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The Democrats And Competition (Or Not)

Democrats claim to love the public option because the competition it would provide would keep the otherwise dishonest insurance companies honest. As President Obama said in Green Bay last June, ?if the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down.? And as Moveon.org, an organization known far and wide for its love of unfettered competition, asserted in a video supporting the public option, ?competition is as American as apple pie.?

It?s no wonder, then, that Democrats are such avid supporter of modest school voucher programs, since the competition they provide helps to keep the massive public school near-monopoly more honest.

Oh, wait. I was dreaming and just woke up. What I should have said is that it would be no wonder if Democrats, because of their professed love of competition with powerful entrenched interests, supported modest school voucher programs. They don?t, of course.

Neal Boortz nails them. He points out that critics of voucher usually rationalize their position by arguing that they take money away from the public schools, but that is not the case in the District of Columbia.

They can't use this argument here because the DC voucher system is funded by the federal government. The actual result is that the DC schools have even more money per student after the voucher students bail.

Well ... it didn't seem to matter that the teacher's unions had no real argument against the DC voucher program. We all know what the true argument was. The teacher's union is scared to death that the private schools are going to make them look bad. Competition is poison to teacher's unions. So the voucher system had to be killed.

And guess who just killed it.

None other than Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. Remember that $1.1 trillion dollar spending program passed over the weekend? Durban had a very quiet little amendment hiding in that bill. The amendment killed all funding for the DC voucher program. Durbin's Christmas gift for teacher's unions.

But why should anyone be surprised that Democrats, who claim to be principled supporters of competition here, oppose it there? They also claim, after all, to be principled supporters of racial equality even though they vociferously defend the state treating people differently because of their race. Acting differently would require, among other things, principle and consistency.

Full post as published by Discriminations on December 16, 2009 (boomark / email).