vouchers, vouchers, vouchers

i started reading this article about bush's cutting of federal section 8 housing funding, and found myself thinking, this is awful. just awful. then i realized, wait a minute, this is vouchers. why am i mourning the loss of vouchers?

and then i thought, why is the bush administration cutting back on vouchers?

are housing vouchers better than school vouchers? i guess it depends on whether you think there's a value to having public housing. if so, then section 8 is privatization just like school vouchers are. but i'm not one to blanketly say that privatization is always bad (even though clearly it often is). i also don't think there's a need for the government to supply housing the way there's a need for public education.

also the theory behind housing vouchers is right: that affordable housing is 30 percent of your income (really it's less), that because of market forces there's a severe shortage of affordable housing, and that everyone has a right to affordable housing. but there are other ways to increase the housing stock; tax incentives for real estate developers is one. but are vouchers the better option?

and are some vouchers better than others? the bush administration seems to think so, since it's putting $14 million into one and cutting $104 million from the other. school vouchers are always good, even in iraq, where "The present strategy of subsidizing or pressuring foreign governments to draw more children into undemocratic state schools is ill-conceived and incompatible with American ideals."

then again, my friend has a plan to start a fund to raise money to send girls in malawi to secondary schools, which she wants me to help with. how can i be against that? is it different because it's a different country? or because it's my friend rather than mortal "enemies" paige and cato?

clearly i'm mixed up about vouchers. but one thing i do know is that all our predictions about the evil of d.c. vouchers are about to come true, and it's starting this week: St. Albans, the elite prep school at the national cathedral, has just "decided not to participate in the program," because it's "concerned that the standardized testing ... may not accurately measure how well they are learning what is taught at the school." this bullshit is as obvious as it is nasty.