The currently popular means of establishing vouchers in the states where the state constitution forbids them is called an “education savings account.” The way it works is otherwise known as money laundering. Suppose Daddy Warbucks owes the state $200,000 in taxes. He gives the money to an independent organization that gives out money for private and religious schools. He gets a state tax credit and may actually make money on the deal if he also gets a federal tax credit.
Very clever. Daddy Warbucks makes a generous gift of money that should have gone to the state treasury to pay for public services. The independent organization collects millions of dollars to hand out as vouchers.
This particular game was created in Florida, where the state courts ruled vouchers unconstitutional, and the voters rejected an effort by Jeb Bush to alter the state constitution.
Now it is happening in Missouri, where the richest man in the state is Rex Sinquefield.
Rex has long been a hater of public schools. He stands to achieve his dream, undermining the public schools, and getting a hefty tax deduction too.
I suspect this allegedly legal scheme will be or already has been challenged in courts in most if not every state where it appears.
See ACSTO v. Winn (2011)
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2010/09-987
Not to trivialize, but my first thoughts was these:
Does Orphan Annie have a role in all of this?
How about Ovaltine?
What about the dog?
I have read about this scheme. In one instance rich folk scooped up all of the “choice” money before parents could apply. I will try to find that reference. It could have been an early version of what happened in Florida.
T Rex’s Show Me Institute co-sponsored the “Failures to Fixes” edudeformer conference in Kansas City, MO last week. It was a doozy, actually more like a snoozy wherein what was said was pretty much a repeat of the edudeformer dogma, just without the total arrogance and hubris that normally characterizes these types of conferences. It appears that they will be backtracking and assigning blame to the implementation of their malpractices and not critiquing the malpractices themselves.
Sinkquefield is a predator that wants to make money on the backs of kids and communities? Garden variety, richest 0.1%.
The wealthy can get tax breaks for undermining public education. It also transfers more tax burden to the middle class to make up budget the shortfall. As Diane pointed out in an earlier post, a lot of these people get a federal “charity” deduction out of this scheme. It is a double win for the wealthy, and double loss for working families.
The politicians put these things into law from the lobbyists and the 1%ers on purpose. Our system has always benefited the rich and wealthy and is getting worse because of the law changes that allow corporations to buy off the politicians. On the same note Florida is to the United States as Nigeria is to Africa, a despicable scam.