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ACLU Attacks Educational Freedom in the “Live Free or Die” State
Jason Bedrick
Earlier today, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against New Hampshire’s School Choice Scholarship Act of 2012, which offers tax credits worth 85% of corporate donations to registered, non-profit scholarship organizations that fund low- and middle-income students attending non-public or home schools. The ACLU argues that since parents can use the scholarships at religious schools, the law violates two provisions of New Hampshire’s constitution: the historically anti-Catholic “Blaine Amendment” and the “compelled support” clause. Fortunately, similar scholarship tax credit (STC) laws have withstood every legal challenge thus far, including in states with very similar constitutional provisions.
The Blaine Amendment reads: “no money raised by taxation shall ever be granted or applied for the use of the schools or institutions of any religious sect or denomination.” What complicates matters for opponents of the program is that, unlike voucher programs, STC programs do not rely on “public money” or “money raised by taxation”. In a decision upholding the constitutionality of Arizona’s STC program, the Arizona state supreme court forcefully rejected the “public money” argument:
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, “public money” is “[r]evenue received from federal, state, and local governments from taxes, fees, fines, etc.” Black’s Law Dictionary 1005 (6th ed.1990). As respondents note, however, no money ever enters the state’s control as a result of this tax credit. Nothing is deposited in the state treasury or other accounts under the management or possession of governmental agencies or public officials. Thus, under any common understanding of the words, we are not here dealing with “public money.”
(N.B. – While the ruling of one state supreme court is not binding on another, state courts often consider how their peers have ruled concerning constitutional provisions with similar language.)
The ACLU’s second contention, that the STC program violates the compelled support clause, is also weak. The clause reads: “no person shall ever be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination.” Of course, no one is compelled to donate to a scholarship organization, let alone a religious school. The implication is that when tax revenues are reduced because someone donates to a religious institution, then everyone is “compelled” to support that religious institution. This convoluted line of reasoning implies that everyone in the United States is “compelled” to support religious activities because of the charitable deduction against the federal income tax. It’s no wonder that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this argument in ACSTO v. Winn (2011).
Writing in response to Winn, Andrew Coulson, Director of Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom, notes that STC programs like those in New Hampshire and Arizona not only expand families’ educational options, they protect taxpayers’ freedom of conscience:
Unlike the funding of public schools, which is compulsory for all taxpayers, participation in Arizona’s tax credit program is voluntary. If an individual chooses not to donate to an STO, his taxes are collected just as they have always been, and those dollars cannot be used for any sectarian purpose. Furthermore, if a taxpayer does choose to make a donation, he is free to select the STO most consistent with his own values. Arizona has scores of different STOs, some with a religious emphasis and some without.
…
The Supreme Court’s Winn ruling reminds us is that there is a way to finance universal education without resorting to socially corrosive compulsion. Indeed if we wish our schools to promote mutual respect among people of different religions and world views, we must respect the right of parents to offer their children an education consistent with their values, and we must not compel taxpayers to support forms of instruction that violate their convictions. Tax credit programs such as Arizona’s do both.
As of now, New Hampshire’s nascent STC program has only one registered scholarship organization, the Network for Educational Opportunity, which is a secular non-profit.
In 2004, former New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice Charles Douglas argued that even a voucher program should pass constitutional muster in the Granite State:
A school choice program that is purposely designed to be neutral with respect to religion, and which provides only incidental and indirect benefits to a religious sect or religion in general, benefits that are purely the result of the choices of individual citizens receiving state funds, does not violate the religion/state separation provisions of either the United States or New Hampshire Constitutions.
New Hampshire’s STC program clearly meets that criteria and has the added constitutional benefit of only utilizing private funds.
As Yogi Berra once said, it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. Just because something has never happened doesn’t mean it can’t. It’s impossible to predict with certainty how the New Hampshire Supreme Court will decide. Let us hope that they remain faithful to the text of New Hampshire’s constitution. The educational futures of countless children depend on it.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Religion • Anti-Semitic attacks on the rise in Berlin
Anti-Semitic attacks on the rise in Berlin
BERLIN — Reuters
Published Friday, Sep. 28 2012
A leading member of Germany’s Jewish community had to point to a gun he was carrying to ward off a young man shouting anti-Semitic comments – the latest in a string of racist incidents in Berlin that has shocked Jews and city authorities.
The Central Council of Jews in Germany said its general secretary, Michael Kramer, endured a barrage of threatening insults from the man after leaving a Berlin synagogue with his two daughters on Wednesday.
