Public Funds for Private Schools

Conservatives are all about "private enterprise". Sucking the government tit is not "private enterprise".

Private enterprise is where you take some of your own money or the money of investors and put it at risk to build a business. You work to make your product or service offering better than your competitors' offerings so that customers will spend their own hard-earned dollars with your business. I strongly support this.

Voucher supporters like to fool themselves into believing that market incentives that exist in private enterprise also apply to taxpayer funded business, but that couldn't be further from the truth. The incentives for a voucher supported school will be #1: get the students in with whatever glitz it takes. #2: spend as little money on them as possible. We've seen these in action with some charter schools already. Perhaps incentive #3 is to skip town with the profits.

Electing politicians who will route taxpayer dollars your way is not private enterprise. Often it's just corruption. You only have to look at defense and highway contractors to understand what happens when government money is floating around: $800 hammers, $1000 toilets, cost overruns, lined pockets, and Aspen vacation homes for the owners. Can you imagine the opportunities for corruption when each student brings in $4000 and there's no accountability to the laws and codes that apply to public schools?