School Choice in DC; a no-brainer!

Take a few minutes to watch this excellent video from PJTV, focusing on the Obama administration’s ending a successful scholarship program that has allowed students to get out of the failing, miserable public schools in the District of Columbia (where more than $15,000 a year is spent, per student, with dismal results). The September 30 protest garnered little attention, but PJTV attended and asked good questions.

Pay attention to the former Headmaster of Sidwell Friends School (where Chelsea Clinton, went, and Malia and Sasha Obama currently attend), who seems utterly baffled as to why a program that is so clearly a good and necessary thing is so despised by the Democrat party, and ignored by a President who himself went to private schools on scholarship. Also, listen to Virginia Walden Ford, the Executive Director of DC Parents for School Choice; the lady who speaks as a mother and states it plainly: “…this is one of the few programs that is government funded that is working.”

When Bill and Hillary Clinton came to DC, they were not rich, like the Obama’s but they made the decision that Sidwell Friends, which costs about $30,000 per year, per student, was “right” for Chelsea. The Obama’s can afford it and have also decided that Sidwell is “right” for their daughters. And that is certainly their right. Why shouldn’t parents have a say in the most fundamental question of all -who will educate their children, and how?

But it is curious that these two families, who each make a great deal of noise about their “commitment” to the public schools and who are quick to say that throwing money at public schools is the unchanging answer to every social and educational problem, did not want to send their daughters to the public schools in DC. And they are not interested in securing for other parents the same fundamental right to choose who will educate their children, and how, that they have enjoyed.

This is a damn shame, I think. And it’s one more thing the press never inconveniently asks any Democrat about.

Do note, btw that the successful scholarship voucher program these people are trying to save was underwritten by President Bush. Bush helped kids out of crappy schools so they could perform to their potentialities.

Bush also saved millions of lives in Africa by insisting on funding AIDS-help and Malaria-help programs, not that we ever read about it. He also liberated tens of millions from tyranny, in Iraq, helping them to establish a democracy, with free speech, protection from rape rooms, a government that will not gas its own people. Code Pink, those clownish anti-war protesters, recently discovered that Afghani women and children go to school and enjoy more freedoms than they had, thanks to President Bush and the American armed forces. Code Pink are still clowns, and their positions make little sense, but they did see it, even if we never will.

And Obama, who is shutting down this program, doing nothing for the fledgling Democracies in the Middle East and assigning a bunch of dubious czars under him…he got a Nobel Prize, essentially for “not being George W. Bush.” Obama may not have lobbied for it, but he accepted the award and gave tacit approval of the Nobel committee’s unspoken but easily recognized swipe at the president who has done these things -helped underprivileged kids to get good educations, liberated people, helped women breathe freely.

Meanwhile Bush, even out of office, remains roundly and knee-jerkingly despised because illusions hold more sway than substance to a public enthralled by masters of misdirection in media, and because he is the easy scapegoat for cowards.

The world is certainly upside down. We’re “remaking” America.

Hmmmmm: