Democrats Subordinate The Needs Of The Children To Yet Another Union

For shame, Mr. President, for shame.

This time, it's the teachers' union. John Fund in today's WSJ Political Diary has the story:

My vote for the worst scandal in America right now is the education monopoly that keeps poor, inner-city kids trapped in failing public schools. Special mention here goes to the politicians who oppose giving these children the choice to escape even as they send their own kids to private or elite public schools.

Let's call them Sidwell Liberals, after the famous Washington, D.C., school where President and Mrs. Obama send their daughters. Despite this personal experience, Mr. Obama signed into law a provision passed by Congress that shuts down Washington D.C.'s voucher program, depriving 1,700 disadvantaged kids of the chance to escape failing public schools through the use of scholarships that let them attend private schools. Two of them attend Sidwell Friends School with the Obama girls.

Mr. Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, professes to support the D.C. choice program but his actions speak louder than words. He has taken back 200 scholarship offers that had already been made to local parents for the next school year. A bipartisan group including Connecticut Independent Joe Lieberman, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Nevada Republican John Ensign recently introduced a bill that would extend the Opportunity Scholarship Program for another five years. "It's not a liberal program or a conservative program," Mr. Lieberman said, "It's a program that puts children first."

Mr. Duncan himself knows the value of choice. He told Science magazine that he thought carefully where to send his daughter to school in the D.C. area when he moved from Chicago to join the Obama cabinet. He explained his decision to live in Virginia thusly: "My family has given up so much so that I could have the opportunity to serve; I didn't want to try to save the country's children and our educational system and jeopardize my own children's education." Would that the parents of the Washington D.C. children who will be thrown out of their current schools had that same option of relocating in upper-income Arlington and enjoying its relatively good public schools.

Many of the Members of Congress who voted to kill the D.C. scholarship program have made choices their own constituents would love to have but can't. A Heritage Foundation study found that 38% of Members of Congress send their children to private school, a rate about four times higher than the national average.

If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.

Save The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program

I thought about entitling this something like, "Democrats Love Unions More Than Kids," because honestly, that's what it looks like.

Washington DC's schools are notoriously bad--as in, worst in the country bad. A few years ago, a few brave souls started the Opportunity Scholarship program which allows a few thousand students the chance to escape the downward spiral at their local public school and attend the same private school as President Obama's kids.

Teacher's unions, whose self interest lies with preserving the jobs of its members, rather than teaching kids, adamantly oppose school choice. Whether it's a charter, corporate scholarship, or a voucher, they will do whatever it takes--by hook or crook--to stop it.

Sometimes that means donating huge amounts of money to Democrats who will hide their killing of Opportunity Scholarships in Omnibus spending bills. They just hope you're too stupid or scared to notice--it's all apart of Rahm Emanuel's plan to take advantage of crisis and get crazy liberal stuff done while you're paranoid and not paying attention--you know, the type of fearmongering the Leftists accused President Bush of doing for years.

Well, now their fearmongering is going to kill the DC area Opportunity Scholarships. And President Obama is a willing, if not complicit, participant. How can he and his liberal Democrat friends (and, incidentally, damn Mike Crapo (R) from Idaho. For shame, Crapo, for shame. I expect this kind of thing from Arlent Specter & Olympia Snowe (certifiable idiots), but you? Please resign.) deny poor, mostly minority kids the same education enjoyed by their children?

Ask yourself that question--how can they do this?--as you watch the youtube clip these kids put together for President Obama. These aren't a bunch of rich white kids asking for tax cuts so their parents can afford a new G5 to take them on a class trip (I'll leave that to Nancy Pelosi), these kids either get the scholarship and go to a good school or they attend failing public schools.




If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.