As Richard Pryor’s junkie character used to say, “It’s the politics,
baby …”
• Last week, a Republican-controlled State House panel voted to
allow Arizonans to opt out of a national health-care plan. Of course,
there is no national health-care plan, but that didn’t stop the six GOP
Neros on the panel from fiddling while the still-undelivered budget
burned.
During the mutual back-slapping that stood in for what should have
been a debate, the phrase “socialized medicine” was used so many times
that you would think that the legislators were getting paid for piece
work by the lobbyists. (Pause. Breathe.)
Anyway, after helping to keep the citizens of the state safe by
sending on to the full House a suggestion that might apply some time in
the future if the federal government ever tries passing something that
might be considered objectionable, they joined their Republican homies
in the Hypocrite Pivot and sprinted down Socialism Lane.
Two days later, they got out the jumper cables, attached them to the
neck bolts of the rotting and fetid corpse of their pet
project—school vouchers—and turned on the juice. After the
Arizona Supreme Court ruled that existing school-voucher programs were
unconstitutional, the right-wing socialism crowd refused to take “You
stink at this!” for an answer. They passed a bill that would allow
corporations and insurance companies to pay for the school vouchers
(instead of having the state do it) while receiving a one-for-one tax
credit in the process. Apparently, this smarmy distinction might make
the whole ugly mess barely able to pass constitutional muster.
Gov. Jan Brewer (yes, she really is the governor) insisted that the
corporate giveaway be capped at $5 million this year, what with the
budget crisis and all.
Renewing their bid to earn first-ballot induction in the Cynicism
Hall of Fame, the backers of the effort claim that the money will only
go to special-needs and foster children: “Hey, kid, I’m trying to grab
that ‘Let’s-Screw-the-Public-School-Teachers’ brass ring, but it’s just
out of reach. Let me step on your wheelchair.”
State Sen. Al Melvin (R-26) still refers to the program as a voucher
system and is quick to launch into a discourse on “competition” and
“school choice” and blah, blah, blah. When asked about the
special-needs kids and the foster children, he snaps to and says, “Yes,
of course, that’s what the program is for.”
The thing is that nobody (including him and all of his Republican
cohorts) believes him and all of his Republican cohorts when they make
that claim. It’s so obviously an attempt to get a foot in the door so
they can start to gut public education.
As a matter of fact, I’ll make this promise right here: If any one
of the Republicans in the state Legislature will stand up with his hand
on the Bible and swear that the corporate-voucher system will forever
be limited to special-needs and foster kids, I’ll give money to the
GOP. I don’t even give money to the Democrats; that’s how sure I am
that nobody will take me up on that. And expanding the definition of
“special needs” to include somebody who voted for you but can’t afford
the tuition at Exclusive Caucasian Prep Academy doesn’t count.
• Congrats to the Tucson City Council. They (and City Manager
Mike Letcher) slapped new taxes on a wide spectrum of people (instead
of just renters), including many who don’t even live in the city. Taxes
and/or fees will go up on water, phones, trash pickup, bus fares, gym
memberships and even tanning salons.
Really?! Tanning salons? What’s that going to bring in, an extra
$140 a month?
• The dumping of the budget burden on non-city residents via
the increased tax on city water may have council members giddy (Nina
Trasoff gushed about “broadening the tax base,” while Steve Leal
blustered: “The community has much to be proud of in terms of what
we’ve done here”), but it may come back to bite them in the butt. The
word is that some state representatives are already working on a bill
that would allow those tax-paying customers outside of the city limits
to have some kind of voting rights when it comes to future Tucson Water
issues.
Right now, it can be argued that the city’s actions amount to
taxation without representation (and it is not the same as a
nonresident buying something inside the city limits and paying city
sales tax). I wonder how happy Ms. Trasoff and company will be with
broadening their voting base as well.
• Finally, to all of those e-mailers and (ahem) bloggers who
have taken me to task for sticking up for fired City Manager Mike Hein:
Yes, he is my friend, but he’s just one of, oh, six or seven friends
that I have. If their jobs were newsworthy, I would try to write
honestly about them.
This one guy wrote pedantically, “The city was being poorly
managed and he was the city manager. Do you get it?”
I don’t think the city was being managed badly; I think it’s being
governed badly. Time will tell.
This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2009.
What’s a ‘homie’?
Of course we Republicans want to change public education. The first priority is, of course, ‘choice’ – defined by the government schools as a limited ability to jump across attendance area borders if they wish you to and think it’s going to be ok for you – and defined by those of us who think it’s a good idea as an unlimited ability for parents to direct every dollar of public money spent on the education of their child to the institution that they sincerely believe would be best for their offspring.
If the voucher/contribution system is indeed a foot in the door to accomplish the latter definition of school choice, not only I am for it, but I suspect you would be too. After all, you have no doubt chosen that your local government school is best for your kids, so you want them to go there, and I think that’s great. What’s wrong with wanting the same choice for other parents? If someone else has a different view, are they evil as you imply?