“The man threatened us and made clear he would have lashed out if the children had not been there,” the council quoted Mr. Kramer, 44, as saying.
Mr. Kramer then pointed to a gun he is allowed to carry for personal protection to deter the man from attacking him.
Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper carried a photograph of the young man that Mr. Kramer himself had taken at the time with his mobile phone. The man, with a partially shaven head, has an arm raised toward the phone as if about to push Mr. Kramer.
Bild quoted the man as having said to Mr. Kramer: “What are you doing here? Go back to where you came from.”
Mr. Kramer and his adversary are pressing charges against each other, German media said.
Last month, Daniel Alter – one of the first rabbis ordained in Germany since the Holocaust – was beaten up on a Berlin street in front of his young daughter by four attackers, prompting a seminary to advise its students to avoid wearing skullcaps in public.
Germany’s official Jewish population, now at around 120,000, has grown more than tenfold in the last 20 years – thanks largely to an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union – but anti-Semitic attacks remain prevalent and policemen guard synagogues around the clock.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wor … le4576111/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Fri Sep 28, 2012 10:08 pm
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Other • Autoimmune Finance: The System Attacks Itself
Autoimmune Finance: The System Attacks Itself
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 2012
The only thing that has been achieved -if we can even use that word- by the European bailouts thus far, is that bank debt is kept hidden from view. That’s all. No economies have been rescued or restored, no jobs have been created, nothing. And the bank debt that we now can’t see even though we know it’s there, will one day forcibly be forced out into the daylight anyway, and kill the banks that hold it. And those that bailed them out.
Eventually Europe will then be forced to deal with it after all, but with the added problem of being trillions of euros poorer, in debt transferred from the private to the public sector. Hence, what Europe has been doing until now, and is doing still, severely weakens its ability to adequately execute necessary measures in the future. Europe is dragging itself and its people into the furnace, just to keep a bunch of failed banks and their loser shareholders whole. Utter madness, an extortion scam.
Last year I started to label the money used to allow zombie banks to continue to extend and pretend, zombie money. It’s conjured up out of thin air, the thinnest air on the planet. The only thing that serves as collateral is the future taxability of the future citizens of bankrupt nations.
In the end, the only truth that remains, though people are seemingly completely blind to it, is this:
The banks that are kept alive with the zombie money will use it to do what they will – rightfully, in the present economic model – see as the most profitable thing to do: bet against, and ultimately bring down, the very system that has "saved" them. This is how perverted the entire scheme has become. The money taken from you by your "leaders" will be, and already is, used to bring you to your knees.
The €100 billion for Spain agreed on last weekend evaporated in two days. 18 Spanish banks were downgraded this week, and Spain’s 10 year bonds are at 6.69% as we speak, reflecting, among other things, that the Spanish government, re: – future – population, is on the hook for that €100 billion. 6.69% is close enough to the 7% threshold that it effectively means Spain has no access to the markets. In the same way, Italy’s 10-year 6.20% is a big red alarm flag, and Italy today paid 3.79% for €6.5 billion in 1-year debt, up from 2.34% last month, a 62% raise.
Moreover, the €100 billion for Spain will by default have to be the model for other bailouts. New lines have been drawn in the sand, and Greece, after the June 17 election, Portugal, and soon Italy, will not accept different, stricter, terms than Spain has gotten.
Not that any of it truly matters; it all just prolongs the agony. It does so, however, at a very steep price for the woman in the street, and even more so for her children. Raphael Minder at the New York Times:
Bailout in Spain Leaves Taxpayers Liable for the Cost
"Unfortunately Spain didn’t manage to reach one of its main goals in the negotiations, which was to have Europe bear part of the risk of rescuing the financial sector, without letting it fall instead directly onto the shoulders of the Spanish taxpayer," said Luis Garicano, a Spanish economist who teaches at the London of School Economics. "Ultimately, those who lent to our financial system were the banks and insurance companies of Northern Europe, which should bear the consequences of these decisions."
Patrick Allen at CNBC quotes Strategy Economics analyst Matthew Lynn, who has some insights, and lovely new words to go with them:
Crisis Path: ‘Spanic,’ ‘Quitaly’ and ‘Fixit’
So how will the euro zone debt crisis finally resolve itself? One analyst believes it will happen after "Spanic" hits, then discussion will turn to "Quitaly" before Finland leaves — or "Fixit."
