Hillary...hypocrisy

Why is everyone (danger: hyperbole alert) in the blogosphere upset or surprised that Hillary Clinton came out against school vouchers?

Do you really think she is worried that money given to the schools will be funneled to extremist religious organizations? I, of course, think her concern has more to do with catering to her National Education Association voter base than worrying what’s best for the future of our children and country.

It’s blatant pandering from a mother who sent her daughter, Chelsea, to private, not public, schools.

An excerpt from her speech:

“Suppose that you were meeting today to decide who got the vouchers. First parent comes and says 'I want to send my daughter to St. Peter's Roman Catholic School' and you say 'Great, wonderful school, here's your voucher. Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send, you know, my child to the Jewish Day School. Great here's your voucher! Next parent who comes says, "I want to send my child to the private school that I've already dreamed of sending my child to.' Fine. Here's your voucher.

Next parent who comes says, 'I want to send my child to the school of the Church of the White Supremacist.' You say, 'Wait a minute. You can't send...we're not giving a voucher for that.' And the parent says, 'Well, the way that I read Genesis, Cain was marked, therefore I believe in white supremacy. And therefore, you gave it to a Catholic parent, you gave it to a Jewish parent, gave it to a secular private parent. Under the Constitution, you can't discriminate against me.'

Suppose the next parent comes and says 'I want to send my child to the School of...the Jihad.' Wait a minute! We're not going to send a child with taxpayers dollars to the School of Jihad. 'Well, you gave it to the Catholics, gave it to the Jews, gave it to the private secular people. You're gonna tell me I can't? I'm a taxpayer. Under the Constitution.'

Now, tell me how we're going to make those choices.”

First, I think it’s a fallacy that lack of current federal funding is somehow controlling extremist schools. Clinton is absolutely right that you shouldn’t discriminate among schools based on their religious and/or cultural outlook. You can and must, however, require all institutions posing as schools to meet high standards of education for their students. Schools which do not meet these standards should then be unable to qualify for the voucher program and should not qualify as education for the purposes of child welfare.

See, when someone accepts federal money in the form of vouchers, they open themselves to federal regulation as to the use of that money.

Jihad or other forms of revolution taught in schools qualifies, I think, as sedition and is punishable under its own legislation. She also discounts the power of the free market to dictate the success of schools to which parents are taking their vouchers.

The argument by some taxpayers that they don’t want their tax dollars spent on something against their beliefs has also been less-than-successful in the past.

So what we really come down to is a desire to preserve the pre-eminence of our current system of public education and, with it, the power of the teacher’s union. I’m pretty sure the Catholic, White Supremacist and Jihad schools mentioned above would not feel constrained to hire NEA members as instructors and the substantial loss of its virtual monopoly would be the death knell for the union.

I’m all for the death of the teacher’s union which has, in my opinion, done more to harm public education than extremist schools could ever do. Heck, let’s encourage Wal-Mart to start offering schooling…maybe they can give a good education at a fair price. – they certainly know about economics.

The only negatives I see to the voucher system is the likely failure of neighborhood schools in inner city urban and economically depressed areas, as students flee those areas for greener pastures. Racial integrations efforts through schooling and busing would also be slowed and illegal aliens would likely see their free ride through the schools curtailed.

Problems? Yes. But let’s not take seriously the calculated warnings of a veteran campaigner like Hillary Clinton who needs the full support of the bloated and corrupt NEA to have any shot at the White House.