This just in from today's NY Times:

A Texas Bid to Shift School Finances to 'Sin Taxes'
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: April 21, 2004


USTIN, Tex., April 20 — How much money Texas spends to teach children reading, writing and arithmetic may soon depend in part on how successful women like Vanity, Destiny and Rio of the Yellow Rose, a topless bar in this state capital, are in attracting customers.

Gov. Rick Perry called the Legislature into special session Tuesday to change the way public education is financed in Texas. He wants to give billions of dollars in property tax reductions to the most affluent homeowners while making up part of the revenue loss through a vast expansion of legal gambling, increasing cigarette taxes by $1 a pack, raising taxes on alcoholic drinks and collecting a tax of at least $5 each time a patron enters a topless bar.

The governor's plan faces an uncertain future, but it seems likely that Texas will adopt at least some of his "sin tax" proposals. Mr. Perry is a Republican, and Republicans have comfortable majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

The idea that the education of future generations should depend on increasing sin taxes is not unique to Texas. Across the country, politicians, eager to avoid anything that looks like a tax increase, are turning to levies on what Governor Perry calls "unhealthy behaviors" to finance education.

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Of course, what this idea doesn't take into account is how unhealthy the US public education is for children and adults alike.