D.C Voucher Progam NOT Killed...Right Away

If you want to understand how liberals operate, pay attention to this.

If you haven't seen the background on this yet, go here first. Now, due to the political pressure being brought to bear on Obama to preserve the best hope these poor kids have to make a future for themselves, Obama has finally relented...kind of:

You’re a real sport, champ. Trillion-dollar federal budget deficits as far as the eye can see and somehow he and the Democrats can’t scrape together a few million to keep this going. Unbelievable.

Contain your surprise at finding The One shafting someone at a special interest’s behest.

President Obama will seek to extend the controversial D.C. school voucher program until all 1,716 participants have graduated from high school, although no new students will be accepted, according to an administration official who has reviewed budget details scheduled for release tomorrow…

The voucher program was created in 2003 and is a Republican favorite, providing low-income students with a maximum $7,500 grant to attend a private or parochial school. All students come from households with incomes below 185 percent of the poverty line, and 8,000 students entered a lottery to participate. But liberal education groups, including the National Education Association, have argued that the experimental program is poorly administered and that voucher recipients have not performed measurably better in their new schools.

In a March 6, 2009 letter to Obama, the NEA president Dennis Van Roekel called the D.C. program “an ongoing threat to public education in the District of Columbia” and urged Obama to “use your voice to help eliminate this threat” by opposing “any efforts to extend this ineffective program.”

Mary Katharine Ham provides the analysis:

Translation: "Let me be perfectly clear. Everyone is going to know I'm killing this demonstrably effective program because of the political debt I owe to teachers' unions, which I of course assured everyone would not dictate my education policies. So let's just extend this enough to get people off my back even if it means taking the morally abhorrent position that the program is good enough for these succeeding, satisfied kids and parents, but no one else should be allowed to be similarly successful and satisfied, lest I lose my gazillions in union support. The children are our future, as long as they're not putting their grubby little hands on money that should be going to NEA members. Thank you, and God bless America."

Before now, Obama had promised that his Sec. of Education Arne Duncan would "use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works." That was shortly before Duncan rescinded scholarships for next year's recipients, effectively killing the program off with even more enthusiasm than Congress, which had scheduled it to die quietly at the end of next school year.

All of this on top of the Department of Education study that indicated the program, err, works. A study which the Washington Post writer for this story unfairly dismisses as indicating "limited gains in reading and no significant progress in math," despite the Washington Post editorial page using the same data to justify editorializing in the program's favor.

Rush Limbaugh put it a little more bluntly (emphasis mine):

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan had told reporters that it didn't make sense 'to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning,'" but Obama did it anyway. Now, this is a flip-flop, a temporary flip-flop. But let me tell you what this program is. This is basically a voucher program where the children of inner city parents can escape to good, qualified schools, and they are doing it, and they are getting great grades. They're doing great and the kids love the schools they're able to go to.

Well, of course, no liberal is going to put up with this. That's why Obama canceled it. The results don't matter. Well, in this case, they actually do, because this is embarrassing the public school system. Can I give you a theory? People say, "Why do they want to keep these inner city schools open? Why do they want to keep inner cities in the blight circumstances that they're in?" Well, guess what happens to communities like that? People who can move out do. And what are you left with? A solid Democrat voter base. It's all about votes. It's not about educating kids. It's all about turning as many cities into Detroit as they can. That's what it's about. There is no common sense reason in the world to close down a school where inner city minority kids are excelling, no reason, unless it poses a threat to you. "Well, Rush, how would that pose a threat?" Well, educated people pose a threat to liberalism anyway. But the key here is that in these inner city areas of cities, what do you think the voting percentages are, Democrat versus Republican? How many Republicans or conservatives do you think are going to sit around and live there?

They move out. It's happened in Detroit, it's happening in Michigan, it's happening in New York, it happened in New Orleans. They move out. It's not a race thing. It's an economics thing. People just move out. They go to places where there's a better quality of life. And when that happens, what you're left with is a solid Democrat voting city, community, state, what have you. So all hell was raised over canceling the DC voucher program 'cause it worked. So Obama's done a flip-flop and he's gonna let every kid in it, going to keep the program open 'til every kid graduates. Then he's going to shut it down, to which I have a question. Either vouchers work or they don't. Either they work or they don't. Obama doesn't believe in them. He wants to shut the voucher program down. He's said so. He doesn't believe in the voucher program. So why would he continue this program if it's a bad thing? He believes it's a bad thing. He says he believes it's a bad thing. If it's a bad thing, if it doesn't serve a purpose, in his view, he ought to cancel it, he should stick with the cancellation because he doesn't think this is a good program. Period. He's not concerned with the disruption to the kids here. I'll tell you what this is about. (interruption) What do you think it's about? Partially, public relations propaganda. But let's be specific because everything with Obama is a PR, propaganda.

What Barack Obama is worried about is that the black population will discover he really doesn't care about them. And that was starting to happen.

His conclusion:

You see, the left doesn't want solutions. The race industry does not want solutions. Solutions means loss of jobs. Solution means happiness, solution means success, prosperity -- they don't want that. They want chaos and insecurity and dependency. This is just sick.

After watching this happen, it's kind of hard to argue, don't you think?

There's my two cents.