Edwards dances to his master's tune

Paul at Powerline takes a look at the Breck Girl's plans for a brighter tomorrow:

The Washington Post has a good piece about John Edwards' plans to combat poverty. Edwards has made his program to "end poverty in 30 years" in this country his signature domestic issue. The Post story, by Alec MacGillis, provides insight into both Edwards and the issue.

The centerpiece of the Edwards plan is to do away with public housing projects and replace them with one million rental vouchers through which to disperse the poor into better neighborhoods, closer to good schools and jobs. However, as the Post explains, a major federal experiment started during the Clinton administration shows that dispersing poor families in this fashion does not improve earnings or school performance. When this inconvenient truth was brought to Edwards' attention during his November 2005 symposium on poverty, he apparently had no answer.

I also wonder whether Edwards can explain (except by reference to political calculation) why he favors vouchers that would enable poor families to relocate but opposes private school vouchers. If the idea is to give poor families choices through which they can improve their lives, it's difficult to see why school choice should be off the table. Moving poor people close to good jobs they lack the skills to perform is meaningless. The key is education, but Edwards is not interested in maximizing educational opportunities. Nor, he admits, is he interested in talking, as Barack Obama, does about the need for the poor to take more personal responsibility. That message, he says, won't play well coming from him.

Given his reliance on a program that has been shown not to work, and his rejection of a program that's consistent with the general approach he espouses, one can't help suspect that, for Edwards, it's not about defeating poverty; rather it's about positioning himself to the left of his main rivals. Is there any evidence that, for Edwards, it's ever been about anything other than positioning?

The answer is simple. The Democrat Party is the bought and paid for property of the National Education Association.

Teachers, by virtue of the fact that they have plenty of free time, are the worker bees of the Democrat Party at the local and state level. Because school administrations and school boards are often left-wing it is even possible for them to engage in various political activities as part of their official duties.

They are the left's chief indoctrination agents where the nation's youth are concerned, corrupting each new generation and stealing a little more of the nation's soul with each year.

And they donate tons of money to the Democrat Party.

There is no way that a Democrat candidate will cross the teacher's union. Even black Democrats will not come out in support of any kind of educational choice despite the fact that majorities of American blacks (in the 90% range in some polls) support vouchers.

The anti-war moonbats are a powerful segment of the Jackass Party, but they are not all powerful. This is why Democrat leaders are going to take a withdrawal timetable off the table in the Iraq war funding bill after the president's veto. There is no way that the Party would abandon a piece of legislation sought by the NEA without a fight to the death.

The NEA hates vouchers because they would drain pupils and funding out of failing public schools and make manifest just how large the failure of modern public education really is. The fact that not only private schooled, but home and church schooled children consistently outperform public schooled children in every category fills them with black rage.

Their answer, however, is not to seek real improvements in public schooling, but to seek to shut down private alternatives. The fact is that they like the public schools just the way they are. Public schools which really educate students would not turn out drones who think that a narcissist like Cindy Sheehan is profound or that an empty headed twit like John Edwards is wise or that a cold-blooded rattlesnake of a bitch like Hillary Clinton really cares about them and their problems.

For the left to succeed the nation has to be dumbed down. Just as the Russian people would have easily seen through Lenin and his communists if they had been educated in economics and history the American people would easily see through Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi if they were properly educated.

The sacred mission of the NEA in the religion of the left is to keep from the common people the forbidden knowledge which would destroy their faith in the secular god of government. As long as they do this the Democrat Party will give them anything which is in their power to give.