Yes, folks, it’s that time again. Each year, the final week of January features a campaign of punditry, analysis, and cheerleading centered around “National School Choice Week.”

What is “school choice?” In theory, it’s a utopian something-for-nothing scenario in which every student gets the education he, she, or other pronoun “chooses.”

In fact, “school choice,” as promoted, robs most stakeholders — most students, most parents, most educators, and all taxpayers — of meaningful choice.

The usual vehicles for “school choice” are vouchers which can be used to pay tuition, or tax credits that can be used to defray tuition at, approved schools, or in some cases to buy approved homeschooling curricula.

The key word there is “approved,” which is where choice gets shut down.

“Public” — that is, government-run — schools, including “charter” schools, are naturally “approved.” Sending a student there is usually characterized as parents taking “their” tax money to the “magnet” school down the road instead of the “troubled” school nearer their homes, but in both cases they just get the government-approved courses of instruction for their children.

“Private” schools and privately sold homeschool curricula are only eligible to enroll students using that voucher or tax credit money if they also teach the government-approved versions of the government-approved subjects.

Educationally, “school choice” turns every school/curriculum into a single McDonald’s combo meal . You can have anything you want to eat as long as it’s a Big Mac. No matter where you go, you get the same burger, cooked and served the same way.  Unless you have a strong preference for one school’s football team or architectural style over another’s, you might as well just flip a coin. Whee! “Choice!”

As for those taxpayers who don’t happen to have children in need of education, they get no “choice” at all in the matter. Their job is to cough up and shut up.

The usual argument from libertarians who’ve fallen for the “school choice” scam is that it’s “at least a step in the right direction.” It isn’t.

Turning every “private” or home educational option into a uniform,  standardized, government-approved educational option, the only real difference being how the books are kept, reduces actual choice.

It also caps educational quality, and therefore potential student achievement, at whatever dismally low level politicians and bureaucrats can agree on.

Real school choice requires separation of education and state. Anything less is just screwing around … and screwing the kids.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“A progressive who stays home on Election Day — or backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels,” reads the tag line on James Risen’s latest column at The Intercept, “is voting for Donald Trump.”

Well, no.

A progressive (or anyone else) who doesn’t vote isn’t voting for Donald Trump or for any other candidate.

A progressive (or anyone else) who backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels is voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or the No Labels candidate (if there is one), not for Donald Trump.

Risen’s column is part of America’s quadrennial narcissism-by-proxy guilt trip: Your vote is all about him and the candidate he wants to win (Joe Biden).

You owe him that vote, by gum. Casting it your way instead of his way is “stealing” it from his chosen candidate.

If you don’t do as he says, you’re no smarter than (and could suffer the same fate as) German Communist Party leader Ernst Thalmann, who ended up getting shot at Buchenwald because he wouldn’t abandon his own party to stop Hitler.

Yeah, Risen goes THERE.

Don’t fall for it.

You don’t owe your vote to Joe Biden, Donald Trump, RFK Jr., Cornel West, or anyone else. Least of all do you owe it to James Risen.

Your vote is yours to cast for the candidate you most support, or against the candidate you most oppose, or for no candidate at all.

Even if it was true, as Risen insists, that only Biden or Trump “can win” — it isn’t, since America’s millions of voters are all free to make different choices — you’re not morally obligated to disgrace yourself by going along with the crowd and supporting either of the major parties’ corrupt, addled warmongers.

If past results and current polling are at all predictive, Donald Trump will carry my state (Florida) by several percentage points this coming November.

Even if he doesn’t, the chance of my vote deciding the outcome, and thus the disposition of the state’s electoral votes, are nowhere as good as my chance of winning a big Powerball jackpot.

Why should I bother voting at all? Maybe I shouldn’t. But if I do vote, how can I increase the value of my vote where my own goals are concerned?

The only thing my vote is good for, if anything at all, is “sending a message.” I’m not interested in “sending the message” that I support Joe Biden or Donald Trump, since I don’t support Joe Biden nor Donald Trump.

If I see a pro-freedom, pro-peace candidate on my ballot this November, I’ll vote for that candidate. If I don’t, I’ll write in my own name or just not cast a vote for president. There’s more, and better, “message value” in that, and I won’t feel like I need to take a shower and scrub with a wire brush afterward.

Either way, regardless of the election’s outcome, I won’t let James Risen guilt-trip me over it. Neither should you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On January 6, Canada’s  CTV ran a story on package theft in Montreal West, a Quebecois suburb. “Porch piracy” — grabbing parcels left at doors by delivery services — isn’t just a Canadian problem, of course. It’s become endemic in prosperous western societies, particularly in densely populated areas with front doors located at convenient dashing distance from streets and sidewalks.

What perked ears around the world in this particularly story, however, was a cautionary note from Quebec’s provincial police, telling victims not to post doorbell camera images or video of porch piracy to social media.

“You cannot post the images yourself,” said police communications officer Lt. Benoit Richard, “because you have to remember, in Canada, we have a presumption of innocence and posting that picture could be a violation of private life.”

But is going onto other people’s porches and stealing their stuff really a “private” activity?

And does recording (and, if one chooses, sharing) what happens on one’s own property, or on “public” property visible from one’s own property, violate anyone’s reasonable expectation of privacy?

I’d answer “no” to both questions, and I suspect you would as well.

Furthermore, presumption of innocence is a concept for judges and jurors in court proceedings, not a ban on people collecting and sharing information that might later be used to challenge the presumption.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s accept the claim that running off the sidewalk, climbing the stairs of your porch, grabbing the box from Amazon with a new pair of shoes you ordered as a birthday present for your mother-in-law inside, and running away is, all else being equal, a “private” activity which you’re not entitled to record or publicly comment on.

It seems to me that all else needs to be made explicitly unequal … and there’s an app for that — “terms of service,” so to speak.

Some enterprising entrepreneur should sell little plaques for  prominent display at front gates or on porch rails:

NOTICE: ENTERING THIS PROPERTY CONSTITUTES A WAIVER OF ALL RIGHTS, INCLUDING PERSONAL PRIVACY RIGHTS, WITH RESPECT TO PHOTOGRAPHS, VIDEO RECORDINGS, OR AUDIO RECORDINGS ESTABLISHING THEFT, PROPERTY DAMAGE, OR OTHER CRIMINAL ACTIVITY.

Maybe a shorter version would work, but you get the picture (see what I did there?), as will any would-be thief.

If such plaques make their way to market at a reasonable price, I’ll certainly order one. And display it, if it doesn’t get stolen first.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY