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Obama's Change Eliminates Hope in D.C. 3/30/2009 9:00:00 AM
By Dan Proft
-Don Wade & Roma Morning Show - WLS 890-AM
Click here to listen to an .mp3 of this commentary as heard on this morning's Don Wade & Roma Morning Show on WLS AM-890.
If only the children in the Washington D.C. school choice program were Wall Street money changers or a "shovel-ready" project in West Virginia Robert Byrd could put his name on.
If they were, then perhaps the 1,700 children currently realizing the benefits of school choice in Washington D.C. would have made the recipients list for the $1.2 trillion worth of other people's money President Obama and Congressional Democrats have spent in the last month alone.
I suppose $1.2 trillion just doesn't go as far as it once did, particularly when the federal government is buying up unsold PT Cruisers and auto company executives' Detroit Lions season tickets and other such toxic assets.
"I don't think vouchers are the answer. We need to be more ambitious. The goal shouldn't be to save a handful of children." Those are the curious words of the comically inept Arne Duncan, the teacher's union marionette impersonating a Secretary of Education who nevertheless concedes that the D.C. scholarship students are "happy and safe and satisfied and learning."
Duncan's recognition of the undeniable is confirmed by a D.C.-based think tank that found D.C. scholarship students are performing at least as well as their public school counterparts for one-fourth of the cost to taxpayers and their parents are happier.
The nation is now being treated to the muddled thinking that springs from the political cowardice which marked the don't-rock-the-boat tenures of both Obama and Duncan in Chicago.
Here's their argument: school choice is working for those 1,700 children in D.C. (not including the Obamas). However, because the program has been limited to 1,700 children, many children are not receiving the same opportunities. So the answer is to discard the program so that all children will be equally deprived of opportunity.
Until we can save all, we should not try and save any.
It seems the change that accompanies Obama's neo-socialism is the elimination of hope.
 
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