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Friday, September 02, 2022

"Walz calls on Jensen, Birk to release tax returns. They haven't done so -- Walz released his months ago, says it's tradition for gubernatorial candidates." By Rochelle Olson, Star Tribune, September 1, 2022

 This Crabgrass headline is the one used by Strib for locally authored content, online here; an item which speaks for itself.

It would be of interest to see how Birk's portfolio generated from hiking the football is doing, but of more interest would be the to-whom-and-how-much of charitable giving. That would reflect on the priorities and general character of a candidate.

Of more interest at Crabgrass would be disclosure of whether children of an office seeker are, or have been enrolled in pubic schools, parochial schools, or in charter schools diverting tax money for education from truly public schools with boards answerable to voters. 

The concern rests upon a strong belief that public schools are the bedrock for having a less ignorant and less unpredictable voting public. In some cases educators fail, but they try, so that certainly fewer ignorant unpredictable people exist and vote than otherwise.

This bedrock need of well funded public schools without money-bleed to charters or religious indoctrination institutions is such that school fees and taxes which are paid at equal assessment rates by childless adults as are paid by those with six or eight children (Michele Bachmann at six, Matt Birk at eight), the principle being that public schooling first of all is a sociatal benefit, for all, for the community, independent of any particular family's usage of the asset. 

Jensen's public school usage, if any, likely would be past tense. Birk's public school usage, if any, present tense. The Crabgrass guess is the Birk family uses Catholic schools, and favors vouchers. That is an issue of importance in the Crabgrass view.

Jensen is on record favoring parent outlooks as a governing decision factor in schooling content. Crabgrass views this as prone to propagation of ignorance, bias and unpredictability, from generation-to-generation, i.e., a net liability on the value and function of public education. Teachers and state education officials know better, and beyond that parents control their input to their children in the home, which in fact is a greater factor in setting child attitudes and beliefs, than schooling.

Jensen, presumably, would not favor his medical prowess judged by the general population or by his customers, but rather would want it assessed by his professional peers. Even with his having had reviews of his anti-vaccination viewpoint via the peer control mechanism, the guess is he'd rather see specifically experienced and educated peer control of licensing rather than it being left otherwise to the whim and current fashion of the general public. But then for schools - parental whim rules?  In the Jensen view of propriety?

Yes, education is harder to pin down as to what is a quality education and what is less. Formal multiple choice standardized testing being in truth unfit for the degree of reliance it is given, while medicine is a more exact discipline and good and bad practices can be reliably set by peer consensus. Hence, medicine is a profession and peer consensus sets community standards, while education is a profession presently under peer consensus but in the Jensen mind, inadequately responsive to the vagaries and variations over time and fashion of the population in general, or of a subgroup of vocal parents - who always do and will have PTA access, and the option of running for a school board seat. 

If voters give very vocal parents those seats, their views have a legitimate power beyond possibly being a sore-head if anti-gay-bullying or LGBTQ equal rights in general as well as against harassment are ideas entering a curriculum. 

And then, hucksters with questionable divisive motives currently abound with a will to demonize CRT.

Parents will always have a board seat right - to run and possibly win - and that is power enough to work with professionals in jointly aiming for the best education that allocated money can buy. Ideally without any of that allocated money being bled away from board oversight into black holes of charter or parochial schools, under the Crabgrass view of best practices; as well as under Crabgrass opinion of what gets the community as a whole the greatest bang for the buck. 

Those childless people paying school taxes should not have to see parochial schools bleeding tax money out of the public system, which is for the benefit of all, independent of creed or dogma preferences.

So, education policy questions, to Crabgrass, are more important than tax return detail, in general. Of course if a charter school official, or say a Legacy Christian Academy, board seat holder in Anoka County (or spouse of such a person) were seeking a legislative seat, then tax returns would if disclosed flag such a situation of potential conflict of interest re education policy, so that there can be overlap in wanting tax return disclosure and education policy issue positions of candidates both spelled out in detail. Presently no tax return data disclosure is mandated.