“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Will they give the money back?
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byAs I was walking to work this AM, a cab (thanks hackney license #385!) ran a red light, stopping only to berate me for walking in a crosswalk with a walk signal.
It got me to thinking about the fare increase of this summer. Back in August, in the throes of the gas crisis, the city of Boston raised rates after a series of complaints by cab drivers and their representatives. I advocated back then for a break in the artificial monopoly that supresses the number of cabs in the city (read the comments too).
As gas prices have dropped from $4+ in August to less then half that (at least where I live), the new, higher rates remain in place. Can we expect Mayor Tom Menino and Police Commissioner Ed Davis to lower them soon? Probably not.
If Kant had had a nose for public policy
/0 Comments/in Blog, News /byPassed on by a friend with a mathematical appreciation for symmetry, and for that balance of responsibility and opportunity, in public affairs is a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Our friendly Kantian “symmetrician” follows with the comment:
Cut the Income Tax! Raise the Sales Tax! Lower and Raise Property Taxes!
/0 Comments/in Blog, Blog: Better Government, News /byHey, its not my idea. It’s a proposal floated by a consultant to the the Readiness Project, tucked in an appendix to the Readiness Finance Commission, released on New Year’s Eve (see “Beware the Doldrums“).
To quote from the appendix itself:
I’ll let someone else run on this platform. It is an interesting (and politically suicidal) mix of ideas. I have not heard anyone connected (or unconnected) to the Administration speak of anything close to this, so I found it intriguing that it made into the report.