The New Testament book of Matthew contains a well-known allegorical tale known as the “Parable of the Talents.” In this story, Jesus told of a man who entrusted his property to three servants while he was away. One servant was given five silver talents; another two; and a third one. The first two servants put that which their master had given them to good use, and doubled his money while he was away. The third servant, who had been given but one talent, buried the valuable quantity of silver to preserve it until his master returned, neither risking its safety nor putting it to good use while its owner was away.

Upon his return, the two servants who had taken that which he had entrusted them with and used it wisely during his absence presented their master with their earnings. He replied to each, “Well done, my good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things.”

The third servant, who had merely protected that portion of his master’s wealth with which he had been entrusted, presented the single talent upon the man’s return. Seeing this, the master flew into a rage, chastising the “wicked, lazy servant” for allowing cowardice and irresponsibility to prevent his putting the master’s money to good use and ordering the servant to surrender his talent to the servant who had proved his resourcefulness and trustworthiness by doubling his master’s five talents.

The moral of this New Testament parable — be a good steward of a little and you will be trusted with more, but poor stewardship will lose you the privilege of being trusted with anything in the future — is recalled to mind by the federal government’s current attempt to take over the American health care system. The 33 years Medicare has been in existence have provided the federal government with an opportunity to demonstrate what type of steward its legislators and bureaucrats will be of a national health care program millions of Americans are trusting for their coverage and care.

“Medicare is… a government-run health care plan that people are very happy with,” said President Obama, at a late July town hall meeting in an effort to defend Medicare as a popular and successful example of government health care at its best.

A simple look at the numbers is enough to rebuff Obama’s claim that the program is an example of the federal government being a good steward of American health care dollars and coverage, while also serving to demonstrate the government’s inability to accurately predict the future costs of its programs (a very important fact to keep in mind in light of Congress’ claims that a health care overhaul can be undertaken without costing future generations trillions).

At its inception in 1966, Medicare carried an annual price tag of $3 billion. Its Congressional founders predicted that cost would rise to $12 billion a year by 1990 — a figure that accounted for inflation.

The true cost of Medicare is stunning. In 1990, rather than costing American taxpayers $12 billion, Medicare cost $107 billion — an increase of 800% over the government’s best guess at the program’s cost 23 years before. That cost has increased exponentially as the years have passed since 1990. This year, $484 billion will be spent on mandatory Medicare outlays; by 2018, that number will be $885.1 billion, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The total amount owed Medicare beneficiaries (American workers who are at least 22 years old and who have paid into the system, meaning they are due Medicare coverage upon retirement) is a staggering $32.3 trillion — an amount over twice America’s GDP, and nearly five times the publicized national debt.

The fact that the federal government has allowed a key health coverage program with which it has been entrusted to fall over thirty trillion dollars in debt should send a powerful message about Washington’s ability (or, more correctly, inability) to be a good steward of Americans’ health care dollars and coverage.

Further, the fact that Congress has refused to do away with a law requiring seniors to enroll in Medicare or forfeit their Social Security benefits — a regulation that is currently being challenged in federal court by a group of plaintiffs led by former Republican Congressman Dick Armey — for fear of losing massive numbers of seniors to private health coverage serves to reinforce the undesirability of the government-run program. It also demonstrates the federal government’s willingness, when given the opportunity, to force citizens onto the rolls of government care by denying them the opportunity to choose their coverage.

Medicare, the chief example of health care as run by the federal government, is an utter mess that is losing doctors, resorting to anti-choice laws to keep seniors enrolled, and hemorrhaging taxpayer dollars by the trillions. President Obama and his allies in the Democratic-led Congress should demonstrate their ability to be good stewards of the people’s health care dollars and coverage by fixing their own Medicare mess before they seek to expand their grip on America’s health care system as a whole.

]]> http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/08/wicked-lazy-servants-government-should-clean-up-its-own-medicare-mess-before-asking-to-be-trusted-with-the-entire-health-care-system/feed/ 1 http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/07/why-trade-the-uss-health-care-problems-for-britains-health-care-catastrophe/ http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/07/why-trade-the-uss-health-care-problems-for-britains-health-care-catastrophe/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:47:52 +0000 Jeff Emanuel http://jeffemanuel.net/?p=472

A series of recent polls showing that his health care proposal has fallen out of favor with a plurality of the American people — and that a majority are no longer predisposed to support a “universal” health care plan as they were before finding out that such a sweeping program would cost them money — has caused President Barack Obama to shift the focus of his health care overhaul evangelism.

Cast for the duration of his presidential campaign and the first six months of his presidency as a solution to the no-longer ignorable “crisis” of the 45 million American uninsured, Obama abruptly abandoned so-called “universal coverage” as the raison d’être for his single-minded pursuit of a health care overhaul, deciding instead to focus on the cost of health care for all, insured or not.

On July 13, Rasmussen Reports released a poll showing that more people (49 percent) opposed Obama’s health care proposal than favored it (46 percent) — the first time a major poll had produced this result. Further, according to a Rasmussen poll published July 18, 61 percent of Americans believe high costs are the biggest problem the nation’s health care system is currently facing. By contrast, only 21 percent had a lack of so-called “universal coverage” as their chief concern. Ten percent cited quality as the biggest problem with the health care system, and 2 percent said inconvenience in getting care.

These poll results seem to show that our health care system really isn’t in as much trouble as some would like us to think it is. After all, if the cost of lifesaving health treatments, rather than the quality of those treatments and access to them, is the biggest worry of a population, things just aren’t so bad, no matter what demagogues in Washington may say.

These Rasmussen polls also seem to show the folly of adopting the style of socialized medicine practiced in countries like Great Britain, where the cost of health care is far down the list of concerns, but where the quality of and access to lifesaving and life-prolonging treatments are incredibly serious problems.

Anecdotes revealing the high human cost associated with government-run health care gone wrong, United Kingdom-style, are endless. Emergency room patients have been left in ambulances outside hospitals for over 8 hours, in order for administrators to technically (and perversely) comply with a government decree that patients be seen by a physician within four hours of entering the hospital. Disabled children are being made to wait up to 2 years for wheelchairs because the government can’t — or won’t — provide them in a timely manner. The average wait is five months, and which children even receive such equipment then is determined by government lottery.

