse to acknowledge the profoundly negative outcomes of these bans for the lives of already-born women?
Excuse my cynicism, but I remain convinced that the real motive for these bans is the patriarchal belief that women should be returned to a submissive social status. Increasing efforts by GOP politicians to restrict access to birth control give the game away.
With the advent of the pill, women were–for the first time– able to manage their fertility and plan their families. Women were able to enter the workforce, able to participate with men in the broader civic and political society. As Morton Marcus and I documented in From Property to Partner,reproductive choice has been far and away the most important element of women’s liberation.
Initially, perhaps some people were convinced that the “pro life” movement really was about keeping wicked and “ungodly” women from “killing babies.” Now that we have irrefutable evidence that, thanks to these bans, more babies and more women are dying, it will be interesting to see how many of those people revise their opinions.
I’m not holding my breath, because for the great majority of those “pro life” warriors, it was never about life. It was about male dominance and faux religion.
Most of us are obsessively focused on the national election, but the stakes of our state-level choices are equally dire–at least, in Indiana.
The Indiana GOP is running a staewide ticket composed of lunatic White Christian Nationalist Micah Beckwith, two Beckwith clones, and MAGA Mike Braun. I’ve posted numerous times about Todd Rokita, our embarrassing, unethical Attorney General. Today, I want to remind readers that the only difference between Beckwith and Jim Banks, who is running for the U.S. Senate, is that Banks is too politically-savvy to publicly claim the White Christian Nationalist title to which he is amply entitled.
Let me just reiterate why Banks is–as I’ve previously noted–wrong about everything. In Congress, he joined clowns like Jim Jordan and Marjorie Taylor Greene, pursuing a pro-Trump, anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-liberty performative politics.
He makes no bones about his desire for a national ban on abortion with no exceptions, not even for rape, incest or life of the mother. He has an A+ rating from Pro-Life America, and a 100% lifetime rating from the National Right to Life Committee. His voting record on abortion/reproductive health can be accessed here.
He opposes even the most modest efforts to control the proliferation of firearms. He opposes both a renewal of the ban on assault weapons and a federal “Red Flag” law. He supports concealed carry and has voted against background checks for private sales. His voting record on gun issues can be accessed here.
Banks calls climate change a “liberal hoax,” and the Biden Administration’s environmental efforts “a war on energy.” The League of Conservation Voters gives him a 1% lifetime rating. His votes on the environment can be accessed here.
When it comes to labor issues, Banks gets a zero rating from the AFL-CIO. In the Indiana legislature, he supported “Right to work” legislation (dubbed by labor as “Right to work for less.”) On vote after vote in Congress, he has voted against labor; a list of those votes can be seen here.
He continues to oppose any expansion of healthcare coverage, and rejects medical science. He voted against the most recent expansion of Medicaid and supports legislation that would ban vaccine mandates. He has voted to repeal the ACA, and against legislation that would prevent insurers from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions. A review of all of his healthcare votes is here.
Banks has voted repeatedly against efforts to fund research into the effects of marijuana. (Those anti-research votes track well with his “know nothing” approach to all issues.) Banks’ votes on issues related to pot are here.
He is an extremist on immigration. He supports finishing Trump’s wall, eliminating federal funding for sanctuary cities, and deporting “criminal illegal aliens.” He opposes legislation granting amnesty for any undocumented persons (presumably including children currently protected by DACA) and opposes any expansion of guest-worker programs.
Banks created the “anti-Woke” caucus in the House of Representatives and introduced legislation to outlaw any remaining affirmative action in college admissions. He has been dubbed “Focus on the Family’s Man in Washington.” He opposes all DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs. He has been especially vocal in his opposition to gay rights generally, and to trans children especially– in addition to his “Anti-Woke Caucus,” he has supported efforts to ban trans people from the military, prevent trans women from participating in women’s sports, and prevent medical personnel from treating children for gender dysphoria. He recently sponsored a particularly odious bill that would prevent agencies charged with placing children in foster homes from taking measures to see that gay and trans children not be placed with foster parents who have religious objections to homosexuality, saying that refusal to place those children in such homes was discrimination against religion.
Banks consistently attacks educational institutions of all kinds. He has vowed to investigate the National Association of Independent Schools, focusing on the group’s role in political advocacy and its tax-exempt status. He has threatened to “expose” what he calls “widespread political indoctrination” in America’s public schools, and has claimed that lawmakers have a “moral duty” to investigate the use of academic accreditation associations as “political tools by leftist ideologues.”
