Florida Shows Why Public Funds Should Not Go to Religious Schools

Roughly 38 states have constitutional provisions that bar the use of public, taxpayer funds to support religious schools.  As Florida's voucher system is demonstrating, such bans are appropriate and that taxpayer funds should not support religious and private schools that actively discriminate against different portions of the public. As noted in a prior post, Christofascists now have cases before the U.S. Supreme Court where they want such bans abolished in order for their discriminatory schools take money from the public trough while openly discriminating against whoever they deem"other" or "sinners."  The Orlando Sentinel looks at Florida's voucher system and the bigotry the public is being forced to finance.  It is instructive to keep in mind that in the South, many "christian academies" began to avoid integration and that the bigoted mindset continues to this day. Here are article highlights:

Once again, Orlando Sentinel reporters peered behind the curtains of Florida’s unchecked voucher-school system to see how $1 billion worth of public money is being used. And once again, what they found was ugly.

Their reporting uncovered more than 80 schools with blatant discrimination policies that deny admission to gay children, expel or discipline students who reveal they’re gay and sometimes refuse to educate children of LGBT parents.

These schools want public money. But they don’t want to serve all of the public.

One school told a mother — a firefighter married to U.S. Air Force veteran — that her children were unfit to be educated there simply because the couple was two women.
The two women served their country and community. But the school — which received $371,000 in state scholarship money last year — told the family to get an education elsewhere.

In their “Schools without Rules” series, reporters found voucher schools forging safety reports, using factually incorrect curriculum and hiring unqualified teachers — some who hadn’t even finished high school.

Yes, high school dropouts teaching school … underwritten with public money.

They found voucher schools that stiffed teachers out of paychecks and some that shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding students.

Berate public schools all you want. There will never be a day when you take your child to a public school only to find it’s gone out of business.

The reporters found administrators accused of fraud, teachers accused of abuse, loads of problems — all of it swept under the rug by politicians who demonize public schools while promoting “school choice.”

These reporters wanted to see what was happening in Florida’s billion-dollar voucher-school system for a simple reason: No one else will.

In six months, our reporters visited more voucher schools in Central Florida — to see what kids were learning and how they were being treated — than the Florida Department of Education visited in the entire state in a year.

Some voucher schools do great jobs. And many welcome all children, regardless of race, faith or sexual orientation. This includes some Christian and faith-based schools that not only welcome LGBT students but teach students that discrimination against anyone is wrong.

But others discriminate — not only against LGBT students, but also students with even mild disabilities.

If these kids were denied admission because they were black, it would be illegal — and politicians would be outraged.

But Florida green-lights discrimination against LGBT citizens. In hiring. In housing. And yes, in schooling.

The politicians also say people of faith should be free to discriminate if that’s part of their belief system. People used to make similar arguments for racial discrimination. In defending a 1965 ban on interracial marriage, a Virginia judge declared in 1965 that God “did not intend for the races to mix.”

Discrimination was wrong then. It is wrong now. It’s especially wrong when underwritten with tax dollars.

[S]ix months of investigating by reporters Annie Martin and Leslie Postal revealed, is that many more schools have explicit discrimination policies. And they should welcome more accountability and standards in general, to make sure children are actually being educated at these publicly funded schools — just as Florida already demands of traditional schools.

Many lawmakers are fine with the status quo and publicly funded discrimination. If you’re not, speak up.

“Christian Advocate” , FRC Celebrates Budget Cuts Harming the Poor

While there are many faces to the Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who preach a foul belief system that is the antithesis of the true Gospel message, one that wraps them all in one hideous hate filled package is Family Research Council (which has ties to The Family Foundation, Virginia's leading hate group) and its white supremacist loving president, Tony Perkins.  If one needs a motivation to walk away form Christianity, Perkins and FRC are prime examples, although there are many others, including FRC affiliates scattered across America.  Franklin Graham is another reason to walk away.  In response to Der Trumpenführer proposed budget that would devastate programs for the poor and working class Americans,  In a press release, hate minister Perkins praised the brutal budget.  Here are excerpts:

There’s a new sheriff in town, and the White House’s budget proves it with deep cuts to some of the government’s bloated spending. Although the proposal is more of an exercise in vision-casting, plenty of Republicans would be happy to take Trump’s pared down projects seriously. To the cheers of fiscal hawks, the administration suggests cutting the EPA by 31 percent and the State Department by a similar amount.

A longer list of programs like community development block grants, the Weatherization Assistance Program, and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program would be cut 100 percent. Included in that bunch are two longtime targets of the GOP: the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The latter, home to the Left’s pet media outlets NPR and PBS, would finally lose the crutch of millions of taxpayer dollars.

President Trump boosted funding, along with a dramatic shift in favor of school choice programs. While he slashes $9.2 billion from the Department of Education overall, he makes good on his campaign promise to expand charter schools and vouchers by 50 percent.

