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Calling for choice

January 22, 2025

Sen. Lori Den Hartog of Meridian, the new Senate Republican leader, has identified the best reason why political leaders – from the governor on down – are backing expanded school choice (a.k.a. vouchers).

The public demands it – it’s as simple as that. Or, more cynically, the demand comes from out-of-state interests that are pushing the concept of state money going to private schools. However you want to look at it, voucher advocates are winning elections and the incumbents who say “no” are being bounced out.

Gov. Brad Little, who takes pride of his record on education, is now friendly toward tax credits for those seeking alternatives to public schools. He’s asking the Legislature to set aside $50 million for that purpose. House Speaker Mike Moyle of Star said bluntly in a pre-session news conference that the money should follow the student – to the chagrin of a couple of leading Democrats appearing at that same gathering.

So, that’s where the conversation in the Legislature begins and it will take at least a few months to sort out the details.

Den Hartog is no late-comer to the fight. She spent her school days at Nampa Christian School, and that’s been the home for her three kids. She has nothing against public schools, but the private school has been the best fit for the family.

“My parents believed strongly in the value of Christian education – what is taught in our home and at church on Sunday,” she told me. “And that’s the choice we made for our three children, and we made choices in our budgeting to make that happen.”

Now, she wants other Idaho parents to have similar options.

“It’s all about making sure people can find the right education setting for their children, and that can change – even with the same kid,” she said. “And the reasons are different.”

Over the years, Idaho has done much to provide school choice – from establishing open enrollment to creating charter schools and providing a better environment for home schooling.

“What we’re talking about during this session is just one more piece of the puzzle – providing resources to families, particularly to families that may not have the means to some of those choices,” she says. “We’re not trying to take anything from anyone. We’re trying to provide additional options for families.”

She rejects the notion that choice advocates want to raid public-school budgets or the general fund. Den Hartog doesn’t see a future of high budget deficits and massive program cuts as a result of modest efforts to expand school choice.

“We’re talking about a fraction of the state budget that competes with other priorities,” she says. “Part of the reason that it’s in the conversation now is this is what Idaho voters are asking for. These are Idaho taxpayer dollars, and these are Idaho kids whose parents pay taxes.”

Den Hartog does not join the chorus of public-school bashing. She doesn’t buy the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s analysis that public schools are glorified indoctrination labs for the political left, and she earns her “F” rating with the IFF by voting for education budgets.

“Our public schools do a tremendous job with the resources that they have, and it’s not all about test scores,” Den Hartog said. “Introducing a little competition in the mix is good. We saw that with open enrollment, where districts highlighted what they were doing well. If you have a monopoly and parents are not happy, for whatever the reason, what is the motivation for schools to respond?”

Over the next few months, we’ll see how many “choice” proposals will come to the table. An early frontrunner is a bill by Den Hartog and Rep. Wendy Horman of Idaho Falls (co-chair of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee). That would provide $5,000 tax credits to students who don’t attend public schools (up to $50 million) – with the priority going to those with lower incomes.

There will be plenty of pushback to the Den Hartog-Horman plan, of course. But if early political momentum means anything, we’ll be seeing some kind of subsidy for families seeking alternatives to public schools.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

Been there

Been there

January 21, 2025

Thanks to our President, Greenland has been in our news lately.

For me, the mention of that name brings back a lot of mixed memories.  That's because I spent eleven months and 14 days there some 65-years ago.

It was a time before satellites or cell phones.  Nearly a year on a mountaintop about 12 miles from the nearest civilization which was Thule Air Base.  And, that wasn't much "civilization."

According to Wikipedia, Greenland is "an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark."

At the time - more than 65-years ago - nearly all of the some 50,000 Greenlanders lived on the far Southeast coast.  Still do.  We were - at the time - on the far Northwest coast above the Arctic Circle.