When Banks was in the Indiana legislature, he voted to allow instruction in creationism and enthusiastically supported the educational vouchers that send tax dollars to private, overwhelmingly religious schools.
And of course, he’s described Trump’s felony convictions as “rigged,” posting on social media that “New York is a liberal sh*t hole.”
As I’ve previously written, having a Neanderthal like Banks in Congress is bad enough. Electing him Senator would be worse.
Republicans should be embarrassed by the whole statewide ticket. As this Republican says, Hoosiers should vote BLUE this year.
This morning, I will speak at the Unitarian church in Danville. I was asked to address Project 2025, Here’s what I will be telling the congregants.
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I’ve done a lot of research recently into the emergence of the White Christian Nationalism that forms the basis of the MAGA movement. Project 2025 does a great service for anyone who wants to know what life would be like if the 40% of Americans who identify fully or partially with those beliefs manage to win control of Congress and the Presidency—especially at a time when the Supreme Court has been captured by ideologues who are sympathetic to their aims and apparently unwilling to follow longstanding constitutional precedents.
PROJECT 2025 was produced mainly by the Heritage Foundation, but it had the assistance of over 100 other conservative think tanks. (If you go online, you can find lists of them. They represent a longstanding, well-organized and well-funded effort to claim the country for their particular tribe of White Christian males.) Project 2025 is the product of over 400 contributors and writers, including the 240 former Trump administration authors who wrote 31 of the 38 chapters of the 920 page document.
Despite Trump’s effort to separate himself from Project 2025, it mentions him over 320 times, and in 2023 he referred to it as “great work. Our roadmap.”
Those who produced that “roadmap” claim that it would “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect children,” “Dismantle the administrative state and return self-governance to the American people,” and “Defend our nation’s sovereignty, borders, and bounty against global threats.” What that lovely language really means, of course, is spelled out in the details—and whoever coined the phrase “the devil is in the details” might have been referring to Project 2025.
I don’t have time—and neither do you—to go through a comprehensive list of the regressive, and frankly, insane, proposals in this document, but I will hit some of the highlights (or low lights).
The chapter on “DEFENSE OF AMERICA” proposes to “” Restore warfighting as the military’s sole mission.” It proposes to end what it calls “the Left’s social experimentation in the military” by halting the admission of transgender individuals. It would increase the Army by
50,000, bring overseas troops home, grow the Navy and Air Force, and triple the number of nuclear weapons—while withdrawing America from all arms reduction treaties.
Project 2025 would withdraw the U.S. from NATO, and expressly disavow NATO’s Article Five, which is NATO’s mutual defense pact. It also proposes to make our Allies pay for any weapons we might provide them.
With respect to Trade and Foreign Assistance, the Project wants USAID to defund women’s rights provisions in foreign aid initiatives, withdraw from all multi-lateral trade agreements, stop providing financial aid to Ukraine, and institute 60% tariffs on Chinese goods and 10% on all other imports. (Every reputable economist—conservative and liberal—has pointed out that tariffs are a tax on Americans, and that imposing them would cost American families thousands of dollars a year and throw the country into recession. If a future administration actually imposed those tariffs, the economy would tank.)
There’s a lot more in this section, but the effect would be to make the world far less safe, and Americans far less rich.
Moving on…
To the extent that the media has reported on Project 2025, it has focused mostly on the Project’s proposed changes to American governance– especially the plan to replace 50 thousand civil service employees with Trump loyalists. I recently read that the Heritage Foundation is currently “vetting” individuals in order to facilitate that replacement should Trump win.
The replacement of civil service workers, however, is only the tip of the iceberg.
The Project also proposes to eliminate or re-write the First Amendment so that the government can operate on what the authors call “Christian Principles.” Those of you in this congregation, and other Christian clergy, might dispute their interpretation of Christian principles….
The media has also reported on the proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, Head Start, Title 1, & school lunch programs. The less-reported portions of their “education” policies are equally regressive: they would eliminate all diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and post the Ten Commandments in all school classrooms (they don’t specify which version…probably the Cecil B. DeMille version). They would eliminate any books addressing race or gender from the nation’s classrooms, withdraw federal funding from any school requiring vaccinations, and require states to provide vouchers for religious schools.
They’d also arm teachers and defund NPR and PBS.
As I said, I can’t go through the entire list of Project 2025’s looney-tunes and profoundly unAmerican proposals, but let me just reference a few more: they’d privatize Medicare and TSA, and entirely eliminate the EPA, OSHA, the EEOC and the FDIC.
When it comes to elections, they’d eliminate mail-in ballots, and require federal elections to be done in one day, on paper, with stringent voter ID requirements.
