How to lose with dignity — or not

November 7, 2007

For a couple of decades, supporters of private school vouchers have insisted that Americans really want public funding for private tuition, but elected officials won’t budge. So, proponents keep putting vouchers to statewide referenda — presumably giving people a chance to get what they want — and they keep losing. Indeed, none of the votes has even come close.

Utah was supposed to be the breakthrough for the voucher crowd. It’s perhaps the most consistently reliable conservative state in the union, with a high percentage of religious families who might want tax dollars for their church’s schools. Under these circumstances, they’d finally win one, right? Wrong — Utah voters rejected the latest statewide voucher scheme by a wide margin. The measure lost in every county in the state.

The funny part, however, is the reaction from the leading supporter of the voucher effort.

Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne – who bankrolled the voucher effort – called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed.

“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.

Got that? Disagree with the right on voucher schemes that don’t work, and you’re a child-hating moron.

Haven’t guys like Byrne ever heard of losing with dignity? Maybe a little class?

For what it’s worth, kids in Utah won when voters rejected vouchers, but kids in Oregon lost when voters rejected a healthcare plan financed through tobacco taxes.

Oregon’s working poor will have to wait a while longer to get health-care coverage for their children.

Voters easily defeated Measure 50, a plan to raise tobacco taxes to provide universal health care for children after a record-shattering negative ad campaign financed by cigarette companies.

The measure went down by a wide margin, both statewide and in Marion and Polk counties.

Dubbed the Healthy Kids Program, Measure 50 was a top priority of Gov. Ted Kulongoski and fellow Democrats in the Oregon Legislature. Democrats placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot when they couldn’t get enough Republican votes to pass it outright or submit it to voters as a simple statute.

“The tobacco industry won this battle,” Kulongoski told a somber crowd of Measure 50 supporters in Portland. “But they will not win the war.”

In Salem, pediatrician James Lace said tobacco companies ran an effective campaign, “and they outspent us 4 to 1.”

The plan enjoyed the support of the American Cancer Society, public employee unions, health insurers, and other public-health advocates, but a $12 million investment from Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds ended up making the difference.

Kulongoski encouraged supporters to regroup and added, “[T]he legislature is going to see it again in 2009.”

You’ll notice that he did not accuse the public of failing a “statewide IQ test,” because they “don’t care enough about their kids.”

“Voucher supporter Overstock.com chief executive Patrick Byrne… called the referendum a “statewide IQ test” that Utahns failed…”they don’t care enough about their kids…””

Not only is he being a prick, but a stupid one. I hope the next time this guy tries to pass some sort of conservative horseshit in Utah, the opposition reminds the public loud and often exactly what Byrne thinks of them.

  • CB’s post throws another log on the fire of our current incarnation of conservatism being more a personality flaw that an ideology.

    Supporters of vouchers view education as necessarily a zero-sum game — that for their coveted private schools to gain the public schools must, and should, lose. Adam Smith’s invisible hand will then force the closure of the public school system that conservatives so love to hate when everyone sees how much more wonderful the privates are. The irony of irony for these guys is that if private schools rely on public funding, they turn into de facto public schools because their revenue stream will be in large part coming from the government. I’m sure the privates would still charge enough to keep the riff-raff out and keep fast food joints and Wal-Marts staffed with low-wage employees. What a wonderful world for a bunch of people who hate government, unless government helps them to the detriment of everyone else.

  • “Disagree with the right on voucher schemes that don’t work, and you’re a child-hating moron.”

    Actually, I think he called them ‘unimaginative child-hating morons.’

  • Well … there’s one site I won’t ever be using again. Their prices weren’t all that good anyway.

    As far as the Oregon measure goes, I’m a smoker and I understand why folks want higher taxes to provide for health care.

    HOWEVER, it’s stupid to but the burden on one group of people for a number of reasons.

    First of all, numerous groups (including the government) are actively trying to get people to stop smoking. So why make funding something so important dependent on something you don’t want people to do? What happens when people take that advice and quit? Where the hell is the money going to come from?

    Secondly, since obesity and heart disease are the top two health concerns in America, how about putting, say, a $1 tax on every fast food value meal? Why not put a $2 tax on any entrée of more than 1,000 calories? Those are much, much more liable to raise more money, are aimed at a much bigger health risk, and would be less regressive.

