School vouchers: flimflam by any name

 Our subject here is two self-evident and highly political truths: (1) School vouchers, by whatever name they're called, are deceitful at their core. (2) Whatever proponents may call them, school vouchers aren't really about education at all.

  We'll talk about the ramifications of this deceit regarding vital K-12 public institutions, but first:

  In the midst of an arduous analysis of higher education options a few years ago, my family gulped at a revelation about private schooling that gave us a queasy feeling -- a feeling of being had.

  Our son had rung just about every bell at the high school level. Accordingly, he had designs on some prestigious private schools.

  On a college scouting trip, we were excited about the prospect of sumptuous scholarships. Then we put the pencil to the actual costs.

  The case in each instance was that once all prospective assistance was applied, he would have been attending these private schools for almost exactly what it would cost to attend a very good state university, at in-state rates, without any student aid at all. None.

  To sum up our college scouting trip, which cost a pretty penny itself: The price of a private education was set -- almost criminally, to my eye -- just beyond this young man's means.

  I was angry then. Now I thank the heavens for this because he joyfully attended a certain state university in Austin, Texas, and never looked back.

  What does this have to do with the flimflam otherwise known as school vouchers? Well, consider what the Texas Senate just voted to do. It voted to authorize tax credits to attract business donations toward a "scholarship program" for low-income families in certain urban districts to send their children to private schools.

  Ah, sweet deliverance for those "trapped" in "failing" public schools – except:

  Such "scholarships" would be capped at 75 percent of what the state pays per student. That shakes down to about $6,000 a year, according to the Texas Tribune. Hence, a poor family would be on the hook for $1,300 based on the national average tuition for elementary schools ($7,355). Meanwhile, even with such a "scholarship," a family would have to cough up a whopping $7,248 at the high school level based on a national average private high school tuition of $13,248.

  In other words, if a family has trouble meeting rent and putting food on the table, there is almost no chance that it can send its children to Sacred Inheritance Academy, even under the Texas Senate's sumptuous incentives.

  Of course, even if such a family could find that kind of money, the school it desires could decline to admit its child. That's why they call private schools "private."

  Money aside, voucher proponents assume that people in inner-city neighborhoods want to send their children away from their local schools. In truth, offers of this nature rarely create the Oklahoma Land Rush proponents imagine.

  All of this brings us back to the self-evident truth that vouchers are not about education. Don't believe it for a second. Vouchers are about association, the pursuit of homogeny, that which populates private religious schools and white-flight school districts routinely proclaimed "exemplary."

  Let's get real. Those who assert that inner-city schools have failed know the best measure of a school, at least by their standards, is the census of pricy SUVs in the parking lot as classes let out.

  Since poor families wouldn't be able to benefit from the "scholarships" envisioned and, regardless, will wish to associate with their neighbors rather than those who have fled their kind, why would lawmakers continue to push vouchers?

  Principally, it's because for many the whole concept of tax-supported education remains alien and odious. Anything that will tunnel under that institution is something they will support.

  Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

Government of the people, by the contractors

        War is the biggest big-government endeavor.

So riddle me this: Why is it that the politicians quickest to salute the power of war tend to be the most anti-government?

That's right. Those most prone to swear by government in war say our government can't possibly facilitate, say, health coverage for its own people.

Previous generations – witness Medicare and the Public Health Service Act – did not indulge this bizarro duality. They knew the nation (translated: its government) that beat fascism in World War II could do much at home to combat illness, illiteracy and indigence. And they authorized it.

This changed in the '80s. Ronald Reagan convinced sufficient numbers that government wasn't the solution to these matters but instead was the problem.

With Reagan came the sway of free-market guru Milton Friedman. Friedman said the best thing government can do is divest itself of governing. Presto: privatization.

Even to wage war? Oh, yes, to whatever extent politicians could make it happen. This would depend, of course, on whose palms could be greased and by whom.

The other day U.S. District Judge Royce Lambert threw the book at four Blackwater security guards for a 2007 incident in which 14 Iraqi civilians were shot dead and 17 were wounded.

The role of private security firms in armed situations has been one of the dark secrets of our most recent combat engagements overseas.

Whereas the "coalition of the willing" in Iraq touted by George W. Bush was mostly of the bystander variety, the coalition of civilian hired guns – contractors like Blackwater -- was, as Robert Greenwald reports in his film "Iraq for Sale," the second largest fighting force: 20,000 strong.

To be honest, however, Blackwater is but a two-bit player in the privatizing bacchanal that emanated when we last went warring.

         With $138 billion going to contractors to build stuff, run stuff, and guard stuff, the big dog was Texas construction giant KBR Inc. Until it was spun off in 2007, KBR shared with Dick Cheney the closest thing he'd ever known to a foxhole: Halliburton.

