Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools.

What a great idea. Finally, parents will have choices that wealthy parents have always had. The resulting competition would create better private schools and even improve the government schools.

But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what’s best for your kids.

Real Clear Politics

This needs to be closely watched.  The public school system in this country absolutely sucks.  Kids aren’t being taught anything anymore and frankly I don’t think America is a country that has a culture valuing education as much as others.  Inserting competition into the public school system is direly needed.

I saw Stossel on Fox News one evening about a year or so ago talking about the way Belgium funds their education system.  Rather than the local schools deciding how much money they need and passing levies or school boards raising taxes like we do here in the U.S, the money is instead attached to the student.  The country decides how many Federal dollars will be allocated to each student each year and that money goes to the which ever school the child enrolls in.  This breeds competition among the schools as they all want the funding so they do what they can do be better educators than the others.  Sounds like common sense to me, which is why it’s unlikely we’ll ever see it here in the near future.

The problem in this nation is that the public is so apathetic at election time.  They vote in school board members based on their political party rather than whether or not they are even qualified to sit on a school board.  Another issue are the politicians.  The unions are steadfastly against any plan that would require schools to actually have to work for something other than the status quo and since the NEA is a major donor to many politicians they do whatever the NEA wants.  The NEA doesn’t care one bit about your child’s education.  Their only concern is to keep the money flowing in to the union.

RedState had this up the other day. Very creative and very accurate at pointing out the absurdity of this bill with a little humor:

“We need consistent conservative leadership in Washington,” Pearce says in the ad, according to a script provided by his spokeswoman. “Leadership guided not by the latest opinion polls, but by core conservative New Mexico values.”

In the ad, Pearce argues he has worked to limit government spending, lowered taxes and cracked down on illegal immigrants. He also argues that he has opposed “big government schemes which promised socialized medicine, even for illegal aliens, at taxpayer expense.”

This latter line seems like a swipe at Wilson, an often outspoken moderate who has sparred with the White House on occasion and backs contentious legislation before Congress to expand a popular state-run children’s health care program. Pearce has voted consistently against the bill.

Politico

I think this will be a fun campaign to watch.

According to a new poll released by the Pew Research Center, Sen. Clinton thumps Giuliani by an eye-popping eight points.  The poll, which has a smaller margin of error than most due to its large sample size, shows Clinton leading Giuliani in every region, including the South, sharing families with incomes over $100,000 evenly, and holding things close among men and regular church-goers.  Suffice it to say, this is not what Giuliani’s backers, whose primary argument for his primary campaign is that he can defeat the junior Senator from New York, wanted to hear.

If the main argument for Giuliani’s candidacy is now collapsing, as this poll suggests, why, then, would conservatives, with whom he agrees on next to nothing, nominate him?  Yes, all of the major candidates have their problems, but all besides Giuliani offer something for conservatives to get excited about, be it Thompson’s federalist principles, Huckabee’s social conservative leadership, Romney’s general (albeit recent) conservatism, or McCain’s veteran status.  What’s more, each would provide a clear contrast to Clinton and, in all likelihood, turn out a larger share of conservatives for down-ballot races.

At this point, I’m in the “Any Republican will lose the Presidential election” camp, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about the 2008 elections.  What we need is the strongest candidate for the down-ballot races.  Republicans need a clear contrast to Clinton, who will rack up huge margins in traditionally Democrat areas, so that the Democrats in the House who hail from districts that they do not represent will get punished for being guilty by association.  If Rudy is the nominee, not only will we lose the White House, but it will also depress turnout for Congressional and state races, which means that we will have a bigger deficit in the House, lose state legislative elections that we should win, and the Democrats will have more say in drawing up the Congressional districts in the next census.  We can’t afford to lose all that just because a few liberal Republicans think Rudy will lose by a smaller margin than the other Republicans.