Chuck Josephson
The problem with the voucher system (and Charter school system) from my perspective is that there isn’t equal competition. Public schools have to provide expensive services to special needs children that private schools aren’t required to provide. Charter schools have to take all comers but realistically if a particular charter school isn’t already in the business of dealing with special needs children the parent isn’t going to place their child there. Further, private schools don’t have to set up due process systems for discipline, aren’t required to bus students living a certain distance from a school, don’t have to provide lunchs for Title IV students, and don’t need to pay for staff to sift through the tons of paperwork required to comply with both State and Federal spending guidelines. Until there is true competition, and public schools are free to compete on an equal level with private and charter schools, the entire “choice” argument is really simply an excuse to not fund public education to a level so it can fairly compete.
The public education system is fully capable of competing with a voucher system – they just have no compelling reason to do so. The expensive services they provide are heavily subsidized by tax dollars at the federal state and local level. The escalating funding levels that they presumably need to “fairly compete” don’t reach the classrooms due mainly to the relentless lobbying of the National Education Association to maintain the status quo in a progressively failing system.
School vouchers are a mechanism to promote competition and thus the quality of the final product – education. Private institutions would flock to provide lunches, transportation and special needs programs if the demand existed and it would if this competition were allowed to blossom.
Finally, a quick comment regarding the tendency of Danehy and others to resort to ad hominem arguments such as “(rich Republicans who can) afford the tuition at Exclusive Caucasian Prep Academy” to swing the debate on education reform. Both of my children began their education in TUSD schools but finished in the parochial system. This resulted from growing dissatisfaction with the school administration in terms of declining expectations, reluctance to enforce discipline, etc. The final straw occurred one day while I was spending the afternoon in my son’s fourth grade class. One of the students became angry and extended his middle finger to the teacher who was a wonderful person and great educator with 14 years at that school. Her response was nothing more than a sad expression. When I later questioned her about this, she told me that she felt that she was not supported by the administration when it came to imposing discipline. I guess the young perpetrator must have not been worried about his action since he was familiar with the “due process system” alluded to by a previous commenter….
“The expensive services they provide are heavily subsidized by tax dollars at the federal state and local level.” Ah-right because public education is funded, not subsidized, by tax dollars. A private school that receives money from vouchers that otherwise would go to a public school is being subsidized. “The escalating funding levels that they presumably need to “fairly compete” don’t reach the classrooms due mainly to the relentless lobbying of the National Education Association to maintain the status quo in a progressively failing system.” An interesting comment given the third paragraph of your comment lamenting ad hominem attacks. “Private institutions would flock to provide lunches, transportation and special needs programs if the demand existed and it would if this competition were allowed to blossom.” Private institutions don’t provide them because they don’t have to and they’re very expensive. My point is that if you want fair competition fine-then let public schools compete on the same level. Finally, I think you’re making my point when you complain about the fourth grader. In private school he’s kicked out. In a public school there’s a discipline matrix. If you were a principal with a problem child which system would you rather have?
The real deal with vochers and charter-schools is this; We hand the public -school system a fixed deck and wonder why they can’t win the game. The public school system in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s are like the national telephone system. We had the best system in the world until Regan figured out that privatization and de-regulation meant more profits for corporations. And the people went for it. Another Jeti mind trick. You know it only works on the weak minded.
Thanks Tom for keeping it real.
The claim that private institutions don’t provide necessary services because they don’t have to and they’re very expensive is misleading. They don’t provide them because there is no market pressure to do so because the taxpayer is on the hook for subsidizing poorly run, inefficient programs. My point is that if you take the largest union in the universe (NEA) out of the equation, the resulting market pressures will create a leaner and higher-quality system for the kids (which is what we all want, right…)
“Discipline matrix” is more doublespeak from the public education bureaucracy to justify their existence and expand their reach. The NEA is the classic example of the bloated, self-serving publicly-funded (by way of their member’s dues) entity that feeds on the social conscience of our country with these sorts of concepts. To continue the fourth grade story, I confronted the school principal about the incident. He wouldn’t suspend or otherwise punish the little recidivist brat because he came from a single-parent family that had a lot of problems managing him. Is that fair to the rest of the class? Is that fair to that child? I grew up in a working class family on the south side of Chicago and attended the public school system. If I had been stupid enough to flip off a teacher, my discipline matrix would have consisted of suspension and my father insuring that I wouldn’t be able to sit for a week.
This may be veering off topic a bit but the point I’m trying to make is that cultural shifts and behavioral changes that occur from one generation to the next result from fundamental changes in critical institutions like our educational system. I lay much of the blame for these negative changes at the feet of organizations like the NEA who want to keep a death grip on their monopoly of the system and really don’t give a damn about the future of kids like the problem child I discussed. Competition with private institutions, and the resulting improvement in the quality of education is their worst nightmare.
Danehy began this article with a diatribe against the evil fat white conservative legislators who want to deprive the public of a sorely-needed socialized medical system. I ordinarily think he has a balanced opinion but I continue to be stunned by him and many others who demonize markets and anything that sounds like competitive capitalism. Socialism does not work (unless you live in Sweden where you pay 55 % income tax in exchange for the privilege of waiting 6 months for a free knee operation). Notwithstanding the financial services thieves on Wall Street that we’ve become familiar with lately, markets work and they work well. If we allow them to be applied to our dysfunctional primary and secondary educational system, we will regain our standing as the nation with the smartest kids in the world.