In those somewhat "primitive" days, our main year-round connections with the rest of the world were the twice-a-week flights by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), out of New Jersey.  They brought food and other supplies.  And stunned USAF and civilian folks seeing their new duty station for the first time.

Again, I lived and worked 12 miles up a mountain.  Our only water was supplied by truck once a week, kept in large tanks and accessed by gravity flow.

I was a USAF noncom.  My USAF crew and I lived with an Army Nike Hercules outfit on the lee side of the mountain.  To get from the barracks up to the station - or vice versa - often involved hooking yourself to a large hawser rope and pulling yourself up or down the 100 unprotected yards with your legs flying in the air behind you.  Wind speeds clocked at times between 150-190 mph.

I landed at Thule December 15, 1959 - in the "dark season."  Didn't see the sun again until about Valentine's Day.  Then, gradually, we moved to the "light season."  By July, it was sunlight 24-hours-a-day until late August.  Really messed with your head.

A family dog would be hard put to find a tree for hundreds of miles.  Just permafrost, rocks and desolation.  And "phase" winds that could hit 200 mph.  Wherever you were when they hit, you just hunkered down as best you could and stayed down.  My Arctic pants had pockets down both legs in which I kept a supply of candy bars, peanuts in the shell and crackers for times you couldn't move.

I relate all this because our President talks like he'd like to make Greenland our 51st state.  Either that or Canada.  Of the two, I'd go with Canada.  One has roads, cars, trains and regular food.  The other, not so much.

Besides, I seriously doubt Denmark is in the mood to sell off its stake in Greenland.

As you may have gathered by my description of the place, Greenland  is not for sissies.  There was a time - long ago - when it offered an excellent location for huge radar systems to "look" over the North Pole to see what the Ruskies were up to.  The territory served a valuable role in our national defense.

But, that's over now.  With today's satellite technology, we live in safer times.  Our need for Greenland is not as great.  Our investment there has been significantly reduced.  Not ended.  Just reduced.

But, I gotta admit.  After spending nearly a year of my life "on the rock," I never figured Greenland would come up in a presidential campaign 65-years later.

Who'd a' thunk?

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Here we go again

January 20, 2025

Dorothy Moon, the current chair of the extremist faction of the Idaho Republican Party, proclaimed on election night that: “We’re not ever going to let Reclaim Idaho bring another initiative.” Moon was honked off that the citizen initiative group had just run a third initiative drive seeking reform of Idaho laws.

Reclaim Idaho ran its first initiative drive in 2017 to expand Medicaid coverage for low-income Idahoans, after the Legislature had refused for years to take a 90% federal match to provide for their medical care. Resistance to that initiative was fierce. Raul Labrador, then running for Governor, claimed: “Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” The voters disagreed and approved the initiative in 2018 with more than a 60% vote. It has been a life-saver for about 100,000 Idahoans of modest means and for counties, whose medical indigency funds were stretched to the limit.

Reclaim’s second initiative, the Quality Education Act, forced a special session of the Legislature in 2022, resulting in an increase of $410 million in K-12 educational funding. That would not have happened without Reclaim’s good work.

The third initiative was designed to break the Moon faction’s control over what kind of Republicans get elected in the closed GOP primary. Moon apparently saw no value in allowing voters to speak their mind on the issue, even though they sided with her.

Moon followed up her election-night vow to stop citizen initiatives with an embarrassing word-salad op-ed that confused constitutional amendments, initiatives and referendums. She proposed “raising the threshold for constitutional amendments by requiring signatures from at least 10% of registered voters in 23 out of 35 legislative districts, up from the current 18 districts. This change aims to strengthen the initiative process, creating a higher threshold for addressing statewide Referendums.” Say, what?

The fact is that constitutional amendments are proposed by the Legislature and do not start with signature drives. Initiatives, which make laws, are completely different from referendums, which veto laws passed by the Legislature. If Moon meant that her 10% of 23 district requirement was intended to apply to initiatives, it would be an unlawful limitation on voter initiative rights that would undoubtedly be challenged in court.