Women are being prevented from giving birth by cesarean section because bureaucrats in charge of health care have decided the procedure is too expensive — a rationale being offered by the National Institute for Clinical Effectiveness for its rationing of care and denial of dozens of lifesaving and life-extending drugs, treatments, and procedures.

Earlier this year, a three-year-old girl had a heart operation delayed for the third time because of a lack of hospital beds.

Earlier this month, a veteran of the British military had to pull out 13 of his own teeth with pliers because he didn’t win the national lottery held to see which National Health Service patients would get a chance to see a dentist this year.

These stories, and more like them, are commonplace events in the government-run National Health Service (which Obama adviser and former nominee for Health and Human Services secretary Tom Daschle has openly said he wants the U.S. system to emulate).

The fact that polls are showing that the vast majority of Americans’ biggest concern is cost, not access, begs the question of what in the world makes Obama and congressional Democrats think trading America’s problem for Britain’s problems — inaccessible care that is low-quality at best when it can even be obtained — would bear the remotest of resemblances to a good idea.

With his newfound focus on costs, Obama — the supposedly post-political politician — is simply doing what politicians do: tailoring the sales pitch to what polls show the American people want to hear. Obama’s health care overhaul proposal hasn’t changed as a result of its new, cost-centric packaging; rather, the bills being demanded by the president and written by Congress will still do even less to bring down health care costs than they will to cover the 45 million uninsured.

The fact is, poll results that stark made the Obama administration’s decision to forsake the millions of uninsured in favor of beating the drum of cost-deflating legislation an easy one to make, despite the high level of energy and political capital the president had invested in playing up the plight of those uninsured.

Obama’s switch in emphasis hasn’t lessened the force with which he is advocating for government-run health care, nor has it curbed his sense of urgency about the passage of his overhaul proposal. On Monday, July 20, he repeated his demand that Congress pass a government-centric health care overhaul bill by the beginning of the August 1 recess, despite the fact that none of the three bills currently being worked on in the House and Senate have been completely written. In that address, Obama also emphatically declared that lowering health care costs is — and always has been — his number one priority. “I’ve said this before,” he said. “Let me repeat: The bill I sign must reflect my commitment and the commitment of Congress to slow the growth of health care costs over the long run.”

Unfortunately for the 45 million uninsured, the sudden jolt they and their supporters just felt was the presidential carpet being yanked out from under their feet, as Obama recognized that he couldn’t ride their plight to legislative victory. Further, an analysis of the House and Senate health care overhaul bills by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that they would enable only about a third of Americans (about 16 million) currently lacking insurance to gain coverage — something that, along with the Rasmussen poll results, made Obama’s decision to drop their predicament from its place of honor at the center of his health care overhaul stump speech all the easier.

Unfortunately for President Obama and for the 62 percent of Americans who see high costs as the number one problem with our system, the bills that have been put forth by the congressional Democratic majority would increase taxes while doing nothing to lower health care costs. You don’t have to take my word for it; CBO director Doug Elmendorf reported in his July 16 testimony before the Senate Budget Committee that those bills would add significantly to the national deficit, while doing nothing to “reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.”

Unfortunately for the 100 percent of Americans who are consumers of health care, President Obama appears disinclined to back off his rigid insistence on trading the U.S.’s cost problem for Britain’s access, disease, and death problems — and on doing so as quickly as possible.

Were he to succeed in doing so, it would be an unfortunate outcome for all involved.

In an attempt to defend the trillion-dollar health care overhaul bills currently being marked up in Congress and to shift attention from his own actions to those of his predecessor, President Barack Obama (D-IL) declared in his July 18 radio address that “the same folks who controlled the White House and Congress for the past eight years as we ran up record deficits will argue — believe it or not — that health reform will lead to record deficits. That’s simply not true.”

Leave aside for the moment the fact that any deficit-spending records set in “the past eight years” were wiped out by Obama himself within a single month of taking office. Also leave aside the fact that the president’s ire was misdirected (it was the director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, Doug Elmendorf, who made that indictment of the health care overhaul bills currently in Congress). The truth is, Obama’s claim to suddenly care about deficit spending at all is belied by his actions and his administration’s statements on a range of issues, from nationalized health care to the so-called “stimulus” package.

In that radio address, Obama urged legislators to “seize this opportunity — one we might not have again for generations — and finally pass health insurance reform this year.” He issued what was intended to sound like a warning along with that plea, saying, “I want to be very clear [that] I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade.”

While this statement was carefully worded to sound like an admonition to legislators against producing a health care overhaul bill that isn’t revenue-neutral, the phrase “deficits over the next decade” is a direct reference to the recommended “Pay-As-You-Go” (or “PayGo”) policy Obama asked Congress to pass in June.

Room for One Man’s Priorities

At the time, Obama called on Congress to “to rein in deficits by addressing [current] challenges in a manner that is fiscally responsible.” This, Obama said, meant offsetting each new “expenditure” (including both spending and tax cuts) with a corresponding increase in revenue. The latter, of course, is poorly-disguised code for tax increases, generally targeted at the top 1% of wage earners who are already paying well over half of total taxes in America.

Though Republicans governed under pay-as-you-go guidelines from 1995 until 2001, Democrats added the policy to House budgeting rules shortly after taking control of the Congress in 2007. However, the policy has been waived or ignored several times since due to an unwillingness on the part of Democratic leaders to meet rising entitlement spending with corresponding budget cuts.

Obama’s stated hope is that the policy being enshrined into law will make it more difficult for Congress to waive or bypass it in the future when they want to fund pet projects without cutting spending in other areas. However, the proposed PayGo legislation he transmitted to Congress does allow for the rule to be bypassed in key areas important to Obama — like his trillion dollar health care overhaul.

Under Obama’s PayGo proposal, lawmakers would have free rein to run up massive deficits in the first several years following passage of health care-nationalizing legislation. In fact, as long as their legislation contained a plan for neutralizing those deficits over the ten-year horizon — even if they had no intention of actually letting the necessarily massive spending cuts or tax increases ever come into being — Congressional Democrats could pass as costly a health care overhaul bill as they wanted. Obama would be free to sign such a bill, as well, without breaking his pledge to veto it, having lived up to his promise not to give the thumbs-up to “any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade.”

Deficits Suddenly Matter?

