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As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) continues to build steam, I’ve participated in an ongoing dialogue with parents and teachers who are still undecided.

Although the media pits Villaraigosa’s pro-accountability insurgency against LAUSD’s anti-accountability forces, the battle is really about whether LAUSD’s unionistas can retain control over their ongoing multi-billion dollar fraud scheme, or lose to LA’s newest godfather-in-waiting. The LA Times favors Villaraigosa because he’s left of Hezbollah, and the City Council smells blood and unanimously fears losing access to LAUSD’s political booty. Like a mutant termite, Villaraigosa has reduced the Governator to sawdust, and he’s likely to devour LAUSD as well.

With almost three times the operating budget of Los Angeles, the LAUSD has misspent, embezzled, extorted, and wasted billions of tax dollars since the 1970s, leaving millions of school children and their progeny far behind. Like Tammany Hall, LAUSD finances Democrats who control the legislature that would have otherwise broken up LAUSD decades ago. If Villaraigosa succeeds in taking over LAUSD’s $13.4 billion budget, he will have unprecedented control over the Democrat Party’s unapologetic political engine. And if he gets his way, he will appoint an inspector general who will report directly to him – with as much integrity as prosecutors who report to the Russian mob. Either way, LA Unified children and taxpayers may be screwed for another thirty years.

I’ve posted a number of essays about vouchers (1, 2, 3, 4) but was recently asked about California’s last voucher initiative, which was defeated by more than a 70 percent vote in 2000. One of my school advocate friends sent Cathy Duffy’s argument against Prop 38. Because Ms. Duffy is as critical of teacher unions as she is supportive of private schools, my friend wasn’t sure why she opposed vouchers. But Duffy’s opposition was not about vouchers, but Prop 38 and the poison pills nested inside the plan’s details. Ideas like Prop 38 fail because voucher opponents complicate the idea with irrelevant, irrational, and unnecessarily punitive bureaucracies meant to kill the idea.

Vouchers Explained

In a nutshell, LAUSD’s per-student budget is over $18,000 a year. Only a fraction of that (10% to 50%) actually reaches classrooms, while the rest disappears into the hallucinogenic chaos of union contracts, union dues, lemon teachers, 80,000 employees, and political activism. In 2005, the California Teacher’s Association (CTA) alone spent an estimated $50 million to defeat Prop 75.

If fully-funded vouchers ($18,000/year) were made available to parents to enroll children in private schools and charters, schools would pop up throughout Los Angeles like mushrooms. By redistributing LAUSD’s per-student budget, parents could decide whether to place their children in public, private, or charter schools as easily as shopping for a car. Private schools that decide to participate should be accredited at or above state standards to receive funding. The idea is simple, intuitive, and elegant.

Because I have found arguments against vouchers sophomoric at best, I’ve decided to help voucher opponents by writing a definitive argument for unions, politicians, and liberals to use whenever and wherever the voucher idea rears its ugly head.

The Argument Against School Vouchers

Dear Constituents, Parents, Friends & Union Workers:

I oppose school vouchers and charters because I want our private schools to remain private.

My children attend private school with the well-mannered children of union officials, politicians, celebrities, and business leaders. We prefer private schools because, when there’s a problem, we can deal with it immediately.

Because people like me care about working-class children, my children deserve a safe campus, far from the unruly children that public schools attract. Can you imagine Senator Feinstein or Steven Spielberg appealing to a public school board because a gang member threatened their children? Outrageous! Politicians, union leaders, and affluent people like me don’t deserve to have our private schools infested with ordinary children, nor should we expect competition when our children apply for private universities like Princeton or Harvard. As long as you help us keep our educational aristocracy intact, we will protect public education from Republicans who would otherwise destroy it with dangerous charter and voucher schemes.

It’s not that I harbor ill will toward working-class parents or their offspring. As long as they remain loyal union workers and vote for the correct political candidates, we’ll make sure that their working-class children will have trade schools and community colleges to attend. We want them to succeed – we only ask that they know their place.

Low- and middle-class parents should not presume that their children are equal to ours, nor can we expect them to understand the complicated social intricacies involved in educating their children. I don’t expect middle- and low-class parents to understand what Mayor Villaraigosa, the School Board, and our benevolent leadership knows. Ordinary people should trust us to protect them from our local and state political enemies, and we’re happy to spend another two or three decades overseeing the education of their children, as long as they permit ours to succeed in schools far from third-world schoolyard infestations. We need to keep public schoolchildren well-nourished (fat) and feeling good about themselves (ignorant) because smart children are harder to control when they grow up, find success, and start voting.

We cared for our slaves, but Republicans forced us to let them go. We outlawed Negro education, but Republicans forced us to teach them. We built Negro schools, but Republicans forced us to desegregate. We’ve made so many compromises already that no one should expect our children to mix with unruly illegal aliens, white trash, and ill-tempered Negro children. It’s just not natural.

So, the next time you hear about vouchers, make sure to vote against them. As long as LAUSD stays strong, we promise to protect public education and your union jobs.

And remember, Live Better – Work Union!

I hope this helps – no thanks are necessary.

Clark Baker lives in Los Angeles.  This previously appeared on his blog, Ex-Liberal in Hollywood.