Rep. Bruce Skaug and several other GOP right-wing legislators have proposed another unconstitutional restriction on the right of voters to make laws with the initiative. They would require initiatives to get a 60% vote in order to become law, rather than the current majority vote. That would change over a century of Idaho and most certainly invite a lawsuit. If the Legislature needs only a majority vote to make a law, there is no basis to require 10% more for a voter-approved law.

Skaug seems to believe that the initiative system is “broken” because outside interests put a lot of money into the Prop1 campaign, which failed by a substantial margin. The extreme GOP usually tries to make it harder to run initiatives when one is approved or comes close. Now, any outcome brings calls to squelch the initiative rights of voters.

There is a problem with out-of-state money being spent in Idaho elections, but it is not related to the initiative. Rather, about 1.5 million dollars of dirty money from out-of-state interests flowed into Idaho in the 2024 GOP primary election to defeat reasonable, pragmatic Republicans who opposed school voucher schemes.  Skaug might notice that many of his former colleagues–Julie Yamamoto, Matt Bundy, Melissa Durrant, Kenny Wroten, Chenel Dixon and Greg Lanting–are no longer in the House with him. They were viciously attacked and beaten in the primary by out-of-state monied interests. Several good GOP Senators were also defeated–President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, Goeff Schroeder and Linda Hartgen. Even more tainted money flowed into the state against moderate Democrats in the general election. The real money problem plaguing Idaho is that it is being used to push the Legislature ever-further to the far-right fringes.

Rather than taking away the right of Idaho voters to make laws, perhaps Moon’s extremist faction of the GOP could start acting in the best interests of Idaho voters by adequately funding schools, providing health care to less fortunate Idahoans, and dispensing with pointless culture war issues. If the Legislature would govern in a reasonable, responsive manner, voters might not have the need to initiate laws.

 

New data for an old homeless problem

New data for an old homeless problem

January 19, 2025

The focus of the next two years in Oregon politics is likely to follow the contours of one of the biggest issues in the state: homelessness.

How it plays out is likely to be shaped not by large policies or spending strokes but by details that from a state level may look almost microscopic. In the coming months, that is where the important answers may be found.

The stakes are both social and political. Oregon voters have not unseated an incumbent governor since 1978, but Gov. Tina Kotek has reason for concern. Winner by a modest plurality in 2022, she has polled poorly since, and in two months earlier this year Morning Consult marked her as the least popular governor in the country.

She now enters the second half of her term on the argument that she would be effective in delivering action on one of the state’s key problems. Homelessness and housing probably have been Kotek’s key issues, and these concerns also are top of mind for many Oregonians. The problem, which Oregonians have for a decade listed as a major issue for the state, remains large. Nearly 23,000 people in Oregon remain unhoused, according to last year’s federal point-in-time count. Kotek’s initiatives have revolved around expanding housing stock, a subject she has tackled long before she became governor. In 2019 as House speaker, she backed House Bill 2001 to require that higher housing density be allowed in what had been single-family zones, in Oregon’s larger urban areas.

As governor, she has pushed for major state spending of hundreds of millions of dollars, including $880 million in state bonding, to increase housing stock by about 36,000 homes annually. Affordability, however, is another question — meaning that its impact on homelessness is unclear as is the impact the new homes will have on homelessness.

She also is proposing $217.9 million to increase shelter beds, plus another $188.2 million to help rehouse people, as well as $173.2 million to help avert evictions from rentals or other properties. These are not small amounts, and they reflect a seriousness of intent, but how well they will ease homelessness is uncertain.

In many places, including in downtown Portland but also in other cities, homelessness is less visible now than it was half a decade ago. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone away; in many cases it’s just been relocated.

Part of the problem has been that homelessness seems like an amorphous blob, hard to define, enumerate, even accurately describe. That seeming inability to get a handle on it leads to frustration, and in turn to a political problem. If you don’t fully understand, and in some depth, what the problem consists of, you’ll have a hard time solving it.