Obama’s sudden focus on reining in that deficit spending not associated with his multi-trillion dollar health care overhaul may come as a surprise to those who recall the rushed passage of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or “stimulus package.” Funded entirely by deficit spending — every one of the $787,000,000,000.00 spent by that legislation was borrowed and went directly onto the debt side of the nation’s balance sheet — the “stimulus” gave the (at the time) month-old Obama administration the record for an annual American deficit, blowing past the roughly $450 billion rung up in the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

This new record deficit came only months after then-candidate Obama twice looked America in the eye during presidential debates and promised a net cut in federal spending. Since the “stimulus” was passed and signed into law (without being read in its entirety by a single voting member of Congress or by the president who signed it), Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have attempted to evade responsibility for the astronomical debt it created, as well as for the utter failure of that massive exercise in deficit spending to create jobs or bring about any semblance of economic recovery.

Passing the Buck

The administration “misread how bad the economy was,” said Biden, in a lame effort to excuse the failure of the three quarters of a trillion dollars he, Obama, and the Democratic Congress added to the nation’s deficit to create jobs and stimulate recovery. Obama added to that a claim that there was a “lack of information” during the first days of his presidency about just how bad an economic situation he had “inherited” from Bush. The obvious question of why the administration didn’t wait until they actually had reliable information on the economy before setting a new debt record in one fell swoop went predictably unaddressed.

Further, Biden’s words seem to run counter to Obama’s new found belief in balanced budgets — and of proof of positive outcomes. “We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt,” the vice president declared at an Alexandria, Virginia, town hall sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP).

“We’re doing things that we know are going to save you, your children and your grand children billions of dollars over the next years,” Biden said, “but we’re not able to prove it.”

Will “we’re right, but we just can’t prove it!” still be the rallying cry of the Obama administration when the entirety of the borrowed “stimulus” money has been spent and jobs still haven’t materialized? Or when Congress predictably decides not to offset the trillions in deficit spending Obama’s PayGo exception is allowing them to engage for the purpose of enacting health care “reform”? Or when the American health care system becomes the costly wreck that is Great Britain’s utterly failed National Health Service, as a result of a poorly-thought out, government-centric health care overhaul being pushed through Congress and signed into law without any serious consideration of the consequences?

For now that remains an open question. If history is any guide, though, the answer to that question will be a resounding “yes.”

However, his dogged refusal to deviate from his standard talking point of “150,000 jobs created or saved” by the $787,000,000,000.00 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (also known as the “stimulus package,” or, my personal favorite, “Porkulus”) is beginning to lend itself to more than a little head-scratching by observers.

A Claim Unchanged by Time

Mr. Obama and his administration have been making the claim for several weeks now. On May 27, “White House economic advisers” announced the “stimulus” had “created or saved 150,000 jobs” since its inception 100 days before — an average increase (or savings) of about 1,500 jobs a day. Twelve days later, on June 8, Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) made the same proclamation on a conference call with reporters: the stimulus had “saved or created 150,000 [jobs]” to date.

Theoretically, there should have been about 18,000 more jobs than that, given the twelve day interval between the May 27 announcement and the June 8 call, but never mind that. Just for good measure, despite the fact economists and simple observers who had the virtue of being awake alike were throwing up their hands in disbelief that a presidential administration would actually make such a claim about something as obviously incalculable as a “saved” job, Biden added the assertion that there had been “no ‘reasonable’ challenges to the estimates.”

Last Wednesday, July 8 — a full 30 days after the Biden conference call, and 42 after the initial 100 day claim of “150,000 jobs created or saved,” Mr. Obama’s deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget announced the “stimulus” had — you guessed it! — “created or saved 150,000 jobs since its inception in February.”

Why Settle for Millions When You Can Have 150,000?

Judging by the administration’s own claims alone, that’s one stimulus package that seems to have lost its, well, stimulation. Interestingly, Mr. Obama Himself said in early June — just after he first made the 150,000 job claim — that he was “not satisfied” with the package’s progress. Then this past Saturday, July 11 — after a full month of no job creation or savings, according to his administration’s claims — he suddenly declared that the stimulus had been a success, and that it has “worked as intended.”

So the intent of this $787,000,000,000.00 legislation, which the president claimed would “create or save 3.5 to 4 million jobs,” was actually to “create or save” 150,000 jobs in the first 100 days, then hold fast at that number? That seems like a wise investment — only $5.25 million of taxpayers’ dollars per job!

Don’t Look at This Website Number

Funnily enough, the one official deviation from this line is on Mr. Obama’s website. There, an interactive map which purports to track the number of “jobs created or saved by the Recovery Act” in every state in the Union claims 1,086,000 jobs “created or saved” in the states of California, Texas, Florida, and New York alone.

How these amazingly inflated numbers were arrived at is likely as much above Joe Biden’s “pay grade” to determine or explain (his words) as is the Obama administration’s method of coming up with the 150,000 number.

Real Numbers

All of this comes, of course, amidst one ironclad fact: the American economy has shed nearly 2.3 million jobs since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by Mr. Obama, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During that period, the unemployment rate has climbed from 8.1% to 9.5%.

Add to that the admission from Dr. Cristina Romer, chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, that the administration has no way of telling how many jobs were “created or saved” because they simply don’t have a baseline to work off of.

From a CNBC transcript:

MARIA BARTIROMO [Host]: When the stimulus was first announced, the President said that he expected that in the coming years the administration, based on the policies on economic revival could save or create 3.5 million jobs. At this point does the administration know how many jobs have been created or saved?

ROMER: You know, it’s very hard to say exactly because you don’t know what the baseline is. Because you don’t know what the economy would have done without it.

This is noteworthy for two major reasons.

First, this appears to be the first time an Obama official has stepped in front of the renowned (and feared) Obamabus and admitted there is simply no way to prove the employment numbers Mr. Obama and his staff have been throwing around aren’t just made up from thin air.

Second — and this may be the most important — Romer is coauthor of the report that established the baseline numbers and formula for calculating jobs supposedly “created or saved” by the stimulus. It was her report that initially made the claim that the “stimulus” would “create or save” 3.5 to 4 million jobs. Further, she and her council released a report just this week — “Preparing the Workers of Today for the Jobs of Tomorrow” — that Mr. Obama claimed in his radio address last weekend “confirms that our plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs.”