Strategy Economics analyst Matthew Lynn advanced the three terms in a research note on Wednesday, in which he maps out the path of the crisis going forward. "A fresh panic in Spain might be followed by rising demands for Italy to quit if it doesn’t get the same terms its Mediterranean neighbor has been offered, followed by a Finnish departure from the single currency that might finally bring the whole saga to a climax," he said. [..]
"Nothing has really been done to make sure that Spain is on the path to recovery," he said. "If the rescue falls apart, however, and Spain has to come back for another package, then there will be a massive run on its financial system." [..]
"Italy has to stump up around 22% of the Spanish rescue — borrowing money at 6% to give to its neighbors at 3%. That isn’t going to go down well," he added. "Inside Italy, pressure is inevitably going to grow for it to get the same terms — and if it doesn’t it will threaten to quit the single currency, with all the chaos that could bring about."
Lynn believes things will finally come to a head when one country decides enough is enough, and that country could be Finland. "It doesn’t particularly have to worry about the impact on the EU, in the way that Germany would if it opted out," he said. "If a country such as that leaves, it is effectively game over, but no one can really say that of a tiny place such as Finland."
We’ve read about limiting ATM withdrawals, border patrols and capital controls, in reports leaking from the EU. These measures could happen sooner than we’d like to believe (if only because they were leaked). In fact, it looks inevitable. The leaks imply that it will be Greece only, if the June 17 votes go the "wrong way" (for the "leaders", that is), but the amounts of euros bleeding out of Spain are already so large that they very directly endanger the survival of the very banks that have just been bailed out (or promised a bailout, to be more precise).
They’re going to do something, and they’ll do it when it’s least expected.
Meanwhile, here’s one more time what should be done, and should have been done all along, and in all likelihood won’t be done until it’s truly too late for you and your offspring. And don’t think this is a European issue; in fact, Europe just copies American examples. Business Insider’s Editor-in-Chief Henry Blodget explains it, like I have so often, and this time in more detail:
Hey, Europe, Here’s The Right Way To Bail Out Banks…
[..] In fact, the U.S. started this string of bad bank bailouts–making a mistake that the country is still suffering from. And now Europe is following our lead.
The most annoying thing about this is that bank bailouts can work–and they can be done without costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars or rewarding executives and investors for making bad decisions. They just have to be done the right way.
What’s the right way? 7 steps:
• Seize the bank
• Fire management
• Write down the value of the bad loans to the amount they are actually worth
• Zero out the bank’s equity (shareholders lose everything)
• Apportion the losses to the bank’s subordinated debtholders (they lose something)
• Inject new capital in the form of senior debt and new equity
• Refloat the bank (by selling all or part of it).
In a restructuring like this, the bank doesn’t stop operating–so the economy isn’t screwed.
Meanwhile, the idiots who loaned the bank money and bought the bank’s stock take the losses they deserve. And the bank is then immediately rendered rock-solid again, ready to make new loans to companies and countries that deserve it. (And, hopefully, the remaining loan officers are chastened by their prior stupidity and are more prudent next time.)
It doesn’t matter how big the bank is–you can do this with any size bank. And, if necessary, you can do it with lots of banks at the same time. You just need an entity–like the US government or ECB–that has the power to seize and restructure banks before they actually go bankrupt and that can write the massive checks necessary to recapitalize the banks.
That’s the right way to bail out banks. And that’s the only way to do it without rewarding stupid, reckless lending and failing to address the root of the problem.
The root of the problem for Spanish banks, as it was for US and Irish banks, is stupid real-estate loans. And the Spain bailout, as currently described, will not force the banks to write down the value of those stupid loans. Rather, it will just give the banks enough money to "extend and pretend" and ignore or deny the fact that the loans have gone bad. But the banks will know the loans have gone bad. So they’ll hoard their cash and not make new loans for fear that the old, bad loans will kill them in the end.
Spain’s banks are broke.
They’re broke because they made lots of stupid loans.
When anyone in the real world makes a stupid loan, they lose their money.
The idiots who loaned money to Spanish banks to make stupid loans deserve to lose their money.
The idiots at the Spanish banks who made the stupid loans deserve to lose their jobs.
And the rest of Spain should not have to suffer the consequences.
The problem, the reason why this doesn’t happen, of course is obvious: the idiots run the asylum. Which makes them look and feel as if they’re not the idiots at all. And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps the rest of us are the idiots, for letting them get away with it.
