{"id":13506,"date":"2007-11-07T10:35:15","date_gmt":"2007-11-07T15:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13506.html"},"modified":"2007-11-07T10:35:15","modified_gmt":"2007-11-07T15:35:15","slug":"how-to-lose-with-dignity-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/how-to-lose-with-dignity-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"How to lose with dignity — or not"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The funny part, however, is the reaction<\/a> from the leading supporter of the voucher effort.<\/p>\n

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

“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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

Haven’t guys like Byrne ever heard of losing with dignity? Maybe a little class?
\n
\nFor what it’s worth, kids in Utah won when voters rejected vouchers, but kids in Oregon lost<\/a> when voters rejected a healthcare plan financed through tobacco taxes.<\/p>\n

Oregon’s working poor will have to wait a while longer to get health-care coverage for their children.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The measure went down by a wide margin, both statewide and in Marion and Polk counties.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

In Salem, pediatrician James Lace said tobacco companies ran an effective campaign, “and they outspent us 4 to 1.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Kulongoski encouraged supporters to regroup and added, “[T]he legislature is going to see it again in 2009.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}