When it comes to how their proposed government would deal with what the Project delicately calls “minorities,” the bigotries become very visible. They’d begin with the immediate mass deportation of undocumented persons that Trump and Vance have promised, ignoring both the inhumanity and the practical impossibility of conducting such a massive effort. Other measures they propose in connection with immigration include construction of internment camps and limiting lawful immigration to 20,000 annually—good luck to any of you who need to hire people to work in restaurants or pick crops or any other jobs disproportionately done by immigrants. They’d deport all the Dreamers (who came as children with their parents, and most of whom have never known another country). They want to end birthright citizenship—which I note would require amending the 14th Amendment– and ban Muslims and Haitians from entering the country. Lest you wonder where the homophobia and misogyny come in, they propose to roll back gay rights, invalidate same-sex marriages, and outlaw transgender rights and no-fault divorce.
Given our recent experience with hurricanes, I thought I’d just end with the Project’s ”Principles Guiding Climate Decisions.” Those “principles” begin with science denial. I guess their version of God will protect them…
Authors of the Project say—and I quote– the “climate is not changing and schools are not to teach that it is.” Since climate change is just a liberal myth, they would eliminate climate and environmental protections, eliminate the regulation of greenhouse gases, and defund FEMA. (I will note that both Mike Braun and Jim Banks—currently running for Governor and Senator—both recently voted against funding for FEMA.) Project 2025 would return management of emergencies to the states. (I imagine even Ron DeSantis might now disagree with that one…)
Project authors want to dismantle the National Hurricane Center and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. They would halt all climate research and revoke the Global Change Research Act of 1990. Of course they would once again withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Accords. And they would halt research into electrical vehicles and revoke tax incentives for clean energy.
If even a small portion of this truly insane wish list became reality, the America we inhabit would disappear. Unfortunately, we’d take most of the world down with us.
In my blog, I keep warning readers about the threat posed by a well-organized, well-financed theocratic movement. The small dip into Project 2025’s 900 pages that I’ve just shared should illuminate that threat.
I don’t think it is hyperbole to say that these people hate the America we inhabit. They love an America that existed only in their fevered imaginations. This is a very scary time.
Last week, I spoke to the Shepherd’s Center at North United Methodist Church. I had been asked to address the differences between capitalism and socialism. Here’s what I said. (Warning: it’s longer than my usual posts.)
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We are in a hot and heavy political season, facing an extraordinarily important election. The outcome of that election will depend, in large part, on the ability of voters to understand the foundational premises of American government –to have what I define as a minimum level of civic literacy—and an understanding of the essential elements of America’s economic system.
Why is agreement on definitions and documented facts important? Look at the interminable debates about the Affordable Care Act—aka “Obamacare”—as an example. People may have very different opinions about the wisdom of the policy choices involved, but a decision to repeal, implement or amend the Act depends upon understanding what it actually says and does—not on hysterical accusations that it constitutes a “socialism,” that is always, and presumably self-evidently, a bad thing.
Or take the ongoing battles over religion in the nation’s schools. There are genuine arguments to be made about the proper application of the Establishment Clause in the context of public education. But we can’t have those reasoned disputes with people who insist that the First Amendment doesn’t require separation of church and state.
Basing our arguments on verifiable fact and accepted history actually helps people make more persuasive cases for their own points of view. We all encounter people who have a legitimate point worth considering, but who—because they are basing their argument on erroneous facts or demonstrating a lack of understanding of important basic concepts—get dismissed out of hand. Credibility requires verifiable evidence. You might want to use that perfect quote from Thomas Jefferson that you saw on the Internet, but if it is bogus, you’ve just undermined your own position. Defending alternate realities is like arguing about whether a fork is a spoon—it doesn’t get you any closer to a useful resolution.
A few years ago, I wrote a brief pamphlet called “Talking Politics” that contained basic facts about the U.S. Constitution, economic concepts and systems, and the nature of science and the scientific method—basic facts that every citizen should know, and that should serve as solid starting points for reasoned arguments. Among other things, that booklet defined government, the provisions of the Bill of Rights, and the major differences between economic systems. It was the elements of those economic systems that I was asked to address today—especially what we mean when we talk about the differences between capitalism and socialism.
Capitalism is defined as an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are primarily controlled by private owners for profit. It is characterized by free markets, where the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand, rather than set by government. Economists often define the ideal free trade as a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all information relevant to that transaction.
