Pastor Charles Foster Johnson wrote this urgent appeal on behalf of Pastors for Texas Children:
Dear PTC Friends,
What we feared all along this legislative session is now happening.
A special-needs voucher provision has been attached to the school funding bill by the Senate Education Committee.
In short, the pro-voucher Senate will not allow any increase in money for our neighborhood and community schools until and unless they get some kind of voucher policy in Texas.
The pro-voucher people are desperate. Powerful monied interests far outside the state of Texas want to profit off our children. They won’t quit until they tap into this market.
We know how wrong it is to fund the private education of a few with money dedicated to the public education of the many.
We know how unjust it is to corrupt the public trust through a subsidy for private interests.
We know how unwise it is to promote yet another government entitlement and expansion program that intrudes into our private schools.
Most important, we know how unrighteous it is to violate God’s gift of religious liberty by using government money to promote religious causes.
So, as much as our children need the increased funding, we must say NO to the privatization of God’s gift of public education.
Please call your state senator and state representative NOW and urge their opposition to this bill, CSHB21 (Committee Substitute House Bill 21). Attached is all the information you need. You can find their Austin phone numbers here: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/
Please pray for our Senate and House members. Please spread the word today to other pastoral and lay colleagues.
Do it for our children. ALL our children.
We thank God for you and your witness!
All best,
CFJ
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Diane!
It’s all hands on deck now.
This is cynical even for the Texas Legislature.
We will keep you posted, my friend. We appreciate you!
CFJ
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 4:52 PM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Pastor Charles Foster Johnson wrote this urgent > appeal on behalf of Pastors for Texas Children: Dear PTC Friends, What we > feared all along this legislative session is now happening. A special-needs > voucher provision has been attached to the sc” >
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Stay the course. We need you to continue to lead the fight.
After this legislative session is completed, then the next task is to begin working on candidates to replace the self-serving types like Lt. Dan. We need people in office that represent the people, not just themselves.
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Greetings Mrs. Ravitch! I have recently commenced the reading of your revised edition of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” and I am very intrigued in combating against our failing American education system. I am currently writing an essay to my current principal on this crisis to begin my works to become an activist towards this cause for not education reform, but an education revolution. I am astonishingly amazed by your works as an educational activist and wish to contact you for further questions regarding my journey towards a new future. Wars can be won even when most of the battles are lost.
With warm regards,
Edo Strike
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Edo,
I don’t think our education system is failing. I think our society is failing. I suggest you finish the book.
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Our country is indeed failing, Diane.
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The people of Texas should not tolerate such sneaky behavior. People should vote against those that would turn public school budgets into ATMs for education of dubious value. Vouchers have been an abject failure so they are not about improving education. They are all about redirecting public tax dollars into private pockets.
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Ka-ching seems to be the norm. This needs to change. Even GOOGLE has gotten into the business. OY!
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Whether you support school choice or not, you must admire their tactics. It is difficult to vote against special-needs children.
“Fight the battles you can win” – Sun-Tzu
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Chas,
If I may correct your first sentence:
“Whether you support school choice or not, you must abhor their tactics”.
Admire lying, disseminating, falsehoods and purposeful deception is what you “admire”, Chas?
Say it ain’t so, Joe!
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You should take my remarks in context. I am a student of history. I read Sun-Tzu and Clausewitz. You can admire the tactics and strategy of an individual or an organization, regardless of whether you agree with their goals and objectives.
I abhor slavery. But, I can admire the tactics that Robert E. Lee used in the battle of Chancellorsville, when his army completely routed the federal army. I served on active duty during the Vietnam conflict. (I did not serve in theater). I admire the tactics that General Giap employed during the Tet offensive.
Get it now?
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No, I sure don’t.
One can study those tactics towards an evil end however to admire them is to give implicit approval of the ends and goals. It is to acknowledge that tactics in the pursuit of evil are all fine and dandy, hell Hitler’s tactics to purify the Aryan race can be viewed as effective and therefore admirable if one doesn’t comprehend the horror of the reason. They were effective at the time in eliminating the many whom Hitler believed, in his mind rightly so, needed to be eliminated. To separate tactics from goals and ends is the militarists, those who deal in death and destruction, favorite propaganda method in order to justify to young vulnerable humans that to kill other humans is a “glorious and sacred” endeavor. Sick, effin sick is that thinking.
I’m sorry that you were in Viet Nam during that war. Many Americans were shanghaied into their deaths in that monstrosity of foreign policy. I’m glad your name isn’t inscribed in that wall of dishonor to humanity.
Yes, much like in talking about the inanities that are religions, talking about the insanities and death and destruction of the military in terms that I do is considered, as Hook would say, “Bad Form”. But in my thinking the military and religion go hand in hand because in order to freely kill other humans (in scenarios other than personal danger) one has to believe the many irrational fallacies that those two very human realms sadly and deadly promulgate.