Which is it, Mr. Obama? Dr. Romer, who wrote this report, says there’s simply no way to tell how many jobs have been “saved or created” — yet you claim the same person’s report proves you right and gives hard numbers.

All the while, hundreds of thousands of real, calculable, and documentable jobs are being lost by real Americans every month, who live in real cities and towns across the country. How’s that for stimulus success?

Though it falls outside his original target of being within 100 days of taking office, President Barack Obama is keeping a pre-inauguration promise by “mak[ing] a major speech from an Islamic capital” this week in Cairo, Egypt.

Obama made what was considered by many to be the safest (and most “obvious”) choice in selecting Cairo for his “high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world.” Unfortunately, by deciding to play it safe, a president whose life to this point has revolved around an obsession with being “historic” missed out on a truly historic opportunity.

Cairo “Feels Bold”

Last December, when the incoming administration first floated the idea of Obama making a major speech from an Islamic capital, pundits, and bloggers alike immediately zeroed in on Cairo as the “perfect” choice – one that is safe, but “feels bold,” in the words of New York Times reporter Helene Cooper.

“Egypt is perfect,” wrote Cooper. “It’s certainly Muslim enough, populous enough and relevant enough. It’s an American ally, but there are enough tensions in the relationship that the choice will feel bold. The country has plenty of democracy problems, so Mr. Obama can speak directly to the need for a better democratic model there.”

The “democracy problems” Cooper and her allies in the media paid lip service to in their pronouncements of Cairo’s perfection are far more than just a passing concern. Just over three years ago, Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak promised nationwide parliamentary elections, a positive development coming on the heels of the first contested presidential election since the 1952 overthrow of Egypt’s ruling monarchy. Unfortunately, “the election was marred by widespread violations, fraud and the arrest and detention of hundreds of opposition supporters,” Saad Edin Abrahim wrote in the Los Angeles Times shortly after the election. That campaign of intimidation, which included the arrest and imprisonment of Mubarak’s chief challenger, resulted in a voter turnout of barely 20 percent and in Mubarak’s allies maintaining their dominance of Egypt’s government.

Baghdad the Clear Choice

If President Obama was as committed to actually being historic as he is to talking about being so, he would have taken advantage of the opportunity left him by former president George W. Bush and made his appeal to the pan-Muslim world from Baghdad, Iraq. A Muslim state by any reasonable definition of the word, Iraq has become, outside the tiny state of Israel, the only functioning democracy in an incredibly volatile region of the world where the U.S. has myriad interests.

Further, the move to normalize relations with Iraq has seen significant progress in recent months, with as evidenced by the Iraqi parliament’s approval of two landmark agreements cementing the American-Iraqi relationship as an alliance of “independent, equal states of sovereignty.”

The Status of Forces and Strategic Framework Agreements, which were passed by a parliament made up of sectarian officially “normalized the U.S.-Iraqi relationship with strong economic, diplomatic, cultural, and security ties” and will serve “as the foundation for a long-term bilateral relationship based on mutual goals,” said President Bush in an address shortly after the agreements were approved.

These agreements were passed by an Iraqi parliament made up of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds – groups which had been fighting a bloody sectarian war against their fellow countrymen speaks volumes about how far Iraq has come in such a brief time.

The recognition and establishment successful, democratic Iraq which is a stalwart U.S. ally would truly be a transformational event in the Middle East – and, by choosing Baghdad as a location for his first major Presidential address on foreign soil, Barack Obama could make it clear to the U.S. and the world – particularly the Islamic world – that he understands the importance of the new Iraq, and that America stands ready to join in an equal partnership with any nation, Muslim or no, which is willing to embrace freedom and peace with its neighbors, and to join the fight against terrorism.

Leave Grudges at the Door

Cooper summed up the “problem” posed by Baghdad as a potential speech site for President Obama in December, writing in the Times that speaking from that particular Islamic capital “could appear to validate the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama opposed.”

Rather than falling prey to such a petty, small-minded concern, Obama and his advisers should have recognized that this was one of several reasons why Baghdad was the perfect location for his pan-Islamic address.

Speaking from Baghdad would have publicly demonstrated the self-proclaimed “non-ideological,” “post-partisan” Obama’s ability to put aside his pre-presidential view on the invasion of Iraq aside and, in true statesmanlike fashion, embrace the Iraqi democracy as the ally it now is. Embracing and honoring the new Iraq in such a public way would have sent an even more powerful message to the Islamic world because of Obama’s opposition to the invasion itself, and because of his opposition to the shift in military strategy that pulled Iraq from the depths of sectarian war and made it what it is today.

Further, such a decision would have demonstrated that the inexperienced American president understands the value of the democratic state that resulted from an effort he opposed, and would have sent the message that Obama truly was what he constantly makes himself out to be: a high-minded statesman who is willing to put partisan ship and petty squabbles aside and to work for the purpose of building and maintaining alliances with members of the international community (in this case, with Iraq).

Tabula Rasa on Israel-Palestine

Iraq is unique in another significant way: it presents the lone location in the Muslim world from which the problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be addressed free of clouding by the current regime’s statements actions. With the great emphasis Obama has put on “solving” the squabble he sees as the root of all Middle Eastern conflict to this point in his presidency, Baghdad offers an unmatched opportunity to address the Muslim world in general, and the Israel-Palestine conflict in particular, from the capital of a nation whose fledgling government has no history of supporting one side or the other in that millennial struggle.

Egypt can make no such claim. Though it has been party to peace talks and treaties with the Jewish state in the past, it was also an aggressor in the Six Days’ War against Israel, and its northern territory currently houses tunnels through which arms are sent into the blockaded Gaza Strip, where Hamas terrorists employ them against Israeli civilians in the southern cities of Sderot and Ashkelon. Further, senior Egyptian officials have gone on the record accusing the “Jews of Palestine” (modern Israel) of “killing children, old people, and women and ignoring taboos,” and of injecting civil Judaism with “their poisons, which are against all humanity.”

Egypt, in other words, has clearly staked out its position on the Palestinian side of the conflict between the Israeli population and those who virulently – and often violently – oppose them.