Understanding the importance of free trade to capitalism is important, because it defines the proper role of government in a capitalist system—as an “umpire” or referee, ensuring that everyone plays by the rules. For example, Teddy Roosevelt reminded us that monopolies distort markets; if one company can dominate a market, that company can dictate prices and other terms with the result that those transactions will no longer be truly voluntary. If Manufacturer A can avoid the cost of disposing of the waste produced by his factory, by dumping it into the nearest river, he will be able to compete unfairly with Manufacturer B, who is following the rules governing proper waste disposal. If Chicken Farmer A is able to control his costs and gain market share by failing to keep his coops clean and his chickens free of disease, unwary consumers will become ill. Most economists agree that if markets are to operate properly, government must act as an “umpire,” assuring a level playing field.
This need for government regulation is a response to what is called “market failure.” There are three primary situations in which Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” doesn’t work: when monopolies or corrupt practices replace competition; when so-called “externalities” like pollution harm people who aren’t party to the transaction (who are neither buyer nor seller); and when there are what we call “information asymmetries,” that is, situations where buyers don’t have access to information they need to bargain in their own interest. Since markets don’t have built-in mechanisms for dealing with these situations, most economists—conservative and liberal alike– argue that regulation is needed.
Economists and others will often disagree about the need for particular regulations, but most agree that an absence of necessary regulatory activity undermines capitalism. Unregulated markets can lead to a different system, sometimes called corporatism. In corporatist systems, government regulations favoring powerful corporate interests are the result of lobbying by the corporate and monied special interests that stand to benefit from them. You might think of it as a football game where one side has paid the umpire to make calls favorable to that team.
The word socialism, on the other hand, simply means the collective provision of goods and services. The decision whether to pay for certain services collectively rather than leaving their production and consumption to the free market is based upon a number of factors. First, there are some goods that free markets simply cannot produce. Economists call them public goods and define them as both “non-excludable” –meaning that individuals who haven’t paid for them cannot be effectively kept from using them—and “non-rivalrous,” meaning that use by one person does not reduce the availability of that good to others. Some examples of public goods include things like fresh air, knowledge, lighthouses, national defense, flood control systems and street lighting. If we are going to have these things, they have to be supplied by the whole society, usually through government, and paid for with tax dollars.
Of course, not all goods and services that we socialize—that we provide collectively– are public goods. Policymakers often base decisions to socialize services on other considerations: we socialize police and fire protection because doing so is generally more efficient and cost-effective, and because most of us believe that limiting such services only to people who can afford to pay for them would be immoral. We socialize garbage collection in more densely populated urban areas in order to prevent disease transmission.
Getting the “mix” right between goods that we provide collectively and those we leave to the free market is important, because too much socialism hampers economic health. Just as unrestrained capitalism can become corporatism, socializing the provision of goods that the market can supply reduces innovation and incentives to produce. During the 20th Century, many countries experimented with efforts to socialize major areas of their economies, and even implement socialism’s extreme, communism, with uniformly poor results. Not only did economic productivity suffer, so did political freedom, because when governments have too much control over the means of production and distribution, they can easily become authoritarian.
Virtually all countries today—including the United States– have mixed economies. The challenge is getting the right balance between socialized and free market provision of goods and services.
In our highly polarized politics today, words like Capitalism, Socialism, Fascism and Communism are used more as insulting labels than descriptions. There are numerous disagreements about the essential characteristics of these systems, probably because the theories underlying them were so different from the actual experiences of the countries that tried them.
Socialism is probably the least precise of these terms. It is generally applied to mixed economies where the social safety net is much broader and the tax burden somewhat higher than in the U.S.—Scandinavian countries are an example.
Communism begins with the belief that equality is defined by equal results; this is summed up in the well-known adage “From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs.” All property is owned communally, by everyone (hence the term “communism”). In practice, this meant that all property was owned by the government, ostensibly on behalf of the people. In theory, communism erases all class distinctions, and wealth is redistributed so that everyone gets the same share. In practice, the government controls the means of production and most individual decisions are made by the state. Since the quality and quantity of work is divorced from reward, there is less incentive to innovate or produce, and ultimately, countries that have tried to create a communist system, like the USSR, have collapsed or, like China, moved toward a more mixed economy.
Fascism is sometimes called “national Socialism,” which is confusing, especially because people throwing these terms around rather clearly don’t understand them. Actually, fascism differs significantly from socialism. The most striking aspect of fascist systems is the elevation of the nation—a fervent nationalism is central to fascist philosophy. There is a union between business and the state; although there is nominally private property, government controls business decisions. Fascist regimes tend to be focused upon a ( supposedly glorious) past, and on the upholding of traditional class structures and gender roles, which are thought to be necessary to maintain the social order.
