In 2006, Milton Friedman, economist and school choice advocate since 1955, right after Brown v Board desegregated schools, spelled out what the goals really are: abolish the public school system. And if they can’t do that, vouchers. Feel familiar? #publicschools
Here is Milton Friedman in 1955 on why we shouldn’t have free public schools.
“The advantage of imposing the costs on the parents is that it would tend to equalize the social and private costs of having children and so promote a better distribution of families by size.”
Friedman discussing lower birth rates among the wealthy (and why schools shouldn’t be free):
“children are relatively more expensive to [high socioeconomic folks], thanks in considerable measure to the higher standards of education they maintain and the costs of which they bear.”
Friedman does touch on movements post Brown v Board.
“Under such a [privately controlled school] system, there can develop exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools. Parents can choose which to send their children to.”
Ya know, “school choice”
More Friedman in 1955, on vouchers for private segregation academies “The appropriate activity for those who oppose segregation and racial prejudice is to try to persuade others of their views; if and as they succeed, the mixed schools will grow at the expense of the nonmixed.”
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1. For the Catholic Church and billionaire Evangelical Christians like Betsy DeVos, publicly funded vouchers for private religious schools opens a path to taxpayer support for their religious orgs.
Make money + indoctrination
There are four types pushing “school choice”
2. For billionaires like the Walton family, John Arnold and Charles Koch, school choice grants a path to undermining public education and lowering taxes.
Keep tax money, make more money, indoctrination if it helps them out.
There are four types pushing “school choice”
3. For billionaires like Bill Gates, Reed Hastings and Michael Dell, school choice prepares a path for creating an education technology industry that has the promise of huge future profits.
I’ve spent the last week counting down the Top 25 Donors to Texas Politics in the 2022 Cycle on TikTok. Here is a thread of all 25, who they are, and where they gave.
Kel Seliger called the Texas system a Russian style oligarchy. He’s not wrong. #FollowTheMoney#txlege
Counting down the top 25 individual donors to Texas politics in the 2022 cycle.
25 is Kelcy Warren, Energy Trading Partners CEO.
$1,705,000
Greg Abbott - $1.25m
George P Bush - $300k
Glenn Hegar - $100k
Here is a hot take. Yes, Texas voting restrictions made it more challenging to vote, but certainly not insurmountable (8 million figured it out). I think the more people talked about how hard it was to vote, it probably did more harm to Dems chances than good.
For someone who aligned with Dems but wasn’t crazy passionate to vote (as the crazy passionate likely did get to the polls), when the broad dialogue keeps with the negative “it’s going to be so hard”, I think that almost instantly pushes that maybe voter to a non-voter.
Yes, it was made harder to vote in Texas. But by hammering that point over and over, I believe it demotivated maybe voters who decided to stay home.
Instead, we should have been messaging “here is the easy way to vote” and actually established infrastructure to make that true.
Three main things that led to the outcomes in the TX Statewide races for Dems.
1. "There were 754,890 voters with previous Democratic Primary history who did not vote in this election [in Texas]." (731k R's didn't show, but R #'s are ⬆️)
2. [In Texas,] "923,023 individuals aged 18 to 29 voted, yet there were 3,656,849 registered voters in that age range. That means 75% of 18- to 29-year-olds stayed home this year."
"Registered voters aged 18 to 29 made up only 11% of all votes cast."
(all 🧵data @longhornderek)
3. "In Texas, there were 549,812 people with a registration date after the Dobbs opinion’s official release (June 24th)."
"Only 47.7% of the 549,812 post-Dobbs registrants ended up voting this year."
When something bad happens and people immediately rush forward and say “they are a good person”, “I know the family”, and “facts matter”, but you haven’t actually seen the story, read the article, heard the facts, you are merely rallying around your sameness.
The “good person” / “I know the family” stance is purely anecdotal, as in your personal interactions with them, they may have been positive, but you have no inside knowledge of anything else about the individual, how they interact with others, the decisions they make.
When you chime in with “Don’t know the story”, that means you don’t know those facts. When reporting is done by real news organizations, there are facts, there are receipts, there are interviews. After the reporting, you either see accountability or sweeping things under the rug.