What’s been missing is fine-grained information about the individuals who are unhoused: their circumstances, why they have no housing, what particular obstacles they face and what it would take to get them settled.  All have individual stories. Because the unhoused population is so varied, the answers can come only case by case.

That data may be coming, and maybe just in time to provide the basis for the Oregon Legislature to more precisely target money and other resources.

Take a look at Built for Zero, a national effort to end homelessness that focuses on veterans and on the “chronically” homeless.

Close to 100 communities nationally — and six around Oregon — have joined Built for Zero and started developing detailed information about individual people who are homeless and posting statistical and geographic information online to help the community better understand the problem and what is needed to solve it.

Lane County and the cities of Eugene and Springfield joined a Built for Zero effort in 2019. They began developing information about individuals in various sectors, completing a count for veterans and for chronically homeless single adults in September 2021. Over three years, they found the number of homeless people in the Eugene area is much larger than the point-in-time studies indicate. But they also obtained specific, detailed information about that population which has made outreach from governments and others more effective.

Portland, Gresham and Multnomah County joined a similar effort in December 2021, and Multnomah officials said that after two years of intensive research, data from it will be ready for use early this year.

That data is likely to provide the kind of information that will allow for surgical, rather than broad-brush, use of government and other funding to help move toward solving the problem. How the Legislature reacts to what is being learned now on the local level may say a lot about how Oregon deals with homelessness. And even about Kotek’s rationale for reelection two years from now.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The coming chaos presidency

The coming chaos presidency

January 18, 2025

It is no coincidence that while news coverage over the last week or so has been focused on the fourth anniversary of the Donald Trump-inspired riot at the U.S. Capitol and the funeral of former president Jimmy Carter that the next president conducted a rambling, shambling news conference where he said he wouldn’t rule out attacking a NATO ally and trolled the country with which we share the longest undefended border in the world.

Trump lives for chaos and distraction. He must be, as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said of her father Teddy, “the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” T.R. had a big ego, but also a big brain. He read and wrote books and knew science. Trump knows chaos.

It was completely predictable that his fragile self-image could not tolerate extended days of laudatory coverage of Carter, an American president with more decency and character than the entirety of the incoming administration. Trump had to redirect attention to himself, even if the attention is mostly in the nature of slapping your forehead and muttering, “he said what?”

We’ve seen this show before. The soon-to-be president is a master at dominating the national mind-set. He loves it, as do many of his supporters who think it’s great fun to spin up Canadian, Danish, French and German politicians who are forced to respond to his senseless rants.

Rename the Gulf of Mexico? Why not. Pardon the lawbreaking thugs who took over the Capital at his prompting? Sure. Send the Marines – again – to Panama to reclaim “our” canal? We stole it fair and square, so why not? Make Canada the 51st state? Why not alienate an old ally, our second largest trading partner, that supplies huge quantities of crude oil; cars and car parts; and machinery such as turbines, engines and construction equipment parts. Not to mention the great Canadian maple syrup you can get at Costco.

“We have been so concerned about all the scary things that Trump’s going to do, we forgot he’s also going to do some really stupid things,” said Desi Lydic, a host of the Daily Show.

It has been suggested that Americans should take Trump “seriously but not literally.” Be wise and take him both seriously and literally. He is a psychopath literally capable of anything over the next four years, or whenever he decides to leave office, and most of what he suggests and does will be profoundly stupid and often disastrous.

The only thing more predictable than Trump sending his first born to Greenland to scope out hotel locations is that not a single Vichy Republican, the spineless, gutless, cowering sycophants that have time and again enabled this flawed, ignorant man would raise as much as a limp social media post against his chaos.

They’re frankly too busy trooping to Mar a Lago to kiss his ring … or something, and by week’s end some were saying the Greenland gambit was a totally fine idea.

