The so-called Backpack Bill will be the CCV's next loss
The latest priority from the theocratic group is going nowhere fast.
Give Republicans this much: They’re adept at taking hobgoblin ideas from their fringe and repackaging them as something that sounds innocuous to the average voters.
Take “the Backpack Bill.”
What’s that about? It’s tough to say! But it doesn’t sound like a $1 billion theft from public schools, which is precisely what it is.
From David Gilbert of vice.com:
The neo-Nazi homeschooling couple from Upper Sandusky, Ohio, could receive a huge taxpayer-funded windfall of up to $22,000 per year if Republican-backed legislation known as the “Backpack Bill” is passed by state lawmakers.
A new nonpartisan fiscal review of House Bill 11, which was co-sponsored by Republican lawmakers Rep. Marilyn John and Rep. Riordan McClain, concludes that the universal voucher system the legislation proposes would cost the taxpayer over $1.1 billion per year, despite those who support the bill claiming it would be budget neutral.
The bill would provide state funding for homeschooled children as well as children attending non-chartered private schools that don’t have to follow state education guidelines.
This means that Katja and Logan Lawrence, who ran the neo-Nazi Dissident Homeschool Network channel on Telegram, could soon be taking in thousands in taxpayer money every year to teach their four children that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a “deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro.”
The Backpack Bill is the latest abomination courtesy of the theocrats at the Center for Christian Virtue (CCV). That it would reward neo-Nazi homeschoolers is a feature, not a bug in their system.
That’s why State Rep. McClain, a CCV acolyte who was homeschooled, has yet to publicly condemn the neo-Nazi couple that operates in their shared town of Upper Sandusky!
See how it works? McClain can’t condemn this couple, whose existence is well documented because he has never heard of them!
CCV and their puppet politicians are dangerous because they’ve deluded themselves into thinking they’re backed by Jesus, who coincidentally is as pasty white as them in their minds.
That means lying, though ostensibly against their religion according to some document called “The 10 Commandments,” is fine as long as it furthers their ultimate goal—a society where everybody thinks and acts like them.
How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to blow a $1 billion hole in public school budgets while laughably claiming it’s budget neutral?
The answer is you can’t!
The Backpack Bill, as currently written, has long been a dream of the Center for Christian Virtue.
Here is its president, Aaron Baer, hours after State Rep. Derek Merrin (R-Monclova) won a Republican-only vote to be named the next Speaker of the Ohio House.
Well, we know what happened next. Republicans, Democrats, and an insane communist blogger came together to put Merrin through the Ohio House floor on what was supposed to be the biggest day of his nearly 20-year political career.
It was a coalition that Baer never saw coming, which is why he was celebrating Merrin as the future Speaker six weeks before the official vote. That’s the problem with thinking your works are ordained by Jesus—you risk deluding yourself into thinking that unofficial, insignificant results are the end of the fight because a divine power protects you.
Oh well. Not my problem.
A casual observer would be forgiven for looking at the Backpack Bill press conference and thinking this was a mainstream Republican idea. There’s an official backdrop. A couple of flags. Some children used as political props. And even some state legislators standing in the background grinning like idiots.
But Reps. McClain and John called the press conference to give the illusion that their idea is popular within Republican circles. And maybe it would be if Merrin had become Speaker of the House.
But in conversations with Republicans this week, it’s clear that this bill is going nowhere fast.
State Rep. Ron Ferguson (R-Wintersville), one of Merrin’s staunchest legislative allies, conceded to The Rooster that the bill, as currently written, was going nowhere. He added that something on “school choice” — another phrase of Republican hobgoblinery— would still happen, but it would be nowhere close to the scale as currently proposed by the CCV.
This isn’t to say that the state legislature’s assault on public education is called off. We are not that lucky. Hell, State Senator Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland) proposed legislation just the other day that would ban diversity mandates and Chinese partnerships (among other things) at public universities in Ohio.
But killing the Backpack Bill — as the Ohio House successfully did in 2022, too — would still be a significant win for public schools, and it would come at the expense of the most reactionary lobbying group in the state. The same lobbying group that spent half of November and all of December popping champagne and bragging about how easily their priority bills would pass under Speaker Merrin.
We must only consult Proverbs 16:18 to understand how CCV fell off so quickly.
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Maybe the Backpack Bill will get a pity hearing from Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill). I wouldn’t read much into that, considering Speaker Stephens is still navigating a splintered caucus with Merrin still pretending he’s the leader of House Republicans.
Sometimes you have to throw the bums a bone, y’know?
But there are zero reasons to think this bill will go anywhere than the dustbin of history, which is where this half-baked scheme to loot public schools further belongs.
THOSE WMDs. This St. Patrick’s Day, you should watch The Fugitive… Homemade hamburger helper recipe… Learn to drive manual with this one easy trick… Police killed his son, and prosecutors charged the teen’s friends with murder… The novelist whose inventions went too far.
DJ - I sure hope you’re right (as usual) on this one because the stakes are high. I do not assume anything is beyond these cretins and we’re furiously calling and agitating against this up here in NWO.