Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Trying to Keep Good Kids Down:

With Governor Pataki’s reign over New York coming to end, he has shown that he wants to go out with a bang. His most recent plan is to throw his support behind tuition tax breaks for parents who choose to send their children to private school.

As you can imagine the left has already rallied behind the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) Randi Weingarten who has come out swinging against the plan. The lefts complaint is that the Governor’s plan for tax credits is really just another way to pass school vouchers. Now I’m not going to argue with the Queen of the Damned because she’s right.

However instead of fighting with the left and Ms. Weingarten wasting energy on why it’s not a voucher, the Governor should be taking it to the people why vouchers or tax credits are not a religious conspiracy but a chance for children from lower income households to raise their chances of succeeding in the future. Unfortunately there is allot of people living in New York that, may I dare say it, believe in God and would love the opportunity to send their children to a private school but can’t do so because of the cost. With the program that the Governor is looking to implement it will open up the possibility for those inner city kids to get out of the schools that currently damn them to a future of mediocrity and into an environment of discipline, faith and culture of success. These three characteristics are the reasons why the Kennedy’s are the Kennedy’s, the Bush’s are the Bush’s and every other successful wealthy family’s children generally succeed in life. Success breeds success and that is something our public school currently doesn’t do as well as our private. It’s amazing how the party of the left that supposedly is there to champion the upward movement of the lower class fights hard to not allow the one thing that would give their base the best chance of upward social mobility. The Governor needs to go to the people of New York and ask them how come the Democrat party and its instance on the redistribution of the wealth doesn’t support the one time it makes sense. For the left to only allow the upper class the benefit of a private education is discrimination at its finest.

For me the obvious reason why the UFT doesn’t support the program is because they view it as a threat to their monopoly and continuous subsidizing of mediocrity by the taxpayers. A tuition break program would actually give more New Yorkers a choice of where to send their children. As we have experienced in business and politics, choices breed competition and competition breeds efficiency and quality, something the UFT couldn’t handle.

For the Democrat party their objection is just a result of their understanding that as people in society become successful they tend to become conservative as they now have something to conserve. A tuition break program would make lower income children successful in the future and as a result hurt the Democrat base. By keeping them chained to the current system they can predict those children will remain low on the ladder and dependent on the party.