In his love letter to retired billionaire Rex Sinquefield in the Sunday Star, Kraske did not mention the word vouchers once, opting instead for this:
Big dollars have been poured into his best-known creation, a St. Louis-based free-market think tank called the Show-Me Institute, which advocates for many of his pet issues. Those include giving parents in Kansas City and St. Louis a broader array of school choices, abolishing the state income tax and replacing the earnings taxes in the state’s two biggest cities.
A broader array of school choices? Kraske not only does not mention vouchers, but he does not mention anything about public money going to private schools which would not have to account for how it is spent. It is the same trick employed by Sinquefield's Show-Me Institute. If you ask people if they believe they should have a choice of which school their children should attend, you are going to go a large percentage who will say yes. If you ask those same people if tax money should go to private schools, including private religious schools, the number who agree drops considerably.
Kraske also seems to almost revel in Sinquefield's efforts to pour as much money as he can into the accounts of his favored candidates, including Governor Matt Blunt and Attorney General candidate Chris Koster:
Critics contend that he’s blatantly skirting the newly reimposed campaign limits, because the committees allow Sinquefield to still make virtually unlimited donations to favored candidates. If each committee makes a maximum donation of $1,275 to Blunt, for example, Sinquefield can still funnel more than $100,000 to the governor.
“This attempt to buy public policy in our state should outrage Missourians,” said Robin Krause, a Knob Noster school board member and chairman of the Missouri Education Roundtable.
But the plan appears to be legal, and Sinquefield is upfront about his objectives. Republicans point out that finding ways to skirt donation limits is a time-honored practice in Missouri by members of both parties.
It should make us all feel good that our elected representatives and those who support them, from both parties, are so adept at taking a look at laws and finding out how to get around them.
5 comments:
Let me get this straigtht: You attack Mr. Sinquefield for his full disclosure and you don't attack the school boards for frivolous lawsuits and for hiding where their lobbying money goes? It looks like Mr. Sinquefield is refusing to play the same old political game and instead creating a new game with new rules--WITH FULL DISCLOSURE.
And please tell me how the public schools are made to account for their funds? We spend twice as much now as we did 10 years ago and the public schools, WITH MORE MONEY, show continued and consistent decline.
If the funding followed the child, the schools would be more competitive.
There is lots of info out there supporting the fact that more money does NOT mean better education:
http://www.schoolchoiceformissouri.org/trial/index.html
http://edualternatives.com/
You have to DIG to find disclosure on what the failed school boards are doing:
http://southcountytruth.blogspot.com/2007/10/socialized-education-cries-foul.html
As far as "changing the name to make it more palatable"--it seems from the article and other information about Rex Sinquefield that he supports ALL types of school choice--not just 'vouchers'. I bet most people who are for school choice are for many solutions other than vouchers, and theoretically one could be pro-school choice and not pro-voucher. It's just not good journalism/logic to equate something with a subset of itself.
Randy supports the failures of public education and refuses to acknowledge the same. He is the "more money" crowd. A prime example of this is the MissouriNet news cast I just heard at 11. It talks about the $4.6 million that schools have wasted on lawyers. They gave a website, fightthewaste.com where you can go and find out how much your shcool district has wasted.
Carl Junction has wasted over $12,000 of my kids education money. They don't have anything to show for it and are considering spending more to appeal the ruling. It's ridiculous and a fraud foisted upon all of us. Turner and his ilk support such idiotic actions.
I did research on the scholarship bill voted on last year. Turner and other dishonest bloggers continue to call the proposal vouchers and using public money. What I discovered was that there was an amendment offered to make it a voucher program, to use public money, and it was defeated. The bill was also defeated but it only provided for a tax credit for people to use their own money not the governments. Turner and his ilk believe that our money is the governments money first and that we are simply allowed to keep some of it out of the kindness of government. Right in line with Democrat thinking.
Turner and his ilk know they can't win telling the truth. Only by distorting it do they have a chance of influencing people.
Hi this is the pro-Nodler person. Randy is always saying all the anti-Randy comments come from me, just for the record, I didn't post any of these at all so when randy spouts off that its always the lone Pro-Nodler person, remember there are many of us but the Anti-Turner numbers are legion.
The school districts spending on the lawsuit for better funding pales in comparison to the amounts being wasted throughout the state on school construction through the use of construction manager -agent contracts.
The difference is that the public can actually see the dollar amounts paid to lawyers, but the dollar amounts paid to construction managers are hidden in multiple ways. Go to www.publicschoolconstructionmethods.blogspot.com for more information.teqoxxbj
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