When the administration fills in the blanks of the budget later this month, we’ll also see if the White House rewards sexual risk avoidance programs with a bump in abstinence education dollars.

As Joe Jervis notes, The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Plan provides up to $300 to year to help poor families pay their heating and utility bills during the winter months. But who needs heat or electricity when you’ve got White Jesus to keep you warm?

Note the boost in school vouchers that will benefit segregated "Christian" schools and shift funds from public schools.  Note that Perkins wants to boost funding for abstinence only sex ed which has been documented to fail horrifically.  I also suspect such "education" programs would include a heavy dose of anti-LGBT propaganda as well not to mention cuts in HIV/AIDS funding which FRC likely views as a means to kill off gays and many in the black community where HIV/AIDS is a huge heterosexual crisis..  

Anti-Gay Betsy DeVos Seeks to Inject Right Wing Christianity into Public Education

One thing is always a constant with the Christofascists: they believe that everyone must adhere to their beliefs and they will resort to any means to accomplish the imposition of their version of Sharia law on all.  With Donald Trump's selection of a cast of the most racists and reactionary individuals in recent memory for his cabinet, religious freedom for non-Christofascists will be under attack. Indeed, Betsy DeVos wants to inject right wing Christianity back into the public schools to do "advance God's kingdom," as defined, of course by Ms. DeVos and her fellow extremists.  Among those specifically targeted by DeVos are gays against whom she has long wage war going all the way back to the 1990's when she and other zealots mapped out a plan to defeat the "homosexual agenda"  and "organized homosexuality."  DeVos has been a huge bank roller for anti-gay and anti-religious freedom groups ever since.   The Advocate looks at DeVos' frightening vision for public education as she works to dismantle it.  Here are excerpts:

Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's pick for secretary of Education, compared her work in public education reform to the battle of David and Goliath, and said she wants to "advance God's kingdom."

In an audio clip exclusively obtained by Politico, Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos, revealed how their religion fuels their drive to reform public education.

The audio from a 2001 conference known as "The Gathering," an annual meeting featuring some of the nation's most wealthy Christians, DeVos, and her husband, Dick DeVos, were interviewed about a failed Michigan ballot initiative that was going to amend the state's constitution to allow public funds to be used on private and religious schools. The couple backed the initiative.

Betsy DeVos is also not exactly a friend to public education. An advocate of school choice, she believes government bodies should provide vouchers to parents who want to send their children to private schools but can’t afford them.

They also commented on how public education has "displaced" the place of the church at the center of communities, and they said that providing parents with school choice is one way to undo that displacement.

Betsy and Richard DeVos have previously provided funding to antigay initiatives. They headed the effort to amend Michigan’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage and gave $200,000 to the campaign, Raw Story notes. Voters approved the amendment in 2004; it was struck down, along with other states’ anti–marriage equality laws, by the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

A transcript from one of the meetings of "The Gathering" provides more insight into the bizarre and obsessed world of DeVos as others like her.  The agenda? To infiltrate the public schools and oppose everything from the "safe schools" concept which argues that schools should be a refuge for all students to stamping out gay-straight alliances.  That DeVos will be in a position to implement some of her agenda is frightening.  Not only LGBT individuals and their friends and families but anyone who believes in religious freedom for all Americans should be very, very  disturbed.

Trump Taps Anti-LGBT Extremist to Head Department of Education

First we saw anti-black, anti-LBGT Jeff Sessions tapped by Donald Trump to be Attorney General of the United States.  Now, Trump  has tapped anti-LGBT extremist billionaire Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education.  Not only is DeVos stridently anti-LGBT rights, but she is a rabid supporter of school choice and school vouchers, a system that would drain funding from public schools and help fund schools run by Christofascist denominations.   Indeed, DeVos would happily do away with public schools all together. For those unfamiliar with DeVos, she and her husband have contributed huge sums of money to anti-LGBT and anti-public school causes. Meanwhile, neither DeVos nor any of her children have ever darkened the door of a public school, yet she is now to head the Department of Education which focuses - at least historically - on public education.   A piece at Joe My God looks at the DeVos family's anti-gay, anti-public school history.  Here are article highlights:

Her family is one of NOM’s most massive contributors. TheDetroit News reports:

President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he intends to appoint West Michigan GOP mega donor and philanthropist Betsy DeVos to be his education secretary, putting an ardent supporter of school choice in charge of the nation’s education policy.

DeVos, 58, is seen as a national leader in the school choice movement, which she has called an attempt to “empower” parents to find good schools for their children, whether they be traditional public schools in other neighborhoods, charter schools, virtual schools or private institutions.

DeVos is a former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman whose husband, Dick, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006. The DeVos family, heirs to the Amway Corp. fortune, are the most prolific donors to the Michigan Republican Party, GOP officeholders and candidates.

