CALIFORNIA YANKEE

Georgia’s Scholarship Tax-Credit Program challenged in lawsuit

Photo courtesy of Institute for Justice.

Georgia’s six-year-old Tax Credit Scholarship Program is the most recent school choice program to be challenged in court. The program provides tax credit scholarships for public school students to attend the private school of their parents' choice. 

In April, a lawsuit was filed by a group of Georgia parents backed by the Southern Education Foundation, claiming the scholarship tax credits violate both the state constitution and tax laws by, among other things, providing indirect public funding to religious schools, giving donors illegal benefits and allowing a publicly funded school program to be run by private groups.

In May, the Institute for Justice intervened on behalf of certain Georgia families seeking to dismiss the lawsuit. According to Attorney Tim Keller, who is the Institute for Justice's lead counsel in the case, "Georgia’s school choice program is one of the largest in the country for a reason: It gives thousands of Georgia parents an opportunity to find a school that best fits their kids’ needs without using a single cent of state funds." Keller is confident that the case will be dismissed.

Since its inception six years ago, the scholarship program has proven immensely popular. It currently provides scholarships to more than 13,000 students, making it the fourth largest school choice program in the country. The program is entirely funded by voluntary donations from individuals and businesses. Donations to the program are offset with a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, up to $1,000 for individuals, $2,500 for families, and $10,000 for businesses. Tax-credit-eligible donations are capped at $58 million annually. 

Writing in the Athens Banner-Herald, Mike Klein  editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, explains that public support has overwhelmed the program. The 2012 tax credit cap of $58 million was reached in mid-August. This year’s budget cap was reached in the first three weeks. About 13,000 of Georgia’s 1.8 million K-12 school children receive tax credit scholarship assistance. The statewide average scholarship amount in 2012, the latest data available, was $3,388.

You can watch Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program founder and general counsel Jim Kelly explain how the state tax credit scholarship is funded in the following video:

____ Franklin School Choice Fellow

Gov. Perry moves to dismiss bogus indictment

A week ago we suggested that the sooner Gov. Perry moved to dismiss the ‘unbelievably ridiculous,’ ‘sketchy’ and farcical indictment the better. So we are pleased that yesterday, Perry's legal team filed such a motion.

The motion seeks dismissal of the bogus indictment on multiple constitutional grounds including:

• The statutes the indictment is based upon are vague and overbroad.
• The indictment violates the constitutional separation of powers of the Texas Constitution.
• The indictment violates the Free Speech or Debate Clauses of United States and the Texas Constitutions.

The motion addresses the criminalization of politics stating, that by seeking to criminalize not only Gov. Perry's veto, but also his explanation for the veto, the indictment violates the Free Speech Clauses of both the United States and the Texas Constitutions. 

The motion strikes me as well done.  

According to Eugene Volokh, the Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, denials of motions such as Perry's can be appealed before trial, and the appeals are to be "heard at the earliest practicable time."

You can read Perry's motion to dismiss below:

Obama's dithering doomed the attempt to rescue Foley

Toby Harnden, the Washington bureau chief of The Sunday Times, reports thatObama's dithering doomed the U.S. military's attempt to rescue James Foley:

It was shortly after midnight on the Fourth of July when the specially modified Black Hawk helicopters fitted with radar-evading equipment swooped down over Ukayrishah, a small town next to the Euphrates River, close to the northern Syrian city of Raqqa.

Flown by pilots from the US 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment — known as the “Night Stalkers” — the Black Hawks’ first job was to destroy a jihadist anti-aircraft battery three miles away. But their main role was to drop several dozen elite troops from Delta Force and SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, into the heart of territory controlled by Isis, or the Islamic State.

Syrian radar had been jammed and fighter jets were patrolling overhead as the commandos blocked access roads. The troops moved swiftly towards their objective: an abandoned oil refinery used as a military post and known as the Akershi base.

The CIA had concluded that the base contained a secret prison in which a number of western hostages were languishing.

James Foley, 40, an idealistic freelance journalist from New Hampshire who had once been kidnapped in Libya and held for 44 days, was thought to be among them.

When the commandos reached the base, scores of Isis fighters swarmed out. A US air force AC-130 gunship laid down a wall of fire, killing up to 15 of the jihadists.

According to locals, some of the commandos were wearing Jordanian insignia, perhaps to mask their nationality. They entered the buildings and found the prison. But the hostages were not there. The special forces troops had found what they term a “dry hole”.

The operation was reminiscent of the 1970 mission to free American prisoners of war from North Vietnam’s Son Tay prison camp. It was flawlessly executed but the North Vietnamese had moved the prisoners a day earlier.

For President Barack Obama the decision to send in the Night Stalkers was an agonising one. 

[. . .]

Pentagon sources said Foley and the others might well have been rescued but Obama, concerned about the ramifications of US troops being killed or captured in Syria, took too long to authorise the mission.

Anthony Shaffer, a former lieutenant-colonel in US military intelligence who worked on covert operations, said: “I’m told it was almost a 30-day delay from when they said they wanted to go to when he finally gave the green light. They were ready to go in June to grab the guy [Foley] and they weren’t permitted.”

Another US defence source said: "The White House constantly goes back and forth on these things. These people are a bunch of academics who endlessly analyse stuff and ordering up another deep-thinking paper but can't decide what to order for lunch."

[Emphasis added]

My RedState colleagues, Jake and Streiff have covered the objections to the Obama regime's revelation about the failed rescue attempt here and here. And I wrote that Obama, was let the information become public so it might appear that he was doing something besides fund raising and golfing. 

We have complained about Obama's dithering before. We took Obama to task twice for his indecisive dithering about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan to fight what he correctly called a "war of necessity." First, for golfing instead of making a decision. And then, after more than two months of dithering, for putting his decision off until after Thanksgiving.

We even started warning about Obama's perceived weakness two moths into his presidency. 

Judge blocks North Carolina's Opportunity Scholarship program

Photo credit: j neuberger via photopin cc

North Carolina County Superior Court Judge Robert Hobgood blocked the state's new school voucher program, saying it unconstitutionally diverted money from public education to private schools, some of them religious schools. 

The state's Opportunity Scholarship program, expands school choice in North Carolina by providing education scholarship grants of up to $4,200 per year for eligible children who choose to attend private school. The program is designed to give low-income families public funds to help pay private school tuition. It was passed by the state's Republican-controlled Legislature last year and had already begun operating. 

About 5,500 students applied for the annual grants of up to $4,200 per child. More than 1,800 students were chosen by lottery have already accepted Opportunity Scholarships, but not all have enrolled in private schools.

Those supporting the so-called voucher program, say it offers low-income children a choice for a private-school education that better meets their individual needs after the public schools failed to do so. To be eligible, parents had to have their children enrolled in a public school and meet federal income requirements for their children to receive subsidized lunches.

The program was challenged in lawsuits by the N.C. Association of Educators and the N.C. Justice Center, a left-wing advocacy group, and the N.C. School Boards Association, which was joined by 71 of the state’s 115 school districts.

 

Previously, Judge Hobgood had granted the plaintiffs an injunction that halted the voucher funds from being distributed to students. But in May, the state Supreme Court overturned that injunction.

 

An appeal of Judge Hobgood's decision was filed on Friday. Among other things, the appeal seeks a stay in the judge's decision. 

 

According to Reuters, school voucher supporters say voucher programs offer parents more choices on where to educate their children. About 20 states offer some form of school vouchers, with most of those programs having survived legal challenges. School vouchers have drawn criticism from some who claim they drain money from public schools and subsidize overtly religious education. 

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Franklin School Choice Fellow