Saturday, March 15, 2008

Venting

OK. Just let me get this off my chest. I'm about to express an opinion that may not be popular with parents out there, but I don't really care.

The Louisiana Legislature just passed this bill. Basically, it allows parents of private school students to take a deduction of up to $2500 of tuition, books, uniforms, etc for each child on their taxes. Parents of public school kids can do the same for uniforms and books.

This makes me angry as a non-child having person. Families with children already get all kinds of breaks on their taxes. I know it is expensive to raise children. But why should single people and married people without children shoulder so much more of the tax burden in our state? It's discriminatory.

And don't get me started on the private school tuition part. If parents want to send their kids to private school, fine. That is their choice. My parents did it for elementary school. But the key word there is CHOICE. No one forces parents to send their kids to private school. I'll grant you that the public schools here leave much to be desired, but is the answer really to take more potential money away from the public schools?

I am utterly and completely opposed to this. I will be letting my legislators know (if I can figure out who they are), and I am saying right here and now: Governor Jindal, if you sign this bill, I will lose respect for you and your administration. And I am one of the Democrats who supported you both times you ran for Governor.

I'm starting to think that my friend who never votes for Republicans, no matter how much better they seem as candidates, has the right idea.

Stupid state.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sheryl, (great name)

You are obviously smarter than your friend that always votes Democrat.

You write well and like you, I have this thing about liking to see my thoughts in writing.

Something else you might consider is sharing your thoughts on an open forum so that you might grow your opinion.

I would like to invite you to join a discussion concerning your most recent "vent".

http://forums.thenewsstar.com/viewtopic.php?t=36105&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=073274f7aa1a881eb7efdf5dc9a7ca66

Oh, if you are curious how I came to find your blog, it was through my Google alerts. They are very handy in keeping up with issues of interest.

Governor Jindal has been a major interest of mine for sometime now.

4unionparish

PS You might want to checkout http://www.louisianaconservative.com/

I vent there sometimes, too.