From a 2012 ABC News story:

The Douglas and Maria DeVos Foundation, financially supported by Amway president Doug DeVos, donated $500,000 to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), an anti-gay marriage group that was one of the leading advocates against same-sex marriage initiatives in eight states. Because of that 2009 donation, gay rights activist are calling for a boycott of Ada, Mich.-based Amway, a health and beauty products company, and its affiliates including the Orlando Magic basketball team, which DeVos’ father and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos owns.

DeVos and her husband also donated $200,000 to Michigan’s ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage. 

The Michigan billionaire is a troubling choice, given her extreme history of supporting anti-LGBT causes and opposing efforts to bring fairness and equality to LGBT Americans. Between 2010 and 2013, the DeVos family and their various foundations have given millions of dollars to anti-LGBT groups, including Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Each of these organizations has fought vehemently against protecting LGBT students from discrimination and harassment. They have also lobbied for legislation to prohibit students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity; opposed rights for same sex parents; and are fighting to require education professionals – including teachers, counselors, therapists, administration and more – to out LGBT students to their parents, even if they are not ready.

An LGBT rights organization, Freedom for All Americans, had this to say about DeVos:

The Michigan billionaire is a troubling choice, given her extreme history of supporting anti-LGBT causes and opposing efforts to bring fairness and equality to LGBT Americans. Between 2010 and 2013, the DeVos family and their various foundations have given millions of dollars to anti-LGBT groups, including Focus on the Family, Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Each of these organizations has fought vehemently against protecting LGBT students from discrimination and harassment. They have also lobbied for legislation to prohibit students from using the restroom that matches their gender identity; opposed rights for same sex parents; and are fighting to require education professionals – including teachers, counselors, therapists, administration and more – to out LGBT students to their parents, even if they are not ready.

By the way, each of the groups cited above is a certified hate group.

GOP/Conservative Groups Plan US-wide Assault on Education, Health and Public Sector

David Koch

The hypocrisy of Republicans and self-professed Bible worshiping conservatives continues to soar to new levels.  As The Guardian reports, plans are underway for a 34 state campaign to "release residents from government dependency," which of course, really means that the poor and those without health care will be cast into the gutter to hopefully die while education spending is gutted.  Helping to fund this effort to bring back the worse aspects of the Gilded Age are not surprisingly the greed driven billionaire Koch brothers.   Shockingly, another major supporter is food giant Kraft and multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline (yes, the boyfriend and I will be changing our shopping patterns).  The article also highlights the pressing need to halt the political activities of alleged charities that are nothing more than funding funnels Here are story highlights:for the far right. 

Conservative groups across the US are planning a co-ordinated assault against public sector rights and services in the key areas of education, healthcare, income tax, workers' compensation and the environment, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal.

The strategy for the state-level organisations, which describe themselves as "free-market thinktanks", includes proposals from six different states for cuts in public sector pensions, campaigns to reduce the wages of government workers and eliminate income taxes, school voucher schemes to counter public education, opposition to Medicaid, and a campaign against regional efforts to combat greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The policy goals are contained in a set of funding proposals obtained by the Guardian. . . . The documents contain 40 funding proposals from 34 states, providing a blueprint for the conservative agenda in 2014.

In partnership with the Texas Observer and the Portland Press Herald in Maine, the Guardian is publishing SPN's summary of all the proposals to give readers and news outlets full and fair access to state-by-state conservative plans that could have significant impact throughout the US, and to allow the public to reach its own conclusions about whether these activities comply with the spirit of non-profit tax-exempt charities.Details of the co-ordinated approach come amid growing federal scrutiny of the political activities of tax-exempt charities.

Most of the "thinktanks" involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform. Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of "media campaigns" aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to "advancing model legislation" and "candidate briefings", in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The documents also cast light on the nexus of funding arrangements behind radical rightwing campaigns. The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83m drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• "reforms" to public employee pensions raised by SPN thinktanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey and Pennsylvania;
• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska and New York;
• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida;
• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada;
• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina and Utah.

Medicaid is the target of a grant proposal coming from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), an influential thinktank funded largely by rightwing foundations and corporations including the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, tobacco company Altria and the telecoms giant Verizon. The Texas Observer has investigated the contents of the document and points out that in its request for $40,000 from Searle, TPPF claims credit for blocking Medicaid expansion in the state.

The article is lengthy, so read the entire piece.

Is Bobby Jindal Self-Destructing?

