But see if you can guess what the major difference was between the ‘choice’ school kids being protested at, and the screaming vandals doing the protesting.  Hint: if you know anything about the DC school choice saga then you already know what I’m talking about – which is also true if you’re a typical progressive activist.  The only difference there is, you’d rather gargle razor blades then admit that you do know what I’m talking about*.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which last is actually not entirely a bad thing, from a certain perspective: better denial fueled by shame and hypocrisy rather than a smug delusion that you’re actually out and about doing the Lord’s work, and never mind what that does to kids that don’t look like you…

Well. Maybe you won’t have to guess the difference, at that.

The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — which provides low-income District students with federal money to attend private schools — is a top priority of Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). The program was closed to new entrants by Democrats in 2009, but Boehner has sought to revive and expand the program. The House passed a Boehner-authored bill last month — the SOAR Act — to reauthorize the program for five more years, and that bill will be included in the final spending deal and signed into law by Obama.

More background here.  The administration was surprisingly unequivocal in its opposition to “the creation or expansion of private school voucher programs that are authorized by this bill,” probably because poor minority kids don’t contribute to Democratic slush funds to the extent that the NEA does.  Killing the DC voucher program has been a priority for Democrats since they took full control of the government in 2009; watching the President sign it back into law is going to be one of the more satisfying things that I* will personally see next week.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Not to mention the Heritage Foundation, which has been fighting this one tooth and nail, and in the streets, all along.

It’s clear, though, from how the destruction of the [OSP] program is being orchestrated, that issues such as parents’ needs, student performance and program effectiveness don’t matter next to the political demands of teachers’ unions.

Sure, teachers’ unions hate school choice.  Exposing a monopoly to market forces always ticks off the monopolists.  But even if the teachers’ unions had been on-board with the OSP, the single-minded way that the Democratic party leadership went hammer and tongs after this small program tells me that white, Democratic legislators have a real problem with poor minority students suddenly appearing in their white, privileged, private schools.  And now that they have both branches of government, they’re finally in a position to do something about it.

Because nothing scares a Democratic politician more than a minority voter with an education.  You never know when one of them will crack a history book written before 1964.

Moe Lane

PS: And where are African-American politicians in all of this?  Take it away, Malcolm X:

Are you surprised? I’m not surprised.

The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:

“House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.

Via Big Government.  You know, there’s a part of me that would almost prefer that this was evidence of some sort of long term payback – one that would have been in the works for about 150 years at this point – against African-Americans by the Democratic party.  At least that would be a reason to wreck school choice.  It would be a conscious decision.  Instead, though, I’m faced with the tawdry reality that the Democratic Party simply just doesn’t care.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

According to the Fox News White House blog:

The White House says that the President has decided to give the approximately $1.4 million prize accompanying his Nobel Prize to charity. They have not made a decision on which charity or charities will receive the money.

Here’s an idea for the President: He could give the 216 low-income kids back the scholarships that his administration took away from them earlier this year.

But if the President was gutsy enough to make that sort of gesture at the teacher’s unions, then those kids wouldn’t have had their program killed by the resegregationists in the first place.

Moe Lane

Background on Durbin and his re-segregation efforts here and here.

Crossposted to RedState.

…one or both of the Obama daughters, knowing that the cancellation of the program would mean some of their classmates would have to leave Sidwell Friends private school, urged their father to keep the program.

…for two reasons:

1. It would involve his family, and I’ve never seen President Obama do anything that crosses his family.  Which is as it should be, of course.
2. It allows me the hubris of pretending that somebody at the White House might actually be reading me*.

Moe Lane

*Admittedly, it’d be better if they were heeding me, too, but it’s always ‘one step at a time’ with this particular administration.

Crossposted to RedState.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I was lucky enough to make it to the DC School Choice Rally (sponsored by DC Children First and DC Parents for School Choice) today, thanks to a (liberal) friend of mine who was able to watch my son for a few hours – and who didn’t mind being asked for a favor like this on very short notice. Then again, she and her husband moved to their current address at least partly to make sure that their kids wouldn’t be stuck in a horrible public school. I understand that sentiment entirely: my wife and I made similar calculations.

The Weekly Standard, Heritage, and the Corner all have some good coverage on the rally (see also Instapundit), so I’m mostly going to just step back and let the videos of Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of DC Parents for School Choice) and the photos speak for themselves.  I will note this, though: this “compromise” that the administration is currently offering is nothing but.  It’s an attempt to get the heat off of both it and the teachers’ unions that are trying to gut school choice.  By keeping the existing program running long enough to finish out the current scholarship roster, the White House hopes to take the personal urgency off of the grassroot activists that are currently raising a stink.

And the grassroots activists know this.

Interview with Virginia Walden Ford

The poor woman had to do the above interview twice: I mucked up the recording on the first one.

Closing Remarks of Virginia Walden Ford, DC School Choice Rally

DC School Choice Rally

It’s a video slideshow of some of the photos.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The short version?

There were some very polite and very unhappy parents out there, and while I am not really good at counting crowds, there were a lot of people who wish to know why Congress has decided to gut this program. I have video interviews: I’ll be adding them once I can get Vista to admit that my camcorder exists.

Crossposted to RedState.

It’s a pretty cool place for people your age, from what I’m told.

Anyway, I just thought that you should know: do you know Sarah & James Parker? They go to your school.

Yeah, them. Are they nice? I’ve never met them, so I don’t know. I do know that their parents really can’t afford to send them to your school without assistance; it’s called the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, and it lets over 1,700 poor kids in DC get scholarships every year. It’s often called a “voucher” program, although people who like school choice wouldn’t agree: they want everybody to have the chance to pick the best schools for their kid, instead of just a small number. Still, this program is helping people who are usually making about half of much as the federal poverty level; it’s hard to dispute that it’s a good one. I’m sure that Sarah & James think that it’s a good program.

Unfortunately, Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) wants to throw them out of your school.

William McGurn of the Wall Street Journal is ready to punch through a wall on this one, and I don’t blame him one bit:

Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama’s new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position.

The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation’s capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program — and with it perhaps the Parker children’s hopes for a Sidwell diploma.

Known as the “Durbin language” after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that’s so handy when you don’t want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.

…because it’s something that should make people angry. It’s unfortunately true that Durbin hates school choice, and has for years; and he’s also very much liked by the National Education Association, which completely hates vouchers. So we really can’t trust that he’s doing anything except trying to kill the program without anybody noticing. The thing is, though, that he probably doesn’t hate Sarah & James; in fact, once he hears about the article above he’ll probably pull some strings and make sure that nobody from your school loses their scholarships. But you two don’t go to every school that has kids who’ll be affected by this. The ones that don’t go to yours will lose their scholarships, and they’ll go back to the public schools that their parents have moved heaven and earth trying to save them from.

No, this isn’t really fair.

Yes, I know that he was very nice to you two. Your father is the President of the United States; and before that he was one of Durbin’s coworkers. That means that Durbin sees both of you as people.

Moe Lane