From providing cash payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who died to kill Israeli civilians, to sending surface-to-surface missiles over Jordan and into Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein was a similarly avowed enemy of Israel and supporter of Palestinian terrorism. However, with the overthrow of Saddam and the accession of a democratic government that has few if any ties to the late tyrant, Iraq is now the one nation in the entirety of the Middle East whose slate is virtually blank when it comes to Israel-Palestine policy and interference. In a region as polarized around a single issue as the Middle East is on Israel-Palestine, this virtue provides Baghdad with a value too great to be expressed in mere words.

Standing as Equals

Finally, a decision by President Obama to visit Baghdad as an equal of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would have sent the crystal-clear message to an Islamic world suspicious of American motives that Iraq is not a U.S. puppet state, but that is stands in sovereign equality to an America that is ready and willing to stand on equal footing with any Muslim nation that respects the rights of its people and those of other nations, and that actively repudiates terror both within its borders and without.

Obama’s choice of location for this address could have sent a powerful message to the Islamic world that the face of the Middle East was changing. Further, he could have used this opportunity to signal America’s willingness to deal openly, honestly, and as equal allies with Muslim nations who comport themselves in a manner consistent with America’s interests and values.

Unfortunately, in ultimately deciding to pass up Iraq with all its attributes in favor of a member of the Middle East’s “old guard” that has as few relevant attributes and as poor a record on human rights and honest democracy as Egypt, a president who is desperate to be “historic” and “transformational” missed a golden opportunity to be just that.

North Korea’s recent underground detonation of a nuclear weapon and multiple missile launches, as well as its declaration that the 1953 armistice that effectively ended the Korean war “no longer applies,” have presented President Barack Obama with just the sort of “generated international crisis” then-vice presidential nominee Joe Biden promised supporters would come along to “test” the foreign policy neophyte in his first months in office.

Unfortunately, the statements and actions Obama has taken so far in response to the communist state’s latest series of provocations suggest he has little idea how to deal with such a situation – particularly when appealing to the United Nations and issuing sternly-worded warnings he has no intention of backing up with effective action fail to solve the problem.

As President Obama is hopefully beginning to learn, neither stern words, nor pleas, nor concessions are particularly effective problem-solving tactics in the real world. Whether this lesson will sink in deeply enough to cause the rigidly ideological Democratic executive to change his approach to foreign belligerence, though, is another question altogether.

A Series of Provocations

On the same day in April that President Obama was in Prague giving a speech on international disarmament, North Korea test-fired a multi-stage missile, the Taepodong-2, over the Pacific Ocean. In going through with this test firing of a missile capable of being armed with a nuclear warhead and of reaching the western United States, the communist state ignored a prior warning from the U.S. president that doing so would be “provocative” – an admonition which, as Obama is hopefully learning, carries far less weight with rogue regimes than with those states that still honor such quaint traditions as diplomatic niceties and international agreements.

Though its only immediate effect was to demonstrate Obama’s impotence when it comes to actually preventing a foreign actor from carrying out preannounced unlawful activities, at least the U.S. knew about the impending missile launch before it took place. The same cannot be said about North Korea’s May 25 nuclear weapons test, which took the Obama administration entirely by surprise.

The rogue regime’s second detonation of a nuclear device in three years, this explosion was fully four times the size of the 2006 nuclear blast according to seismic readings, showing progress by the North Koreans in solving the problems the weapons program faced three years ago. That previous detonation was met with swift action by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which issued two unanimous resolutions condemning the rogue regime and calling for tighter sanctions against it. Unfortunately, the Bush administration quickly took the teeth out of that action by resuming shipments of aid and even removing the rogue nation from its State Sponsors of Terrorism list for no reason other than its desire to lure Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

President Obama’s response to date to the 2009 nuclear detonation has been similarly disheartening. Monday’s nuclear test was a clear violation not only of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and international agreements, but of Obama’s own repeated pleas for nuclear members of the international community to divest themselves of their arsenals and join him in pursuit of his vision of “a world without nuclear weapons.” (If nothing else, this should send a clear sign to the American people that simply changing personalities in the White House cannot eliminate global security threats or to cause the international community to live in harmony.)

Following Monday’s nuclear test, Obama declared that North Korea’s actions were “directly and recklessly challenging the international community,” and that “such provocations will only serve to deepen North Korea’s isolation.” Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the UN, echoed the president’s admonition, saying Pyongyang will “pay a price for the path that they’re on if they don’t reverse.”

However, the inexperienced president and his administration appear reluctant to go any farther than issuing sternly-worded admonitions to the rogue state, as he has given no indication as yet of any willingness to rescind his standing offer to restart the six-party talks – let alone take such a drastic step as to cut off the shipments of food and energy aid (of which the U.S. remains the largest donor) being sent to the destitute, famine-ridden state.

A Position of Weakness

Rather than toughen its stance in response to North Korea’s continued persistence in honing its nuclear device and delivery technology, the Obama administration appears willing to offer the rogue state two major concessions, one direct and one indirect, regardless of its actions.
The direct concession is a resumption of the six-party talks, a diplomatic tool which, when active, has brought North Korea to the negotiating table like a civilized nation to negotiate a reduction in its nuclear activities with Russia, China, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan in exchange for increased aid and more normalized diplomatic relations.

This is a concession the Obama administration appears determined to make, despite the fact that North Korea has a history of neglecting to live up to the promises it has made within the framework of the six-party talks (instead soaking up all the aid it can get before pulling away and resuming its illicit nuclear and conventional activities). In the run-up to the Taepodong-2 launch in April, Stephen Bosworth, a full-time academic who moonlights as Obama’s special representative for North Korea policy, made it known that the DPRK’s impending launch would have no bearing on the U.S.’s willingness to restart the talks. Once the “dust from the missiles settles,” he declared, America would be back at the negotiating table, where it would be ready and willing to discuss further concessions to, and benefits for, a North Korea that had failed once again to earn them.

The indirect concession the Obama administration is making comes in the form of its rapid scrapping of a functional missile defense system into which so many resources, both temporal and monetary, were poured over the last decade. As Pyongyang perfects a warhead delivery vehicle capable of reaching the American homeland, and as nations like Iran take aim with shorter-range missiles at U.S. interests and allies abroad, the White House and Pentagon are working hand-in-hand to fulfill the dovish executive’s campaign promise to cut off investment in a defensive technology whose necessity is likely to become more apparent in the very near future.