You can’t help but wonder when the buyer’s remorse will set in. Maybe when he has to actually manage a natural disaster or a foreign crisis. Perhaps when the debt ceiling needs to increase to prevent a government default. Perhaps when bird flu or another public health crisis produces a new “disinfectant” crisis, a signature moment of the first Trump presidency.

Just to remind you: On April 23, 2020, while standing in the White House briefing room for the daily Trump follies during Covid, the then-president rambled at some length about the magic powers of sunlight before going totally off his rocker.

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that.”

Bleach manufacturers had to issue warnings. Who knew that many Trump supporters were, well, that gullible?

“It honestly hurt. It was a credibility issue,” said one White House official at the time. “It was hurting us even from an international standpoint, the credibility at the White House.”

Credibility? International credibility? Not with this guy.

Imagine John Kennedy during the tensest days of the Cuban Missile Crisis going on live television to say no, he couldn’t rule out lobbing an ICBM into the men’s room at the Kremlin? (Actually, Barry Goldwater did say something similar, but poor Barry was seen in his day, even by many Republicans, as more than a little dangerous, and Goldwater never got anywhere near the nuclear codes.)

The chaos, the incompetence are the point with Trump, along with clinging to power no matter what.

In true Orwellian fashion Trump largely succeeded this week in rabbit holing January 6. The avalanche of pure, unprocessed bull about the very worst of his behavior in the first term is taking hold. The coming pardons will further serve to erase this dastardly, ugly Trump stain.

“Trump has an audacious goal,” writes Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice, “to reinterpret one of the most public crimes in history, to wrap it in the gauze of patriotism.” He’s asking us to brainwash ourselves, and many of the gullible seem willing to embrace his utter nonsense.

The clear, cold fact for Trump supporters and the rest of us is simple. He’s back for only two reasons: to stay out of jail and to grift over everything from Bibles to golden sneakers. The Greenland threat, the Panama Canal, the mocking of Canada are all about distracting from the real and profound harm he will do.

Reflect on this: There is no greater contrast in American history than Carter’s exit and Trump’s return. As Pete Buttigieg says of Carter, “He’s this figure who is so respected for a sense of decency – humility, really – from all sides … So the contrast was, of course, not lost on me, as we were thinking about what coming next in Washington.”

Which is to say we ain’t seen nothing, yet.

Figure out how you are going to respond.

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Not a SLAPP

Not a SLAPP

January 17, 2025

The first Senate bill of the new legislative session offers something to ponder: The political backdrop and connections of the sponsors as opposed to what the bill actually does, which appears to be highly positive.

Senate Bill 1001 is described by its backers as a freedom of speech measure, but more specifically it provides a mechanism for “swiftly dismissing meritless Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, ensuring public engagement and expression on matters of societal or community interest not stifled by legal intimidation.”

A SLAPP is a legal action, usually undertaken by a well-funded person who has plenty of money to spend on lawyers, to attack someone else for marginal or no good reasons when they speak out on an issue of public concern. Wikipedia describes such suits as “lawsuits intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.”

SLAPPs are a real problem, in Idaho and nationally, and these sorts of lawsuits have popped up in Idaho in recent years; some have generated statewide headlines.

Laws comparable to this bill are on the books in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Washington, Oregon, Nevada and California have had anti-SLAPP laws on the books for years. The Institute for Free Speech currently gives Idaho an “F” grade on its lack of an anti-SLAPP law.

The new Idaho bill would allow a defendant, within 60 days after a suit is filed, to seek dismissal of the case if it’s not strong enough, and stay actions until or unless the judge concludes the case does pass muster. It’s a simple approach but could choke some damaging legal maneuvers in the meantime. It would be a big improvement over existing Idaho law.