Candidly, I do not like the policies that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has been pursuing in his quest to bolster his image with the national Christofascist and Tea Party crowd.   The irony now seems to be that while he has increased his name visibility at the national level, his popularity is on a sharp decline in his home state where the policies cheered by the knuckle draggers and saboteurs of the Christofascist/Tea Party are proving not so popular with the hometown crowd.  Of course, if one's popularity crashes and burns in one's home state, it makes the likelihood of success nationally far less certain.  Apparently, Jindal should have kept his eye more on the wants and desires of those in Louisiana.  Here are highlights from a Washington Post article:

Jindal’s approval rating appears to be in steady decline. On Monday he dropped his tax reform plan that would have replaced income taxes with higher sales taxes, acknowledging a widespread backlash from the public, religious groups, business and state lawmakers in his own party. ”It certainly wasn’t the reaction I was hoping for,” Jindal said.

That very public failure comes just 16 months ago after Jindal was easily reelected with two-thirds of the vote against minimal Democratic opposition. What happened? The answer is that the policies that have made Jindal an increasingly attractive national candidate have hurt him back home.

Deep budget cuts, particularly to health care and education spending, have been unpopular. Polling suggests that a small majority also opposes the vouchers at the heart of his educational reform plan, which a judge has deemed unconstitutional. While other Republicans gave in, Jindal has held firm in his opposition to a federally-funded Medicaid expansion — an unpopular position, according to a Southern Media Opinion & Research poll.

Jindal’s popularity dip is the price of getting things done, Anderson [a Jindal political consultant] argued. At six percent, unemployment in Louisiana is lower than the national average and low for the region. In 2011 the state GDP ticked up .5 percent. Per capita income has also grown, although it’s still below the national average.

The current slump is hardly the end of the story. Jindal is still pushing for an income tax repeal without the sales tax swap — and his staff is no longer insisting that the package be revenue-neutral. To pass that legislation he needs only a simple majority rather than the two-thirds required to raise sales taxes and it will likely be much more popular (at least in the short term) even if fiscal hawks in the state cry foul. (Republicans control both the state House and state Senate.)

As a presidential contender, Jindal has been touted not just as a reformer but as one who can stay hugely popular while making dramatic cuts. Of late, that’s not been the case, however.

I'm sorry, but anyone willing to prostitute themselves to the Christofascists/Tea Party doesn't deserve a promising political future. Long term, these groups are political poison to the GOP's future.  When will someone grow a spine and stand up to them?

Court Strikes Down Bobby Jindal;s Voucher Plan Benefiting Religious Schools

Some in the Republican Party and the pundit class are lauding Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal as a possible new face in the GOP that can lead the party out of its post election defeat and in a more modern direction.  Unfortunately, these voices ignore the fact that it is the GOP's policies and toxic marriage to the Christofascists that is the true problem.  Propping up a non-white face like that of Marco Rubio or Jindal doesn't solve the GOP's underlying sickness.  Now a court in Louisiana has struck down Bobby Jindal's school voucher program that allowed parents to use public funds to pay private and particularly religious school tuition.  In addition to the court's ruling, the voucher program is under investigation for its possible guise as a way to circumvent federal desegregation orders.  This is not the type of programs a "new GOP" would be pushing.  It's merely the same old pig with a new tube of lipstick.  Here are highlights from Reuters:

A state judge on Friday shot down Louisiana's sweeping school voucher program, ruling that the state could not use funds set aside for public education to pay private-school tuition for thousands of low- and middle-income children.

While State District Judge Tim Kelley ruled the voucher program unconstitutional, he did not issue an immediate injunction to stop it. The 5,000 students currently receiving vouchers will be able to continue attending their private schools pending an appeal, state officials said.

But Kelley's ruling is not the only challenge facing the voucher program.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled that the program had the potential to disrupt the region's court-ordered efforts to desegregate public schools. The judge issued a temporary injunction halting the use of vouchers in Tangipahoa Parish over concern that the program was siphoning off state dollars needed to implement the desegregation plan.

While that ruling just applied to the one parish, at least 30 other school districts in Louisiana are under desegregation orders; opponents of the voucher program have said they will bring similar federal court cases in those districts.

They may not need to take such action, however, if Friday's ruling is upheld. Kelley issued his 39-page decision after a brief but emotional trial in a case brought by two teachers unions, dozens of local school boards and the state school board association.

 Judge Kelley ruled that Louisiana's annual education appropriation, calculated under a complex formula known as the Minimum Foundation Program, was intended exclusively for public schools. To divert it, he said, violated the state constitution.
 
In a statement, Jindal didn't tip his hand about his tactics but did issue a forceful vow to defend his signature program. The opportunity to attend private schools, he said, "is a chance that every child deserves, and we will continue the fight to give it to them."

Hopefully, the voucher program will remain dead.  Anyone who has followed the Christian Right for any amount of time ought to know that a long sought goal is to have tax payers pay for their children to go to religious schools, many of which teach creationism and other batshitery.  Jindal is doing little more than shamelessly prostituting himself to this malevolent force in the GOP base.