Indiana School Vouchers

I don’t know if this USA Today story on voucher payments in Indiana has all the details in the story I first read but one thing about it makes me cringe. It plays into the hands of the worst elements of the Republican Party which took over Indiana in a landslide two years ago. Every blue or purple state where they got such a Tea Party landslide has been using that muscle to enforce all the GOP Dogmas in the book.

I’ve had a lot to say about vouchers on Lincoln Democrat over the years. I’m for them when public schools are cesspools. I’m not interested in them when a state has allowed its funding mechanism to shortchange poor neighborhoods. Sadly my search function no longer seems to go back far enough to find any of my old posts on the subject.

The Dixiecrat GOP has brought among its many perverted legacies like voter suppression, and allowing the poor to be strip mined by usurious pay day loans. Now its added to this the abandonment of public schools with lots of poor and black students.

While it is as yet unclear to me whether this will happen in Indiana I suspect it will happen. In Minnesota it would be like giving money to the many well to do folks who send their children to Breck, Blake or Marshall School.

Its intended as one more nail in the coffin of unions, in this case teacher’s unions. My posts have been none too charitible where the Duluth teacher’s Union leadership is concerned. In my case its not a zero sum game of union destruction. Its contempt for the union leaders acting in concert with previous administrations to stifle dissent.

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