The political positioning of SB 1001’s backers, Nampa Senator Brian Lenney (who also pressed a similar failed measure in the 2024 measure)  and Representative Heather Scott of Blanchard, both Republicans, is a little less clear. Both have been close to a number of the Republican activists and interest groups involved with lawsuits of this kind in recent times.

One of the people caught up in one of those legal conflicts is Gregory Graf, an Idaho blogger and political activist, who has conflicted with some of the people now backing the bill. And he adds, in a detailed online post (at https://idaho.politicalpotatoes.com/p/idaho-needs-good-faith-anti-slapp, and which I won’t try to parse here) about the background of the bill, that, “It’s hard to ignore the irony of Lenney’s sudden interest in curbing the very tool his allies have wielded for years.”

So what about the bill?

Graf made clear he would like to see and would better trust a SLAPP bill coming from a different source, but concluded, “This bill may pass, and if it does, Idaho will finally have protections against SLAPP lawsuits.

As Lenney said in asking for support for the bill, “Good people don’t deserve to get buried for exercising their First Amendment rights.”

That would seem to be the bottom line, even if there are some questions about how and why this one specifically came to be.

There are larger issues here too about how our legal system works: Clearly, there are bugs in the system. The anti-SLAPP laws don’t solve the underlying problems, but they do help protect against some of the worst immediate abuses.

It isn’t perfect (few bills are), and its use probably eventually ought to be expanded beyond the relatively narrow reach it has at present. It does say it should be “broadly construed and applied to protect the exercise of the right of freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble and petition, and the right of association, guaranteed by the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Idaho.”

The details should get close legal analysis. But if it’s as described, it’s a good bill and should pass.

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A government handout?

January 15, 2025

The fight over school vouchers might be the leading issue going into this legislative session, but the term “vouchers” will have selective use.

We’re more likely to hear terms such as “school choice,” “tax credits,” “rebates” or even “savings accounts” come up in the committee rooms and press briefings. Regardless of the name, it’s all part of the effort to steer public money to private or religious schools.

Rod Gramer, an advocate and former president of Idaho Business for Education, uses another term. “It’s the biggest government handout in history,” he says, and one that is aimed for helping rich folks get money for sending their kids to private schools.

“There is nothing conservative about vouchers,” he says.

Politically, there appears to be strong sentiment is some form of vouchers. Gov. Brad Little has endorsed a tax credit that will provide $50 million to those seeking education alternatives. Gramer, a longtime journalist and native Idahoan, blasted the governor for pandering to the right – at the expense of Idaho’s constitutional obligation for public education.

Tax credits, or other measures, may not raid the public-school budget, but they can chip away at the general fund that underwrites everything else. Gramer says that Arizona, a voucher-friendly state, is cutting programs and facing close to a billion-dollar deficit as a result of its financial boost to the private schools.

Reviews in Arizona are mixed. Former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, in a recent visit to the Gem State, had high praise for Arizona’s voucher program. Arizona’s current governor, Democrat Katie Hobbs, has called the program “unsustainable.”

Gramer sides with Hobbs in this dispute.

“The state general fund has only so much money, and we always have been frugal in Idaho. It’s not like we are throwing money at our public schools,” Gramer says. “So, if you have vouchers, it puts the squeeze on the state general-fund budget – and not just for K-12 education. It puts the squeeze on community colleges, higher education, roads and all the things we do on a limited budget.”

Legislators are getting plenty of pressure to provide relief for those fleeing public schools. Ron Nate, a former Eastern Idaho legislator and president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation – which has a generous following among legislators – sees public schools in a negative light.

“For some time, public schools have been indoctrination zones for leftist ideology,” Nate says. “If it’s not sex ed at an inappropriately early age, it’s a course how we should be ashamed of our country’s history. While the teachers are forcing their woke LGBT, anti-white agenda down our children’s throats, their test scores continue to drop.”

Meanwhile, he says, “spending on education continues to go through the roof.”