At what point Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will recognize that non-state actors like al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are not the only threat the U.S. will face in the near future is an open question, and one to which we can only hope the answer is “before it’s too late.”

Combating Illicit Proliferation

U.S. ally South Korea responded to Pyongyang’s nuclear test by announcing its decision to join the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a Bush-era program established to coordinate a worldwide effort to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The PSI, in which 90 nations now take part, is the brainchild of John Bolton, the former U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. The highest-profile tool used by PSI-supporting nations to prevent proliferation is shipment interdiction, often conducted by boarding ships suspected of carrying WMD materials or forcing them into friendly port for inspection – a tactic that has been used against North Korean ships in the past, and which in 2003 directly led to the unraveling of the largest nuclear black market ever discovered: that of Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan.

Pyongyang has long warned South Korea that a decision by the latter to join the PSI would be tantamount to an act of war. Not coincidentally, the DPRK responded to Seoul’s announcement by firing short-range rockets – one surface-to-ship, one surface-to-air – into the Sea of Japan (or the “Eastern Sea,” as the Koreans refer to it), a clear warning that its past threats should not be forgotten. That action has, of course, been accompanied by heightened rhetoric (including a declaration that the 1953 armistice “no longer applied”) aimed at reminding Seoul of the danger that exists mere miles to its north, and of convincing leaders of the free Korea to walk back their efforts to pressure the rogue regime.

An increase in counter-proliferation activities in its immediate region is a cause for concern for Pyongyang, given its reliance on black market weapons and technology sales for income and its recent history of exporting nuclear technology (as recently seen in the nuclear reactor complex in Syria, which was built with North Korean assistance and destroyed by Israeli aircraft in 2007).

Further action to prevent North Korea from aiding other states and non-state actors in their pursuit of nuclear weapons is necessary to maintain some semblance of international stability and domestic security. However, as (or if) steps are taken to that effect, Pyongyang will certainly ratchet up its threatening rhetoric and activities – something that will make President Obama’s position incredibly uncomfortable.

Unfortunately, if Obama’s response to Pyongyang’s recent missile and nuclear tests are any indication, the administration’s answer to such aggression will be to dial back the pressure, rather than to keep the heat on the rogue state to comply with international will.

The U.S. currently has 30,000 soldiers and airmen stationed in South Korea as a guarantor of American military intervention should Pyongyang decide to withdraw from the 1953 armistice and resume open war with the South. Should the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea continue ratcheting up its level of belligerence in response to Obama’s efforts to placate the rogue regime, the foreign policy neophyte currently serving as Commander in Chief of the U.S. military will have some very difficult decisions to make.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations military veteran, is a columnist, a combat journalist, and a director emeritus of conservative weblog RedState.com. He was stationed in Uijongbu, Republic of Korea in 2002.

Originally published at CBSNews.com

Saying that no good could conceivably come of it, President Barack Obama this week reversed his administration’s plan to release photographs of alleged detainee abuse dating from the Bush administration’s war on terror without at least putting up the appearance of a legal fight.

“The most direct consequence of releasing [the photographs], I believe, would be to further inflame anti-American opinion and to put our troops in greater danger,” Obama said to reporters Wednesday in an attempt to explain the rationale for his 180° reversal in policy. Less than a month ago, the administration had announced it would publicly unveil dozens of photographs of alleged abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan by American servicemen and women.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2003 seeking the release of these and all other detainee photographs, didn’t have to reach far into its bag of epithets when determining how to respond to Obama’s decision.

“The reversal is another indication of a continuance of the Bush administration policies under the Obama administration,” said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. “President Obama’s promise of accountability is meaningless [and] this is inconsistent with his promise of transparency.”

“It’s absolutely essential that these photos be released,” Singh hyperbolically declared.

Making the Right Decision

However “inconsistent” it may be with Obama’s campaign promise of open and transparent government (one which he hasn’t done the best job of living up to in any aspect of his four-month tenure in office), his decision to withhold these photographs of detainee abuse is the right one in this case. And where national security is concerned, it’s far more important that President Obama be right and effective than that he be consistent.
Whether or not there is in fact a “legal basis for withholding the photographs,” something Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, vehemently denied on Thursday, is a matter for the Obama administration and the Supreme Court to sort out in the coming weeks and months.

Far from being “absolutely essential,” though, there is no tangible benefit to America or any of her citizens that could come from publishing years-old photographs of wrongdoing by a tiny number of American servicemen and women, all of whom have already been investigated and punished for their parts in those actions. The only good that could possibly have come from releasing these photographs would have been felt by the extreme anti-American left, whose insatiable appetite for “war crime” pornography demands constant feedings of similar material.

The “needs” of the extreme (and perverted) few here in the U.S. and abroad are and should be far outweighed by the fact that, internationally, the release of these images of distant-past, already-punished actions would have provided America’s enemies with yet another powerfully visual tool with which to recruit future jihadists and terrorists to their cause – something we saw in spades after the 2004 release of the Abu Ghraib detainee photos.

“Thousands Of Al Qaeda Recruitment Posters”

Though the claim made by Yousef Munayyer, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, that “Abu Ghraib set the bar for obscene inhumanity” is laughable on its face (Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg and the thousands of others tortured and slaughtered by radical Islamists were unavailable to comment on Mr. Munayyer’s assertion), there is no doubt the disclosure of images from the infamous coalition prison affected jihadi thought and recruitment in a way mere verbal description never could have.

“The greatest recruiting tool we had” in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq “was Abu Ghraib,” a former al Qaeda leader told Senator John McCain in 2007, affirming the case made by soldiers and pundits alike, including Generals Ray Odierno (commander of Multinational Force-Iraq) and David McKiernan (outgoing commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan), that publishing these images would put even more lives at risk both at home and abroad.

In other words, quietly acquiescing to the ACLU’s demand for release of these photos would have been tantamount to publishing and distributing “thousands of al-Qaeda recruitment posters,” as Ben Johnson at FrontPage Magazine put it, all on the taxpayers’ dime and the Obama administration’s watch.

Obama acknowledged this fact himself in a speech given in Strasbourg, Germany three weeks before his Justice Department’s initial decision not to fight the order to release the photographs. “When we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib, that wasn’t good for our security,” Obama told the German crowd. “That was a recruitment tool for terrorism.”

