Matt Wuerker for March 30, 2023

What? No Pastafarians? ( I know, they are probably not that sophisticated yet, or skipped the capitalization phase of any real religion)

Tax the churches!

Well if public schools brought back discipline, allowed for expelling problem students, and stuck with core classes, maybe parents wouldn’t be screaming for vouchers. It’s not the religions pushing this, it’s the parents who are dissatisfied with public schools, but Mr. Wuerker choses to ignore this fact.

Why should poor students be stuck with crappy public schools? Should only students whose parents can afford to send their child to a good school be allowed to?

It’s Official! Here in Florida President DeSantis is ending public school education because the teachers are groomers. $96,000 in private school vouchers to every kid in the state ($8,000/yr x 12 years). The funds are coming from the public school budget. (It really was just signed into law).

Republicans are helping them.

TAX THE CHURCHES!!! TAX THEM ALL!!! MAKE IT RETROACTIVE TO THE BEGINNING OF THE TAX CODE!!!

They want to be PACs, let them PAY the price of admission, just like everyone else!!!

Reverse the flow.

@BenniHanna: Public schools in Oklahoma require students to share textbooks because there aren’t enough of them to go around. Public schools in South Carolina have leaky roofs and no heat. “Crappy education”, indeed. How can anyone generate a love of learning in a child who can’t keep warm enough to stay still?

These are just two examples of why our public school systems are failing, and you will note that it doesn’t mention teachers, administration policies, or curriculum.

State governments are loath to “throw money at the system” so those problems continue to fester. Yet many seem happy to send tax dollars to “better-performing” schools. This is willful blindness, and it astounds me that people vote for such bad actors.

Keep in mind that many states do not require charter schools (and other non-public schools) to submit the statistics that public schools must, nor are they required to serve everyone who wants to attend. Indeed many are exclusive, in that they will not accept children with special needs, or those whose haircuts suggest that they might become lesbians (truly happened in Virginia). The happy success rates that they tout are often figures that are accepted without proof.

The crazy backwards Republicans want to arm teachers who they don’t trust to pick out books.

Mr. Wuerker is dead right here. Our Supreme Court has shown us that it has no regard for religious freedom, unless it is their own chosen religion (or more accurately, the religion chosen by the parents of their parents of their parents…).

It is bad enough that churches and their extended campuses and holdings are not taxed. Here’s the deal: if someone is getting a discount, and you’re not one of those someones, you pay extra. Senior discount? A tax on young people. Tax-free real estate? Higher taxes on non-church-related property. Follow the money.

So, every US citizen is supporting, involuntarily by way of taxation, every house of worship, its affiliated religious schools, and other holdings that they may be able to justify under lax IRS rules.

And now taxpayers have to give their tax money to religious schools? Whether they teach real science or demand that their students accept a universe that is 6000 years old? Whether they will reject a potential student simply because of the religion that he/she was born into? I call BS. Bad enough to pay them off once; to offer them a double dip at the collection plate is beyond the pale.

Republicans champion their erroneous interpetation of the Second Amendment (minus the first 13 words). And they have made mincemeat of the First Amendment by ignoring the first ten words (established religion) while calling Jan 6th “the right of the people (themselves!) peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government (Pence) for a redress of grievences” Greene and Boebert have never read the Constitution in its entirety and are too immature to understand it if they do!

One receipt of tax funded voucher money and say goodby to your 501C status, that simple

Theocracy, not just for the Middle Ages.

So, religions want our money but not our control – that isn’t new – it’s always been that way. The incredible “snark” that arises as religious entities, especially “televangelists” buy yet ANOTHER private jet or monster McMansion is truly amazing…

And they serve NO PRACTICAL PURPOSE other than relieving fools, idiots and imbeciles of their money…

I grew up quite close to a Lutheran Church that bought its “leader” a new Buick each year because they didn’t want their “parish” to “look poor” – it was a point of ridicule of my grandmother’s Baptist church, though I suspect there was a “touch” of envy there as well, since that parish really WAS poor.

Private schooling is a modern form of segregation and division along religious, class, race, economic, and political identities. Its enrollment is limited to only those “like us” and helps divide our once unified country into “them” and “us”—and not “Americans”. Public schooling once mixed us together in a common endeavor. Now we live in tribes and gated communities and are suspicious of others unlike ourselves. Where did this suspicion come from? Why is it so pervasive now? What is its cost?

Our public schooling once was a model for the world and made the nation a leader in the world. Why let public schools slide into third class educational warehouses for millions of kids who can’t and won’t be enrolled into elitist schools funded by public taxes and funded by the detriment of public education? We all will lose.

Keep religious delusions and superstitions where they belong: In the fiction section of libraries.

It’s getting weird in my state. The legislature , with a supermajority of white christain nationalists , is calling abortion “satanic” and passed a law that lets people who pay tuition to christain schools deduct each dollar from their state tax bill. That’s one way of defunding public education.

My father was Jewish – My mother was Roman Catholic. Judaism is matrilineal, so I’m technically not Jewish.

(And I’ve learned to live with my guilt;-)

My father had had to sign a document that I would be raised Catholic – which was interesting because when I was four years old, my folks were divorced . . .

I went to live with my mother’s sister and her husband – who were childless, churchless, and wonderful.

And spent time with my father’s parents, who were secular Jews.

Sometime in elementary school, for years, there was offered: “Church School” – otherwise known to me as: “time off from school”.Those who didn’t sign up had an afternoon study hall. (Boring). Those who signed up for it were to leave school at lunch on Thursday and go to the church of their choice . . . I went to the park, or movie matinees, depending upon the weather.

I was only challenged once where I went. The lady was Christian (she wore a cross) so I said I went to Temple. She didn’t seem convinced, so I whipped a little Old Testament on her – The Good Samaritan or Joseph with the coat of many colors (We all know why, don’t we?) and she seemed mollified. She looked like she wanted to say more, but I told her I HAD to get home before sundown for Shabbos. That was my trump card . . .

People of faith will believe anything.

God bless all of you for your posts.

Was today’s cartoon new to you? Yes? Don’t forget to click left to see if the previous one is also new to you.

The wall was meant to be one-dimensional.

Meanwhile FL passing laws for Gov deSatan to give school funding to both Private and RELIGIOUS schools. In Oklahoma Gov Stitt and State Superintendent/Sec of Education(collecting 2 salaries-and reportedly wants a raise) are trying to get a on line Catholic school approved for state education $$$-the state virtual school board wants to approve it despite an AG opinion saying its against the state-and federal Constitution. The OK City diocese reportedly spent a year working on this application with much assistance from the University of Norte Dame law school