Education professionals may sneer at Nate’s assessment, but the perception is real. And political leaders are paying attention after seeing a few anti-voucher legislators bounced out of office. Gov. Little, who next year could be looking at running for a third term, doesn’t want to be on the wrong side of this issue.

Gramer agrees that political momentum in Idaho is on the side of tax credits, savings accounts – or whatever the variation is to vouchers. But he’s not convinced that the public stands by the effort. He sees little benefit to rural areas that traditionally have strong identification with the public schools.

“In November, on the night that Donald Trump was elected president, three states (two red states and one purple) rebuffed efforts to use taxpayer money for private schools,” Gramer says.

In political campaigns, there’s plenty of money flowing to candidates who support vouchers in some form. But Gramer, who has followed politics for more than 50 years, has seen some unusual dynamics in national campaigns. Advertisements avoid focusing on using taxpayer money to support private schools over public education.

“Vouchers are never mentioned,” he says. “The ads focus is on candidates who are accused of being soft on border security, or gun control.”

Of course, as Gramer knows, legislative sessions are all about political momentum and the messy process of finding consensus with conflicting bills. With luck, he says, the volume of school-choice plans will collapse under their weight.

But the issue certainly is not going away.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

They ain’t real

January 14, 2025

Some may view the content of what I'm about to say as racist.  I assure you, in the most fundamental way, that's not the case.

But, I've been observing something that's made me look at television's vast advertising power in a different light.

First, a little background.  I don't live in a community with a large Black presence.  Aside from the military and some years in Washington D.C., I've not had a lot of experience with mixed-race living.  Or, thinking - in personal terms - of Black and White.  Until now.

Television, more than any other medium, has its difficulties from an advertiser's point of view.  But, also, it has powerful impact.  Yes, it reaches a vast audience.  Still, one of its drawbacks is the difficulty of using TV for targeted viewing.

Radio has Black-oriented stations.  And Cuban and Mexican and many others.  All aimed at specific target audiences.

While there are TV stations that try to do the same thing, they are few and far between.  My small community lies within the mass market coverage of one of the West's larger cities.  Yet, we're not served by an ethnically-oriented TV station trying to reach a single ethnic market.  Radio, yes.  TV, no.  And, that's true in most of the other parts of the continental U.S. as well.

Recently, it seems, in more and more commercials, there'll be - by design - one or more Black actors.  No matter the product.  No matter the ad campaign.  There will be a Black inclusion.  And, that inserted Black presence seems to be growing with advertisers.

If there are, say, three guys doing something together on television, one will be Black.  If the national ad depicts a baby shower, at least one woman will be Black.  If teens are the subject, same thing.  And, on and on.

I'm not sure why this is.  It may be sponsors - from Campbell's soup to Chevrolet - are trying to show their soups/cars are good for people of all races.   Kind of a crazy thought, I know.  But, that's all I can come up with.

Here in our Western states, White is, by far, the dominant race.  Look at your church - your service club - your favorite dining spot - the staff at the grocery store.  On a daily basis, most of us just never come into contact with someone who's Black.

Maybe that's why the inclusion of Blacks in so many television ads seems unreal to me.  While there may be such representations in social or business affairs in other parts of America, around here, not the case.  We have few mixed communities and, as a result, we don't usually have racial interactions.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with such interactions.  We just don't have them.

While TV ads mostly depict Whites and Blacks, another racial group is growing at a rapid rate.  Hispanics.  And, in our neighborhood, most of us can have regular interactions with members of that group.

For us, it's yard workers, for example.  Nearly all we've come in contact with.  Hard workers who do excellent work.  Starting to see some in local culinary, food service, wineries/vineyards, sales and other professions. Many bringing the flavors of their former home country to their new settings.  And, they are most welcome.

Sometimes I wish those ads were our "mirror" image.  That we did have such excellent inter-racial relationships on a regular basis.  That we did have brothers and sisters in our everyday life that brought their own heritage and style.

