That's not choice, it's robbery. E.J. Montini is on the mark here, writing on why should proponents of school vouchers, a terrible idea, be granted special status to choose how tax money is spent. For example, I opposed the illegal, immoral invasion of the sovereign nation Iraq which threatened the United States not, but I'm not permitted to "choose" to get my tax money to spend on helping children suffering under poverty.

The income tax we all pay goes into one big pool. The politicians we elect then use our cash to pay for government services and programs like roads, prisons, health care, education and so on.

If I do not particularly like Arizona's transportation system, the law does not give me the right to receive a "voucher" that I could use to repair roads in my neighborhood or put a stoplight at the end of my driveway.

Likewise, I don't get to say that I want my personal tax dollars earmarked only for programs that help poor kids.

That's not how it works. You may be happy to pay the salary of the governor but not so happy about contributing income to certain legislators. But you don't have a "choice" in the matter.

Montini scored another point on this issue, earlier in the week, illustrating the blatant Republican hypocrisy on this issue

That would be as crazy as a bunch of elected officials saying that they would like to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on vouchers to send children to private schools, which are not required to administer the Arizona AIMS test, but upon which our elected officials have spent millions of taxpayer dollars. And yet, when the secret parlance of Arizona lawmakers was translated into English, that's exactly what the proposals said.

It is indeed crazy, but not entirely unexpected from Republican politicians who have the heartless desire of securing education for only the rich. Because that's the bottom line on vouchers — it's a siphon of money from public schools into the pockets of the affluent and gives a big "screw you" to children left in the public school system.