Though it took some prompting from the commanders of our forces who are currently serving on the front lines of the war on terror, Obama finally acknowledged that the resulting effects of the Abu Ghraib photographs’ release would also almost certainly hold true for these images, should they be released to the public and broadcast around the world.

During the late stages of the 2008 presidential campaign, National Review Online’s Jim Geraghty famously coined the phrase “All Barack Obama statements come with an expiration date.” That his decision not to challenge the release of these photographs came when it did, as opposed to after the action had been taken, is fortuitous for all who stand to suffer from increased jihadi activity and terrorist recruiting.

Now, we must simply hope his decision to fight these images’ harmful publication doesn’t expire before that battle has been won.

By Jeff Emanuel
Originally published at CBSNews.com

That question is being debated in court right now, as three states are currently seeking a ruling from a federal judge that the final say in an individual’s medical treatment lies with the government, not with that patient’s doctor.

In March, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama joined in an appeal of a 2008 U.S. District Court ruling that a patient’s physician was better positioned – and better qualified – to make decisions about that patient’s medical treatment than state bureaucrats.

The case centers on Callie Moore, a disabled teenage girl living in Georgia. A stroke Callie suffered in utero left her suffering from multiple conditions, including cerebral palsy and mental retardation. For the last decade, she has received around-the-clock in-home nursing care for her medical conditions.

IN 2007, THOUGH, the state of Georgia cut coverage of Callie’s in-home care by 15%, from 94 hours a week to 84 over the objections of her attending physician, who was intimately familiar with her case and her needs. State officials (who were not medical professionals) cited disagreement with the attending physician about just how much care Callie needed as the primary reason for this reduction in care.

Callie’s mother filed suit in 2007, arguing that the state had no right to contradict the orders of her personal physician and limit her treatment. However, because Callie receives her medical treatment under Medicaid, the joint federal-state administered health coverage program for low-income individuals and families, Georgia officials argued that Callie’s care was subject to rationing, as state bureaucrats’ need to ensure Medicaid resources were allocated “fairly” superseded her doctor’s care prescription or her personal medical needs.

On June 4, 2008, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash ruled that Callie’s doctor, not state bureaucrats, had the right to prescribe just what medical treatment and care his patient required. Georgia was ordered to raise Callie’s skilled home nursing care back up to 94 hours a week, as prescribed by her doctor.

Rhonda Meadows, commissioner of Georgia’s Department of Community Health, immediately appealed the ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Peach State. Her argument was that state officials, not doctors, should have final say in what treatments and care patients within their purview require. Florida and Alabama, which fall under the 11th Circuit’s jurisdiction and will have to abide by its ruling, filed an amicus brief with the Atlanta-based court.

THIS CASE HAS THRUST into the spotlight debate about an issue that has long been confined to dark, smoky rooms in state capitals and Washington, DC, and to the back pages of legislation Members of Congress aren’t bothering – or being allowed – to read before their passage.

From state governments to the federal legislators and bureaucrats who had a hand in writing and passing President Barack Obama’s 2009 “stimulus” bill, more and more officials are beginning to make the public argument that it is not a trained doctor with years of experience and personal knowledge of a patient’s medical history and needs who should have final say when it comes to patient diagnoses and prescriptions, but some nameless, faceless bureaucrat inhabiting a cubicle in some nondescript government building, with nothing but an agency-developed cost-effectiveness spreadsheet to guide them in determining what is and is not medically appropriate or necessary for every patient seen within their jurisdiction.

The case currently being decided in Atlanta, Moore v. Medows, is evidence of this. In oral argument before a panel of the 11th Circuit on March 24, attorney Robert Highsmith contended that, while bureaucrats “will consider doctors’ determinations,” the “final arbiter” of medical decisions is “the state.”

The thrust of the states’ argument is summed up in a brief written by the attorneys representing the state of Florida in the case. “Left to their own devices,” they write, doctors “advocate for their patients” – something the apparently resented by state governments for its interference in the execution of their cost-effectiveness analyses.

IT IS DIFFICULT TO OVERSTATE the impact a decision in the states’ favor would have in this case. Medical professionals and health care advocates rightly fear doctors’ evaluations, diagnoses, and prescriptions would sink to the status of mere suggestions pending review and approval or disapproval by state bureaucrats.

Imagine, if you will, every decision made about your personal motor vehicle, from the gas you put in it to the recommendations the mechanic makes for fixing your worn-out brakes or broken transmission, was subject to final review by a state bureaucrat with no experience in the automotive industry. Now extrapolate that scenario to your health care. Are you concerned yet?

Even if the judges of the 11th Circuit disagree with the appellants’ argument, the fact that three states are currently in federal court seeking official validation of their “right” to overrule physicians and arbitrarily ration medical care is frightening enough.

When government is given free rein to overrule a medical professional’s judgment of care based on their analysis of cost, physicians and their patients no longer have a role in making decisions about those patients’ care.

The battle is not only being fought at the state level but at the federal, as well, where funding and authorization for “comparative effectiveness research” was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (or “stimulus” bill). That benign-sounding term refers, quite simply, to the drawing up of those comparative-effectiveness spreadsheets bureaucrats will use to approve or overrule physician diagnoses and prescriptions once the federal government’s power to do so has been affirmed, be it by legislative action or judicial fiat.

Given the track record of the faceless bureaucrats who make the majority of the government’s day to day judgments, the idea that they, rather than the doctor you know and trust, could be responsible for your medical decisions should be a very frightening prospect indeed.

The Tea Party was a key step in the course from resistance to Revolution in the American colonies. Less than a year after the event, the first Continental Congress presented the colonies’ British hegemons with a united American opposition — and, less than a year after that, the Revolutionary War had begun and the second Continental Congress, which would adopt the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, had gone into session.

IN 2009, AS DISCRETIONARY budget totals and annual deficit projections in the trillions of dollars are being bandied by an administration that speaks as though wasting that amount of money were a commonplace undertaking, those ruggedly individualistic, fiscally-responsible Americans who have quietly suffered the effects of the government expansion and waste imposed by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt (New Deal) and Lyndon Johnson (Great Society), and who have witnessed the sullying of Ronald Reagan’s economic reputation, have decided to suffer in silence no more.