As I stated at the outset, I don't mean anything racist in these words.  Not a one of 'em.  And, there may be places in our world, where the racial mix of characters portrayed in those multi-racial commercials represents real life.

Just not around here.

 

Invitation to a lawsuit

January 13, 2025

Despite the fact that Article IX, section 5 of Idaho’s Constitution strictly prohibits using public funds for religious education, Idaho’s spendthrift legislators are at it again. They want to shower taxpayer money upon parents who are sending their kids to private schools, which would open the floodgates to subsidizing religious education.

Here is the grift. The US Supreme Court has twice ruled that if, and only if, states enact a program to subside private education, they must also make program money available for religious schooling. In the latest case, Carson v. Makin, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” The proponents of using public money to finance private and religious schooling totally ignore the words of the Chief Justice. Roberts’ words are a warning regarding the religious consequences of using public money to subsidize private education. So-called “school choice” legislation is a workaround to evade and subvert Article IX, Section 5.

Any scheme to divert taxpayer funds to subsidize private education, whether it is called a school voucher, a tax credit, a school choice payment, a savings account, or whatever else, would necessarily result in subsidization of religious schooling, in direct violation of our Constitution. Indeed, most of the public subsidy would go to religious education. There is solid evidence that about 91% of 2024 subsidy recipients across the country attend religious schools. That would likely be the case in Idaho.

Every legislator was fully advised on January 6 of the unconstitutionality of these subsidy schemes. If they write one into law, it will be a knowing and deliberate violation of the Idaho Constitution and an invitation to a lawsuit.

Idaho’s constitutional framers made it an overriding responsibility for the Legislature to properly fund the public school system, both for the instruction of Idaho kids and for the construction and maintenance of school buildings. They undoubtedly believed that future legislatures would honor that constitutional mandate, but our recent Legislatures have consistently failed on both counts.

Idaho consistently refuses to adequately fund the instructional side of public education.

Every state bordering Idaho provides more funding per student, giving their kids a competitive advantage over Idaho students. The most recent NEA report (2023-24) ranked Idaho 51st in the country with $9,808 per-student spending. Montana ranked 32nd with spending of $15,323 and Wyoming was ranked 14th with $22,032.

In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled  that the Legislature had utterly failed to fulfill its obligation to fund the construction and maintenance of school buildings, improperly placing the lion’s share of that burden upon local property taxpayers. Unless facilities funding is dramatically increased by the Legislature this year, school districts will either have to try educating kids in substandard, sometimes hazardous buildings, or hit up local property owners with hefty school bonds.

If legislators fork over $50 million tax dollars to pay the religious school expenses of primarily wealthy parents whose kids are not presently enrolled in public schools, that money will undoubtedly reduce the public school appropriation by a comparable amount. Subsidy programs have a voracious appetite, which will cause program spending to skyrocket, which will severely impact spending for public schools, which will make the state a prime target for a new school funding lawsuit.

Rural kids would bear the brunt of school choice schemes. Twenty-seven of Idaho’s 44 counties have zero or one private school. Just 3 counties–Ada, Canyon and Kootenai– have over 63% of private school kids in the state. What possible benefit would public school kids in rural Idaho receive from a voucher law, particularly if it resulted in their school district receiving less funding from the state?

Several religions in Idaho operate religious schools and quite a number do not. The lion’s share of subsidy recipients attend religious schools. Subsidy payments would allow those religions to advocate principles of their faith with public money. This would place churches that do not operate schools in a disadvantageous position. For instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a strong and historic presence in the State of Idaho. Church members have been stalwart supporters of public education, but the church does not operate a system of religious schools. Many Mormon communities are located in rural areas around the state. Mormon public school patrons would suffer disadvantages in a subsidized system–no public funding for church members and a diminution of support for public schools that their kids attend.

Unfortunately, Governor Little has given in to the out-of-state dark money interests and in-state tax-and-spenders. What next? Giving taxpayer money to favored churches?