Do you understand now?
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@Duane, I think I am tracking you. One small correction, I stated in my post Q I served on active duty during the Vietnam conflict. (I did not serve in theater). END Q
I have never been to VietNam, and I did not serve in theater.
I was stationed in California, and I was spit on. One person actually told me to “Get out of Viet Nam”. As if the generals actually cared what I thought!
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Certainly agree with your last sentence, and they still don’t care about the “grunts”. And just as those generals didn’t care, neither did the a$$w@*e who spat upon you. Even worse in a certain sense than the generals.
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Sadly a similar bill recently passed in Arizona, along with another that removes the requirement for certification to teach allowing anyone who is an “expert” in an area to teach. We are going down a dark hole…….
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“Most important, we know how unrighteous it is to violate God’s gift of religious liberty by using government money to promote religious causes. So, as much as our children need the increased funding, we must say NO to the privatization of God’s gift of public education.”
Ay ay ay. Such horse manure from a supposed man of god!
His supposed god did not give us “religious liberty”. Flesh and blood men enshrined that in the Bill of Rights. No god was a part of that process.
Likewise, no god gave a gift of public education. Lie and falsehood!
Men, writing clauses in each states’ constitution mandating public education, are what “gave us the gift” of public education. As a matter of fact in 3/4 state constitutions that have “Blaine type amendments” it is prohibited for the state to use public monies for aiding any religious organization, even though the biased in favor of religion SC judges and other lower level judges have twisted the constitutional mandates to mean something other than they mean in order to give public monies to tax free religious organizations.
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Duane,
I’m grateful that the Pastors for Texas Children are fighting against vouchers. I am grateful that they understand the value of separating church and state. I stand with Pastor Charles Foster Johnson and his fellow pastors. I wish they had chapters in Missouri and across the South and Midwest.
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Well, I have no problem with their stance on helping public education. But I do have a problem with religious folks who twist history and claim their god was the cause of very human actions. The falsehoods that I pointed out should rightly be rejected.
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People need to realize that there is no such thing as “government money”. There is only private wealth. If “government money” existed, there would be no need for taxes (currently taking nearly half of wealth earned in this nation), nor for government borrowing (currently approaching $20 Trillion dollars).
I agree, that no deity ever established a school. Education is man’s invention. No deity ever delivered freedom. Our freedom was purchased in blood, at Lexington and Normandy beach.
Nevertheless, as a man who has lived under communism, and Islamic Sharia law, I tend to believe that there is a divine blessing in our liberty.
Freedom is like the American Beauty rose. God made the rose. God and man working together made the American Beauty rose. Our rights and freedoms are a blessing. Men crafted and designed the bill of rights, to protect and secure these rights.
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“People need to realize that there is no such thing as “government money”. There is only private wealth.”
Without the government there would be no “money”. As it is the government is the one that is charged with printing money, not individuals. As far as wealth, so all of the National Park lands do not count as wealth? Quite confused are you, Chas.
There is no god to “bless us” with anything. The Bill of Rights is a man made instrument, part of the social contract that we have in this country, it has nothing to do with a god.
Now, I’ll defend your right to believe what you want to believe, but to insist that your beliefs are necessarily true because you invoke some metaphysical concept you call a god is risible and ludicrous. See Russell’s Teapot to understand why your claim of a “god who made the rose” is absurd.
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Forget the God issue. It is just absurd to say that there is no such thing as government money. We pay taxes and government decides where to spend it.
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I don’t ever bring up the “god issue” unless someone else has used it for whatever justification purpose or explanatory mechanism which is not a valid rationo-logical one. Mine are a response to those posts. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Kind of hard to forget the god issue when: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/05/franklin-graham-school-boards-must-be-run-by-evangelical-christians/
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Another of the reasons I can’t forget the god issue:
https://www.autostraddle.com/i-was-trained-for-the-culture-wars-in-home-school-awaiting-someone-like-mike-pence-as-a-messiah-367057/
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Let me make it a bit more clear. There is no such thing as a “spontaneously generated Washington (government) dollar”. The only money the government has, is the money taken from the public in the form of taxes. (Notwithstanding, federal lands which were purchased with money collected in taxes).
No government can come up with wealth on its own. It must take wealth from individuals.
I lived in Mozambique. The government there printed money, and declared the value to be MT40 for one US$. But there was so much paper money around, that you could get it on the black market for MT1600 to one US$.
The Confederate government printed money during the War between the States. It was valueless.
The Weimar government in Germany printed Reichsmarks, and the value was diminished to where they have to print 5 Billion-mark notes.
No government creates wealth. It is a private concern. Not even the government of Saudi Arabia creates wealth (I lived there too). The only money the Saudis have, is what they earn from oil sales, all denominated in US Dollars!
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