There’s nothing new about the right way to restructure a bankrupt company; it’s been done a million times. But it’s done not this time, not in Europe and not in the US. As a result, the whole banking system is now a $1 quadrillion zombie system, held up by zombie money that is injected into it in our name, no matter that if we don’t have it. And our grandchildren will be born with a million dollars or so each in debt right from the get-go. And we’ll tell them we love them, and believe ourselves when we say it….
All of which is why maybe we should look forward to a Syriza victory in the Greek elections, or to Finland leaving the Eurozone. Just so the idiot emperors and the idiot clothes they don’t wear are revealed as the zombies they are.
What happens to date helps a happy lucky few pay off their gambling debts, and devastates the rest of us. It’s not working, and it will stop, so much is guaranteed. But if there’s ever been a time to say: the sooner the better, this is it. And if instead you want to wait for the Greeks or the Finns to save your asses, be my guest. But don’t say you didn’t know.
Let me quote myself:
The banks that are kept alive with the zombie money will use it to do what they will – rightfully, in the present economic model – see as the most profitable thing to do: bet against, and ultimately bring down, the very system that has "saved" them. This is how perverted the entire scheme has become. The money taken from you by your "leaders" will be, and already is, used to bring you to your knees.
It’s sort of like one of those autoimmune diseases, where the body attacks and kills itself, using its own defenses, isn’t it, a kind of zombie disease? Then again, at least we seek to cure those …..
http://theautomaticearth.org/Finance/au … tself.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Jun 13, 2012 1:39 pm
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Canadian • NDP’s Thomas Mulcair Attacks Alberta’s Oilsands Prosperity
Some provinces suffering because of oil sands prosperity: NDP’s Thomas Mulcair
Derek Abma, Postmedia News May 5, 2012 –
OTTAWA — NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Saturday that, because of the way it raises the value of the Canadian dollar, other parts of the country are paying a price for the prosperity enjoyed by natural resource sectors such as the oil sands in Alberta.
“It’s by definition the ‘Dutch disease,’ ” Mulcair said Saturday on the CBC Radio show, The House.
The “Dutch disease” is a reference to what happened to the Netherlands economy in the 1960s after vast deposits of natural gas were discovered in the nearby North Sea. The resulting rise in its currency was thought to have caused the collapse of the Dutch manufacturing sector, and Mulcair said the same thing is happening in Canada.
“The Canadian dollar’s being held artificially high, which is fine if you’re going to Walt Disney World, (but) not so good if you want to sell your manufactured product because the American clients, most of the time, can no longer afford to buy it.”
The Canadian dollar has traded higher or close to parity with the U.S. dollar for most of this year and last.
Mulcair cited Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick as some of the places affected by the high loonie.
“We’ve hollowed out the manufacturing sector. In six years since the Conservatives have arrived, we’ve lost 500,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs.”
Mulcair also discussed the need for the “internalization of the environmental costs” of oil sands and other natural resources development and making the “polluter pay.”
He said he’s not against oil sands development, but said it should be carried out in a sustainable manner.
There was some reference to an article Mulcair wrote for Policy Options magazine, which was published just prior to his winning the NDP leadership race in March. In it, he proposed a “comprehensive cap-and-trade plan that would be based on the principle that polluters pay.”
He rejected the notion, brought up by the show’s host, Evan Solomon, that he was using the oil sands as a “wedge issue” that pits other parts of the country against Alberta.
“This is a question that we have to address across the board because we are such a resource-rich country,” Mulcair said. “We’ve got to learn how to add value here, to stop shipping raw logs, to stop shipping raw bitumen.”
However, Alberta Environment Minister Diana McQueen, who was also on the show, said Mulcair was being divisive in his treatment of the oil sands.
She called it “old-style politics; trying to pit one part of the country against another. . . . It really is disheartening to see such divisive comments coming from a federal leader, and I’d certainly invite the honourable leader to come out and meet with us. I’m not sure that he’s done that. I’m not sure if he’s actually visited the oil sands.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/05 … s-mulcair/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat May 05, 2012 12:54 pm
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American • Obama attacks Palin, she bites back harder
Obama attacks Palin, she bites back harder
March 13, 2012 by Don Surber
From Breitbart: “Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has presented an ad featuring Sarah Palin speaking out against the President’s law school association with controversial racialist Derrick Bell. Four years later, President Obama is still running against Sarah Palin.”
What else does Barack Obama have?
His $787 billion stimulus was the biggest and most expensive failure in human history.