    Anyway, I should note that I’ve voted for tax increases on smokes more than once, so it’s not like I’m just trying to keep more money in my own pocket. I just don’t understand why sin taxes are seen as some sort of cure all that can fund everything.

  • IF any of the CB readers occasionally by something from Overstock . com, maybe it is time to forgo them in the future. I”m sure you can find it somewhere else, without supporting a social conservative. Where you spend your hard earned money DOES make a difference.

    Living in Oregon, it is sad to see that money does buy elections, especially since the tobacco industry attacked the measure with scare tactics because it was ‘changing the constitution’. There was never a mention of the health care benefit; just talk on how deceptive the proponents were in trying to ‘sneak’ something in the constitution that could NEVER be changed, and who knows what else they’d want to sneak in there next time.

  • IF any of the CB readers occasionally by something from Overstock . com, maybe it is time to forgo them in the future. -Bruno

    Here, here! I always vote with my dollar. It’s the only thing they’ll listen to.

  • Bruno–
    The Mrs.used to use Overstock quite a bit. Just got off the phone with her and, although she’s a tad sad, she’s onboard with a boycott.

    I’d love to see a site that shows which businesses are owned by whom, and whom those businesses support politically. It could even be a bipartisan effort, giving left and right the chance to support or boycott those businesses.

    Although now that I think about it, maybe that’d be a tad extreme. Not sure, though …

  • Becoming addicted to tobacco money to fund health care initiatives is like using drug money to buy methodone for heroin users. If tobacco taxes are successful at reducing smoking the revenue stream slowly dries up and the health initiatives go begging. Sure, overall medical costs might decrease because tobacco related diseases in the general population would decrease, but why can’t we say that children are ENTITLED to decent health care. Why is that such a stretch in such a rich country?

    Becoming dependent on smokers is perverse. It perpetuates the problem. It guarantees the tobacco companies their existence.

    I like the idea of taxing high calorie meals and fast-food junk. Banning discount liquor sales might also cut down on alcohol consumption.

  • The whole sin tax thing is simply nuts to me. I pay 30% in salary taxes and $5000 annually in property taxes (amongst all the other taxes) and what the hell am I getting? Good roads? Bridges? Money going back into America in reasonably good wages for an average worker? Care for the elderly? No. I see my taxes go to the select few companies the government decides needs it most (the Halliburtons of the world). They get everything. We get perpetual war, no infrastructure, and the supposedly christian values who say Screw he who can’t take care of himself. I am disgusted by it. And worse yet, I have no say in it!

    I want my money to go to the old lady down the block, not into Dick-F’ing-Cheney’s pockets!

  • Yes, that’s just one more item to lay at the feet of Georgie Bush – the beginning of nasty class warfare in our beloved America. Thanks George and Dick! -Kevo

  • what i like is the window into the ceo mentality: i’m sure this clown says this kind of thing all the time, and all his employees nod their heads and agree.

  • To #13, class warfare has been for lot longer than the near 7 years Dubya has been in office. I would say we’re actually at a very developed stage of class warfare. The Bilderberg Group’s effort to help knock up oil prices is the most obvious weapon against the middle class. And if their prediction of $200 per barrel of oil by the end of 2009 comes true, the middle class will be obliterated. Their prediction of $100 per barrel by the end of 2007 is right on target. Interesting.

  • Yes, that’s just one more item to lay at the feet of Georgie Bush – the beginning of nasty class warfare in our beloved America. Thanks George and Dick! -Kevo

    Kevo –

    As much as I dislike what Bush and Cheney have done to this country, and as much as they deserve blame for many, many things, nasty class warfare is not one of them. Bush and Cheney are more of a culmination of decades of nasty class warfare being enacted upon the middle and lower classes by the rich than the cause of it. Class warfare is part of the DNA of the USA – it’s been with us since the founding of the Republic.

  • Sounds like the archetypical dotcommer neolibertarian asshattery.

    “Hey, we dragged ourselves up by our bootstraps and our own native Ayn Randian genius, using a communications infrastructure entirely developed and implemented by taxpayer dollars! We are therefore smarter than all of you peasants!”

    They sound like truckers heralding themselves as the great, rugged individualist pioneers of using the Interstate system to drive crap around.

  • >“They don’t care enough about their kids. They care an awful lot about this system, this bureaucracy, but they don’t care enough about their kids to think outside the box,” Byrne said.

    Love that bureaucracy!

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