         Taxpayers are led to believe that private companies can do the job better and at lower costs. That's just not true. It certainly wasn't in Iraq, asserts Greenwald. Much of "Iraq for Sale" is about horrendous overpricing of services and goods as the result of no-bid contracts and lack of oversight.

Look around, however, and see the privatize-at-any-cost mentality at every level of government these days.

Naomi Klein's book "Shock Doctrine" is a devastating look at the deceit built into privatization. She explains how it becomes a go-to strategy when things go awry – see 9/11 -- or when leaders can construct a crisis – see Iraq -- to rationalize it.

Klein's prime example, however, is Hurricane Katrina. It is convenient to blame government for the response that left so many hanging, but Klein cites ineptitude that was the result of free enterprise – contractors hired by the Bush administration whose heads weren't in the game.

Worse, after the devastation, public institutions that had been so important to the poor of New Orleans – public schools, public housing, public transportation – became easy pickings. Who needs public schools when New Orleans can have for-profit charter schools? Don't rebuild public housing. Condemn and sell.

"New Orleans' public sphere was not being rebuilt," Klein wrote. "It was being erased, with the storm used as the excuse."

        The insidious thing about all of this is when we punt away public functions and when the private alternatives fail, we simply blame government. In too many venues, we have created what Paul Krugman, in Katrina's wake, called "the can't-do government."

But, of course, this nation can do anything it desires. It has the resources, the people, the history. And that doesn't apply just to war.

         Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

 

Hardliners desperately seeking Satan

  Chances of war with Iran, says career Middle East journalist Barbara Slavin, went down "a gazillion" with the framework for a nuclear agreement.

  Ah, fudge.

  Never fear. Or fear. Hardliners in Congress will do their very best to change the percentages.

  Slavin, who covered Iran for the Washington Post and is now senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, told The Hill that Congress should "declare victory" and join other nations that helped hammer out the deal.

  With those countries -- Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, with general participation by the European Union -- the United States would be in a powerful position to monitor whether Iran abides by its pledge to limit nuclear development to peaceful means.

  We don't want that, say congressional Republicans.

  That depends on who the "we" is. An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 59 percent of Americans do.

  They agree with President Obama on the best way to ensure peace: "We will engage, but we preserve all our capabilities."

   He might have said, "Trust, but verify," but that was Ronald Reagan's line in dialing down nuclear tensions with the Soviet Union.

   Joe Klein, writing in Time magazine, calls the nuclear talks a stunning opportunity for a moderate leader, President Hassan Rouhani, to put that country's hardliners on the sidelines regarding a deal with "the Great Satan" – us.

  Klein remarks on a "weird ideological confluence" between "Likudnik neoconservatives" in Israel and Iranian hardliners. They are speaking as one in opposing the deal.

  I found it interesting that Klein didn't call the confluence a troika, because we have our own hardliners of said mind.

  Calling Iranians "the most pro-American Muslims in the region," Stein notes a disconnect between the masses, particularly young Iranians, and members of the "desperately-seeking-Satan hardliners" who have controlled Iranian policy for decades.

  The same can and should be said of the tea party operatives now calling the shots in Congress. They are no more representative of this great and diverse nation as a whole than the cast of "Duck Dynasty."

  Americans are saying: "Engage. Seek peace." They're saying it about Iran. They're saying it about Cuba.

   Reagan did it with the Soviets. Nixon did it with China. We are now trade partners with Vietnam. Count all members of the World War II Axis as among our very best friends. All of them. Engage. Seek peace.

  The Iranian people are saying it. The Cuban people are saying it.

   The American hard right is saying, "No. No. No."

   On Iran, Sen. Tom Cotton talks blithely about letting bombs do our talking.

   On Cuba, Sen. Marco Rubio says 50 years of isolation isn't nearly enough.

   Klein is right. Some people in power are desperately seeking Satan. But are the masses? The graying Iranians want to relive the heady days of American hostages. The young Iranians want an unshackled economy and "Dancing With the Stars."

   Observe at the same time the American right. It lives in another time entirely. It aches for Cold War-style tensions. It resists modernity. It resists diversity.

   As an emblem of all the above, the Great Satan for America's hard right is the man in the White House. Menace is in his every twitch.

   "There is no option to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon," says that man, our president, "that will be more effective than the diplomatic initiative and framework that we put forward."

    That is inarguable. Iran can do what it wishes, arms-wise, if it wants to endure more sanctions. Then the only answer will be bombs. However, if it wants to end its economic isolation, it has a peaceful route to get there.

     This response to tensions based on musty blood oaths is a gazillion times better than the alternative, which is war.

     Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.