His Obamacare was even worse.
The public hates his domestic policies.
All he has is hate.
Sarah Palin ain’t taking his misogyny, diversion and scapegoating any more.
From Sarah Palin on Facebook:
The far Left continues to believe American voters are not smart enough to grasp the diversionary tactics it employs to distract us from the issues our President just doesn’t want to talk about – issues that affect us all every day and must be addressed.
Exhibit A in these diversionary tactics is an absurd new attack ad President Obama has released taking my comments out of context. I’m not running for any office, but I’m more than happy to accept the dubious honor of being Barack Obama’s “enemy of the week” if that includes the opportunity to debate him on the issues Americans are actually concerned about. (Remember when I said you don’t need a title to make a difference?)
Just off the top of my head, a few of these concerning issues include: a debt crisis that has us hurtling towards a Greek-style collapse, entitlement programs going bankrupt, a credit downgrade for the first time in our history, a government takeover of the health care industry that makes care more expensive and puts a rationing panel of faceless bureaucrats between you and your doctor (aka a “death panel”), $4 and $5 gas at the pump exacerbated by an anti-drilling agenda that rejects good paying energy sector jobs and makes us more dependent on dangerous foreign regimes, a war in Afghanistan that seems unfocused and unending, a global presidential apology tour that’s made us look feeble and ridiculous, a housing market in the tank, the longest streak of high unemployment since World War II, private-sector job creators and industry strangled by burdensome regulations and an out-of-control Obama EPA, an attack on the Constitutional protection of religious liberty, an attack on private industry in right-to-work states, crony capitalism run amok in an administration in bed with their favored cronies to the detriment of genuine free market capitalism, green energy pay-to-play kickbacks to Obama campaign donors, and a Justice Department still stonewalling on a bungled operation that armed violent Mexican drug lords and led to the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
Remember the Who’s opera “Tommy”?
We’re not gonna take it!
http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/52803
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:50 pm
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War and Conflict • Scores killed in terrorist attacks in Nigeria
At least 120 people have been killed in a series of bombings and attacks by Islamist militants in the northern Nigerian city of Kano.
Soldiers and police officers are out in force in the city in Nigeria’s Muslim north, where gunfire is still ringing out in some quarters.
The Islamist group Boko Haram, which has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in recent months, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
A mortuary attendant at Murtala Muhammed hospital, the largest in Kano, said they had 126 bodies of people who died in the attacks, which began at 5pm on Friday afternoon after Muslim prayers. AP reported that there were soldiers and police officers among the dead.Nwakpa O Nwakpa, a spokesman for the Nigerian Red Cross, said officials were continuing to collect corpses scattered around sites of the attacks. "From what they are saying, there are many involved, either wounded or dead," Nwakpa said.
A survey of two hospitals by the Red Cross said at least 50 people were injured in Friday’s attack, he added.In a statement issued late on Friday, federal police spokesman Olusola Amore said attackers targeted five police buildings, two immigration offices and the local headquarters of the State Security Service, Nigeria’s secret police.
"The police have commenced investigation and therefore use this medium to call for calm among the residents of Kano as police are doing their best to bring the situation under control," Amore said.
Police are "appealing to members of the public to come forward with information on the identity and location of these hoodlums. Information given will be treated with utmost confidentiality."
A massive blast caused when a suicide bomber who drove a car full of explosives into a regional police headquarters shook cars miles away. Inmates at the regional police headquarters fled amid gunfire, witnesses said.
State authorities declared a 24-hour curfew late on Friday as residents hid inside their homes amid the fighting.
A Boko Haram spokesman, using the nom de guerre Abul-Qaqa, claimed responsibility for the attacks, which he said were retaliation at the state government refusing to release members of the Islamist terrorist group.
Boko Haram, which seeks to implement strict Sharia law across Nigeria, is responsible for at least 510 killings last year, according to the Associated Press. The group has been blamed for at least 76 killings this year, the news agency added.
The targets of Boko Haram, whose name means "estern education is sacrilege" in the local Hausa language, have included both Muslims and Christians. Bit the militants have promised to kill any Christians living in Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north.
The group previously claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in August that targeted the UN headquarters in the capital, Abuja, killing 25 people and wounding more than 100. The sect killed at least 42 people during a series of attacks on Christmas Day, which included the bombing of a Catholic church outside Abuja.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/ja … boko-haram
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Sat Jan 21, 2012 9:25 am
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