Private School Scholarships: Money Laundering for the Masses

Reagan taught that government is the problem. In post-financial meltdown America and in the absence of Wall Street prosecutions, with presidential candidates and major corporations hiding profits offshore to avoid taxes, with tech billionaires renouncing their U.S. citizenship rather than pay theirs (and being hailed as heroes in the financial press for doing it), scamming the taxpayers to subsidize your child’s private education seems like pretty acceptable behavior, even for churches. But it is not arising from dogmatic anti-governmentism. Small-time players have simply discovered what the big-time grifters already knew — that government is the enemy only so long as public tax dollars are going into someone else’s pockets. Thus, conservatives, fundamentalists and others have gotten behind the movement to “reform” public education by diverting public tax dollars into their own pockets in the name of providing more choices for the underprivileged.

Rep. Paul Stam, too, is selling his proposal as a way to help children from low-income families. Yet, one of his supporters at the rally, Michael Pratt, principal of Victory Christian Center School in Charlotte reports that his operation is suffering from low income of its own. The vaunted free market? Not so forgiving. Enrollment is off by 17 percent and contributions towards tuition are down in this recession. So as in other states with similar scholarship programs, North Carolina private schools with and without affiliated churches are looking to dip Scotch-taped fingers into the public collection plate, fishing for tens and twenties.

(Cross-posted from Scrutiny Hooligans.)

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