Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Old-Style Pol Mike Ellis Doesn't Get It

Mike Ellis is another of those old-style Republicans. Country club, horses on the estate, personal friends with T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, "shaken, not stirred", ...you get the idea.

Sen. Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) was one of several Republican senators giving a lukewarm reaction to Walker's proposal, announced Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to seek taxpayer money for students in private schools in three new Wisconsin cities.

He said he also had concerns about another provision in Walker's budget that would eliminate income limits in Milwaukee's school choice program, allowing the children of middle-income and wealthy people to attend private schools with the help of taxpayers.

“We have problems with the elimination of the income threshold because the idea behind this program was to help poverty-stricken students who don’t have the wherewithal to go to private school," Ellis said in a brief interview. “This is a complete blowing up of that concept. Throw this (new proposal) in, and I have to do some serious thinking about the rest of this.”

After all, Mike wants to be viewed as a Gentleman! You know, charitable with taxpayer dollars, not "efficient" or anything like that.

It's Mike's place as a member of the Landed Gentry, to determine what are the Proper Charitable Causes. This Walker fellow--his father was...what? A Lutheran minister? They don't own horses, do they? What does HE know about proper charities, after all?

Mike, get a clue. The Choice program is far and away the MOST efficient school-dollar expenditure in Wisconsin. In other words, Mike, it's not a "charity" program: it is an education program which happens to cost a LOT less--and it also gets results.

It would be very nice if you'd pay attention to tax expenditure efficacy and efficiency, Mike.

4 comments:

Display Name said...

Plus it props up religious schools with tax dollars.

neomom said...

First - its been ruled constitutional.

Second - the folks that pay to send their kids to a parochial school prop up the public schools that are failing and that they don't use with their tax dollars.

So?

Anonymous said...

Foust - TOOL extraordinaire

Anonymous said...

Sorry - you want your kids going to parochial school, you pay for it. The state is broke, don't you get it?