What could be wrong with tax-deductions for funding scholarships?

If you haven't read the article, go read http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/education/scholarship-funds-meant-for-needy-benefit-private-schools.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&smid=fb-share&adxnnlx=1338296531-PsvBaPUhYr30Ns1UWfcp0Q

It will probably make you nauseous and, perhaps, yearn for a shower. But if you have time, read the whole thing. It's rather poorly constructed, but the picture sketched by the scenarios is recognizable none the less. If you read it and aren't sure what the point is, I've tried to sketch what I saw a little more clearly here.

First, let people, and, of course , corporations, deduct donations to the scholarship funds of private schools, at a level so high that, when combined with federal charitable deductions, sometimes a corporation or individual can actually come out ahead on the deal. Plus it guts the amount of funding available to (dirty, inefficient, atheist) public schools, assuring poor quality to public education, thus driving increasing demand for private schools.

Next, allow parents and corporations to target the recipients of the donations, so they get deductions for donating to their own children or those of their friends and cronies.

This combination of profit and targeted-giving strongly drives donations. I mean, who wouldn't give money to have a loved one go to school at no personal cost? I mean, if it's legal, it must be okay, right? Fortunately, not everyone in the story felt this way: I wanted to cheer for the ones who refused to do what was immoral, legal or not: Look, people actually following Christ's teachings - hooray!

Now the private schools (read "churches") have a big piece of the money taken from funding the public schools, which can be used to pay politicians to be sure that the process remains legal, or at least enough money to keep things tied up in court until the opposition goes broke.

Now, since they are providing such an important public service, they also have a voice in the public domain. They can use that voice to tell people that public schools are corrupt, that private, for-profit, schools are better. They can set up testing systems to prove it (FCAT's, anyone?). Then they can set up companies for friends and family to run, for a small administrative fee, of course, that provide testing services and run schools.

Oh, and, by the way, they don't forget to fund a few poor children in the process, to parade out when they need to prove the point that private systems can take the place of public ones.

Finally, they can then teach the children anything they like. The reporter only touches briefly on this most important part. Once they get the schools, they can then teach the children that this kind of private funding is the only moral way to conduct business.

They can teach them that any kind of public systems are just a disguise for either the destruction of Christianity, or bringing forth the Anti-Christ to enslave their bodies and devour their souls.

They can teach them that the planet was made to be consumed by Christians, that God put oil and gas in the ground just so they could frack it out.

They can teach them it is okay to hate their neighbor, if he has the right name, like "Muslim" or "baby killer" or "Occupier".

They can teach them that it is wrong to ask for a living wage, that they should accept whatever pay their benevolent employer offers.

They can teach them that it is wrong to ask for a safe workplace, that they should work under any conditions the employer provides, without recourse if they are injured.

They can teach them that rights are God-given, and, therefore, a privilege only to be extended under the rules of their God.

Most importantly, they can teach them to tithe, and to support their faith, at all cost, even the cost of liberty, even at the expense of their neighbor, even if they have to be bullied into it. Because what is a bigger way to bully than threatening the damnation of someone's soul for all eternity?

I have news. We don't have to wait for the end of the world for the Anti-Christ to enslave our bodies or devour our souls. Our friends in corporate America will have done it long before that.

Is it all fracked up?

You could change the words in this story very slightly and it would be one I heard far too often in coal country. I learned in the early 90's what is becoming evident to everyone, everywhere, now.

"The DNR," he (Ron Koshoshek, of Wisconsin's Public Intervenor Citizens Advisory Committee) says, "is now a permitting agency for development and exploitation of resources."

Not only "is now", but from what I can tell, maybe always has been. Variations of this story are repeated everyday, across the country and the planet. Global warming or not, we are devastating the planet by closing our eyes to the fact that the system we are in is built on the infinite growth needed to create constant shortages of resources to drive demand, to drive prices, to drive profits. It is unsustainable. We are squandering a whole world's worth of resources in a few short lifetimes, the blink of an eye in planetary time.

I don't have a lot of answers, except to try to live in more sustainable ways, but then we are back to one of the ultimate questions: where is the line between need and greed? Like most Americans, I live in ways that help make this environmental devastation happen and I don't like knowing it. I've had a pass to Disney. I like fireworks. I drive *way* too much.

I try to help keep the balance by planting trees, and doing other service to public lands, as a hobby. I've planted hundreds in my life, in Ohio and throughout Central Florida (join me June 1 & 2 my area), But the older I get, the more acutely aware I become that this doesn't make my indirect participation in the devastation disappear.

I am making slow but sure moves. I'm learning to garden, an art of it's own in Central Florida's sand country. I pay close attention to how much I drive, combining trips at every opportunity. I picked my cars for their mpg's and will drive them until they are worn out. I'm learning about where my food comes from and trying to shop closer to home. I'm trying to buy more from local vendors and less from big boxes. I try to steer onto a path that seems to trend toward a more sustainable, and therefore, to me, better, world, one that cherishes mountains and prairies and oceans and deserts and swamps and artic "wastelands", instead of viewing them as cash cows.

But most days that still doesn't feel like enough. So I try to bear witness. I take the time to filter the massive information stream that comes in through my diverse collection of sources and share it with all of you. Because I know that the first step to change is understanding the need, and that need seems to be becoming desperate. The tensions are rising, here and abroad. But I know sometimes the way is dark, and especially so in the times of greatest transformation. Change is afoot in the system, and we, the people of the Earth, perhaps for only a brief moment, have the ability to communicate across the planet as never before.

Share what you see, and change what you can. *We* are the people we've been waiting for. We are the saints and heroes and champions of our day and we must live our lives remembering that. We must find a path to a better world, or watch our planet be fed into the ever-hungry maw of the unsustainable system we implicitly accept every time we power up from the grid or fuel our cars.