Understanding the differences among these different political philosophies is important for two reasons: first, we cannot have productive discussions or draw appropriate historical analogies if we don’t have common understandings of the words we are using. Second, we cannot learn from history and the mistakes of the past if the terms we are using are unconnected to any substantive content.
When activists accuse an American President of being a Fascist or a Communist simply because they disagree with a position that President is taking, it trivializes the crimes committed by the Nazis and the Soviets and it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to engage in reasoned discussion about—or persuasive criticism of—whatever the President is doing that led to the charge.
On the other hand, when we fail to see very real analogies between American political actors and the fascists who ushered in very dark historical eras, we run the risk of falling into a similar abyss. I believe it was Santayana who said “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”
As I said in my opening remarks, we live in a pivotal time. We can choose to educate ourselves and choose to embrace the philosophy of America’s Constitution and Bill of Rights. We can continue to fine-tune our mixed economy in response to the evolution of new technologies, or we can do what so many seem to do: forego fact-checking and education, and just find sites on the Internet that confirm our existing biases.
That’s the thing about liberty and democracy. We have a choice. I’m not usually a praying person, but I’m praying that Americans choose the Constitution and democracy when they go to the polls next month.
One of the most unfortunate aspects of our current politics is the way tribalism has obscured policy differences. As we head into the 2024 election, few–if any–voters will base their votes on the candidates’ different policy positions. That’s not a criticism of America’s voters. At the top of the ticket, our choice is between a senile megalomaniac whose sole “policy” (if it can be dignified by the term) is hatred of “the Other” and an opponent whose sanity and competence outweighs other considerations.
This won’t be a Presidential election where thoughtful policy differences drive votes, and that’s frustrating for those of us who are policy nerds.
The situation is somewhat different at the state level, however. America’s states have settled into Red/Blue tribal divisions that may or may not hold. For those of us who follow policy preferences and their outcomes, those Red and Blue states provide a rather striking natural experiment, and Blue state policies have emerged as clearly superior.
In Oklahoma, nearly a quarter of children live in food-insecure households, one of the highest rates in the country. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT, its annual compilation of child well-being data, ranked Oklahoma 46th in the nation overall—as well as 49th in education and 45th in health.
Yet Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt rejected the roughly $48 million of funding for the 2024 Summer EBT program and announced in August the state would also not participate in the program next summer. Oklahoma was one of 13 Republican-led states that declined this year’s summer grocery benefit. “Oklahomans don’t look to the government for answers, we look to our communities,” a spokesperson for the governor said in a statement regarding the decision to decline the funding, which they referred to as a “handout.”
Halfway across the country, KIDS COUNT ranked Connecticut 8th overall, 3rd in education, and 11th in health. But the state, which also participated in Summer EBT this year, faces a hunger problem as well—more than 15 percent of children live in food-insecure households. In fact, Connecticut was one of the first states in the country to pilot its own program in 2011.
The article noted numerous other differences attributable to policy choices. Life expectancy in the two states had been roughly equal in 1959; today, folks in Connecticut live 4 years longer on average than those in Oklahoma. Oklahoma–with Wild West gun laws similar to those in Indiana– had the 13th-worst rate of gun violence in the U.S., while Connecticut had the 45th-worst rate.
Research shows that, as political parties nationalized, state governments followed the governing party’s ideology. Differences in outcomes followed.
State government, after all, plunges into the day-to-day minutiae of our lives through decisions about health, education, social services, criminal justice, and more. For example, families in some states get money to keep their kids fed during the summer; in other states, they don’t.
The lengthy article illustrates the multiple ways in which these ideologically-driven policy differences affect both individual citizens and economic performance in the state. It’s well worth a read.
Another article–this one from the American Prospect—focuses on educational vouchers, a policy choice I frequently discuss. The article warns that Red state expansion of universal school vouchers is likely to have profound impact on the lives of young people.
As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.
Among the other detriments of these programs is an almost-total lack of oversight. In Arizona, for example, parents are allowed to direct education funds, not just to the school of their choice, but to anything they might call “education.”
As Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction Tom Horne, a loud proponent of vouchers, admitted in an interview, the state’s emphatically hands-off approach means that there’s nothing to prevent parents from using public dollars to teach their kids that the Earth is flat. Indeed, state law prohibits any kind of public oversight over the burgeoning nonpublic sector of private schools, homeschooling, and microschools, which are for-profit ventures in which small groups of students learn online while being monitored by a guide.
If, as economists insist, economic development depends upon the existence of a well-educated workforce, vouchers don’t just shortchange the children in sub-par private schools. They eventually impoverish the state.