Fourteen years after Boston, America’s Constitutional Convention met to draft and ratify the document which governs our nation to this very day. Now, with many viewing our founding document and the principles it espouses, and upon which this nation was built, as being under attack, the memory of the Tea Party resistance has been resurrected, and is being put into practice around America.

This Wednesday, tens of thousands of people across the country will join together in a protest years in the making, as a silent majority that quietly seethed through the Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43 years of fiscal irresponsibility and expanded government entitlements has been moved to action through the previously unimaginable profligacy of President Barack Obama’s administration. These protests are driven by the common sentiment that our nation’s government is already too big and too expensive to operate, that it acts too punitively toward those who work for success, and that it has increased its regulatory footprint far beyond an acceptable level – and that the current administration’s policies will only exacerbate that situation.

IN GEORGIA, THE TEA PARTY movement has been driven by ordinary citizens whose outrage at Obama’s effort to turn the ship of state hard to port has turned them into grassroots activists.

However, the resistance to government waste here in the Peach State has not been focused only on Obama and his Democratic Congress. Discontent with the fiscal and regulatory environment that helped contribute to Georgia’s $3 billion FY09 budget deficit and its 9% unemployment rate have caused Atlanta to be as big a target of Georgia’s Tea Party movement as Washington – and that resistance hasn’t been limited to laypersons.

FEEDING ON THE PUBLIC’S discontent with the fiscal climate within the Peach State, one state representative, Bob Smith (R-Watkinsville), has proposed legislation to convene a new state Constitutional Convention for the express purpose of scrapping and rewriting Georgia’s labyrinthine tax code via constitutional amendment.

Smith’s legislation provides “for the holding of a Convention of the people of Georgia for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of this state relating to state and local taxation and finance.”

Smith hopes these modern-day Tea Parties, which are being held at nineteen separate locations in Georgia alone, will help build popular momentum for tax reform in the Peach State, and will motivate Georgians to become directly involved in managing and reforming their government’s revenue-generating efforts.

In their pursuit of this goal, Representative Smith and the Georgia Tea Party movement are representative of the Tea Party movement as a whole. After eight years of enduring the Left’s claim that dissent and protest are “the highest form of patriotism,” America’s previously silent majority is taking to the streets and to the steps of state capitols, city halls, and universities across the country and making their voices heard.

THE NATIONWIDE TAX DAY Tea Parties are just the beginning, of course. Promoting and provoking real change – not canned slogans and tired old leftist policies – will take prolonged effort and teamwork by the fiscally responsible majority in this country. However, the combination of the initial Tea Party protests on February 27 and the Tax Day Tea Parties this Wednesday should make for a very solid start to a nationwide reform movement.

At the very least, after tomorrow, those in our state capitols and in Washington will no longer be able to claim they haven’t heard the will of America’s majority, which is to rein in runaway spending, lower excessively confiscatory taxes, and reduce government penalization of the individual success that made this country possible.

Nobody should be surprised to hear America’s citizens calling for this. After all, it is quite simply what this great country was built on.

]]> http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/04/revolution-rekindled-the-21st-century-tea-party-movement/feed/ 0 http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/04/democrats-delay-release-of-report-showing-success-of-dc-voucher-program-until-after-senate-can-vote-to-kill-it/ http://jeffemanuel.net/2009/04/democrats-delay-release-of-report-showing-success-of-dc-voucher-program-until-after-senate-can-vote-to-kill-it/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:15:59 +0000 Jeff Emanuel http://jeffemanuel.net/?p=400

On Tuesday, March 10, the U.S. Senate voted to terminate the experimental Washington, DC school voucher program, which had been implemented in order to help provide poor minority children in failing DC schools with the same educational opportunities that so many children of Senators, Congressmen, and Presidents within the district have as a result of their advantageous birth.

During his Presidential campaign, President Obama indicated that he would put his personal opposition to vouchers aside “if he saw more proof that vouchers are successful.” I would “not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn,” he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in February 2008. “You do what works for the kids.”

Now, it appears that the Obama administration and the U.S. Senate purposely kept the results of a Congressionally-mandated study showing the benefits of the Washington, DC voucher program from becoming public until after they had managed to spike the program due to its supposed “lack of effectiveness.” (The executive summary is available here; the full report can be seen here.)

The information for the report was collected in spring and fall of 2008, and it was prepared for publication over the winter — then held from the public until April 3, when it was finally made available online.

The result of the Obama administration delaying the release of this report, which showed that participants in the voucher program outperformed those in the district’s public schools by a large margin on reading tests, until after the Senate vote is that the 1,700 low-income, minority children who are currently receiving up to $7,500 in vouchers per year to attend private school instead of their own failing DC public schools, will be forced to return to those publics after the 2009-10 school year, over the wishes of DC mayor Adrian Fenty, who said “it would not be productive to disrupt the education of children who are presently enrolled in private schools,” and despite empirical evidence that such a move will consign them to a lower-quality education and a far less optimistic future.

The DC voucher program, like all attempts to rescue poor, underprivileged, minority children from failing public schools, has long been opposed by the pro-equality-of-(poor)-outcome Left and the teacher’s unions, which are strident in their opposition to any attempt to introduce competition and standards into American education regardless of the devastating impact that opposition has on inner-city minority populations.

“The free market voucher paradigm is a thinly veiled threat to public education,” wrote Cheryl Lubin last October at Huffington Post. Liberals across the board agreed, like those at DemocraticUnderground, which hyperventilated that vouchers are part of an “extremist agenda to destroy public school education.” In Florida, the state’s top teacher’s union went to court to prevent the state’s citizens from being able to vote on the restoration of a voucher program.

Now, with time running out on the DC voucher program, and proof in hand of its success, the Obama administration and Senate Democrats actively prevented the public from learning the truth about this program designed to pull poor minority children from failing DC schools until they had successfully terminated the program.

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) attempted to save the voucher program by offering an amendment to the omnibus spending bill that would have removed the provision ending the “D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program” after the 2009-2010 school year. Democrats opposed to That amendment was defeated by a 58-39 vote.

Given a chance to put its money where its mouth is on a program that had been proven to be successful, Senate Democrats and the Obama administration instead chose to hide the evidence of that success in order to push their radical ideology that forces continued failure on poor, minority children and families in order to placate powerful unions and to perpetuate the cycle of government dependency within one of the Democrats’ most sickeningly reliable voting blocs.