Last week, the group at its annual convention released
a report noting
that charter schools potentially sap education dollars from traditional public
schools, calling for changes in charter school board composition and
transparency, and wanting greater state stringency in regulating such schools.
In effect, the increased, unneeded regulatory details that would follow would hamper
the ability of these schools to operate as intended. This adheres to a liberal agenda of protecting the one-size-fits-all model of education that empowers special interests over children.
Not that the study’s quality commends policy-makers
to pursue such recommendations. Both the organization that represents the state’s
charter schools and the state Department of Education panned
the effort, each observing it to relay numerous corrections to the drafters
of an early version and subsequently received no feedback. The report’s lead author
herself has spoken often and publicly against the concept.
Neither should this kind of issue preference surprise. The LWV, at both the national and state levels, has a long history or aligning itself with the political left. The state organization almost half a century ago argued for the moribund Equal Right Amendment, and over a quarter-century ago its president, who ran an abortion mill, publicly opposed strict state regulations of abortion.
While its lengthy current statement
of public policy positions contains items that do reflect generally
nonpartisan exhortations, a number also scream fealty to a liberal agenda –
some blatantly, some more obscurely. For example, it gives full-throated
support to the (Un)Affordable Care Act and its Medicaid expansion component,
and promotes the most extremist view of abortion on demand. Less obvious
examples but still tilting leftward, it calls for full funding of Louisiana’s
ailing pension reserves but won’t endorse changes from a defined benefit to a
defined contribution system, and it throws around words such as “equity” and “fairness”
in regards to tax policy, yet rejects a flat income tax and wants income
taxation as opposed to (ironically, the most equitable and fairest method)
sales taxation to comprise a larger share of raising revenues.
That it joins itself at the hip with Democrat
leaders becomes clear when reviewing the tax increase stumped for by Democrat
Gov. John Bel Edwards.
In 2016, when Edwards went full bore for income tax increases, the state organization
proclaimed its support for that in
favor of lawmakers rejecting sales tax increases. But by 2018, when Edwards
had to fight to reinstitute part of the expiring sales tax put through in 2016
that the LWV initially had opposed, or else reduce spending, the LWV president
wrote defending
maintaining the sales tax instead of facing cuts.
In order to keep its Internal Revenue Service
nonprofit status, the organization cannot endorse political candidates, and in
doing so trumpets its “nonpartisan” label as itf that should give the group’s
preferences added weight. Don’t be fooled. “Nonpartisan” doesn’t equal “objective”
or “unbiased,” neither of which the LWV is. As such, any policy recommendations
it makes informed observers must take with a grain of salt, critically
reviewing the assumptions and data behind these. Regrettably, in both past and present
on many issues they likely will find the invalid assumptions and selective or incomplete
data that are the hallmarks of liberal policy preferences.
No comments:
Post a Comment