What is amazing, is McCain was supporting private timelines himself!

 http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/byauthor/166271

 At least one story has come up noticing the love affair that Huck has with McCain.

McCain is a hypocrite of the worst kind, not only negative campaigning, but taking it to a whole different level.  Florida residents and everyone on Super Tuesday would do well to not reward such hypocricy and bullying.

1.  Look at the areas that were the most adamantly against vouchers.  It was the majority of Utah counties that don’t have a private school for sometimes hundreds of miles.  In no flier or advertisement did I see any appeal to this huge group of people that in the end were shown NO REASON to vote for vouchers.  I heard some say that they believed that with vouchers it would probably help build private schools in these areas, but there was no proof or plan to make this happen.   By ignoring this group of people and instead focusing on a small group of people along the Wasatch front they doomed this from the start.  You will rarely win a vote by asking a large group of people to pay for another group of people with no proof or plan of ever making any of that money available to them.  Try sometime to pass a bill in Utah County to pay for a side road in Salt Lake County with no plans to spend any of the money in roads in Utah County.  Yeh, that wouldn’t pass.

2.  Failure to recognize that this is not a step in the direction of a free market education system.  The voucher program is still an education subsidy the same as public schools.  Jordy is a great guy, but most of his quotes point to this being about a free market system.  Like I explained earlier, the vouchers are scaled like the free lunch program.  The vast majority of people getting voucher money would be getting much more than they ever paid in, just like public schools.  Vouchers do not allow you to spend your money how you want, in most cases it just lets you spend others money how you want.  It also takes away any control the actual people paying for the majority of the vouchers had over where their money is spent.  Were we to return everyone’s property tax and have them school their children with that money then you are talking a true free market in line with all of the quotes Jordy mentions.  For apartment dwellers with no property tax, they would essentially get 0 money for school.  Vouchers are in no way, shape or form moving closer to a free market system.  It is still a redistribution of income just without many of the ways for the people getting money taken from to know where their money is going.

3.  The proponents of vouchers never decided if they were pro-public schooling, or anti public schools.  One ad would defend the vouchers as not hurting public schools when the next would attack public schools.  People see through this as just trying to pander to get your vote.  I suggest those blogging on vouchers look back at their entries and see they were doing this exact thing.  If you are trying to convince someone that your program won’t hurt public schools, don’t in the next breath tear into public schools as wrong and say that you don’t believe we should have public school.

I am all for private schooling, and I hope that a better plan will be constructed for building out and giving incentives to people to build out private schools across the state.  This needs to go back to the drawing board and I hope people come to grips with the problems that were inherit in the bill itself and the marketing of it.  Until they do, nothing good will be done because they will just stay angry at the world not admitting that there are common sense reasons not to have voted for this.  When you approach something from the perspective that everyone that voted against you is dumb then you will get yourself nowhere.  Frankly, it is insulting that so many believe that the only way you could have disagreed with vouchers is if you were ignorant or believed lies.  I can see the reasons people voted for vouchers and I respect them, I’m not seeing that same respect back, just a lot of name calling.

All this being said, both sides are just ridiculous. I think every ad starts with “Don’t believe the lies”. In the end they are pounding the same points over and over and in my opinion neither side are talking about the true issues behind this. Something like 6 million has been spent on both sides. The first year of vouchers will be approximately 15 million dollars. If that doesn’t make you crazy….

Another issue I have is how people treat so flippantly the public school system and how it should be more “free market”.  Well, last time I checked public schools are a part of the Utah Constitution.  So until you remove that little part the legislature has a responsibility to not only continue the public school system but make sure it is in good condition.  If you don’t like the public school system as a whole then you need to repeal that first and then you can make better arguments.  Right now the pro-voucher groups seem to be just fine with public schools eventually losing out on funding and cutting essential programs.  Of course proponents make it seem like all public schools are loaded with 90% fluff and that kids just do gym all day anyway.  I think that is what I did all day, had gym and world cultures every day for 4 years, dang public school.  Strange many of these same people berate our national leaders of not following the national constitution.  Once again, whatever is convenient to your argument.

What I want answered is three things.

1.  How are you going to limit the number of people who can game this system?  In California and other states parents regularly game the system and end up pocketing the money and the quality of education for the children actually goes way down.

2.  How to deal with private schools that go belly up (happens often).  If a school goes under midway through the year what do you do with the kids?  If they go to a public school then you are paying for them twice over with public money.

3.  How do you deal with the issue of future budget losses and/or a large spike in number of vouchers?  Do the public schools take a hit before the vouchers?  Is there a cap?

Overall, this voucher program was not thought out well at all.  I am appalled it passed in the first place.  Go back to the drawing board, close up the loose ends, and bring back something better.  I will send my kids to public schools, but I am all for private schools, just not this mess of legislation.

1.  I understand that the voucher money is coming from excess money in the general fund and is not taking out money directly out of public school funds.  Here is the place where voucher proponents are pushing in the media.  Anyone with half a brain knows that while something might not take money DIRECTLY from something else, it can indirectly reduce funds that could be used later for something else.  By agreeing to this voucher system, it is promising money that is available today, but there is no guarantee we will always have this surplus.  Further, by appropriating this money now and in the future, that money has no way of ever being considered for public school money.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something that needs to be considered.  If you are going to set aside money for something that won’t be available for public schools now or in the future you better be sure it is a good program.

2.  The walled Utah society (Utah county especially).  No matter what proponents say, religion is a huge reason for this proposal.  A large contingent of LDS in Utah disagree with public schools in very general terms because of their religious and cultural beliefs.  They often then either home school or send their children to schools that focus on their religious beliefs.  Their is already a largely held opinion with those that are not Mormon in Utah that our government and cities are a theocracy.  There is a big opportunity for a large amount of this public money to pour directly into LDS private schools further segregating the community and adding fuel to the fire critical of the political environment here.  I believe personally as a member of the LDS church, that going this route is shutting ourselves off from many of our neighbors and eliminates so many chances at being able to share the gospel with others.  I have to add, that currently teachers are far too restricted about talking about religious subjects in public school, but just because this is the case does not give us the right to go exactly the opposite while using public money.

3.  Vouchers are not going to automatically make your education system better.  Much has been made about the amount of students in Utah that are in private schools, but that is a point that is a red herring.  California has vouchers and still scores much worse than Utah students.  Obviously, home environments matter far more than the schools themselves.

As an aside, I have noticed that many of the people pushing the voucher program are the same people mortally opposed to any type of entitlement program, including health care etc.  While I know the arguments about the differences between them, I just don’t buy it and believe many of them are hypocrites. There are many other issues, and you can read about more here.  I have to restate, that I am for more kids going into private schools.  It reduces public school class sizes, and moves kids and parents not happy in one environment into another.  However, I just think people are trying to oversimplify something that is very complicated.  I’m not willing to sign off on something so easy to abuse like this that will cost tens of millions of dollars.

http://www.rimarkable.com/

“But Clinton is not the only candidate who does well with black Democrats in South Carolina. Obama does, too. He could be highly competitive with her for black votes, particularly if he wins the New Hampshire primary. African-Americans might suddenly become excited by the prospect of nominating one of their own.”

So now it is appropriate to say “one of their own”?  I’m sorry, but that is 1960 southern talk there.  In my mind that comment is just blatantly racist.  Anyway, just amazing that he thought it appropriate to write like that and CNN did not seem to find a problem with it.