Democrats Resegregate the Washington D.C. School System

Sometimes Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit pulls together such an excellent collection of links and commentary, all I can do is scrape 'em and encourage you to go to his site every day.

Here's what he accumulated on the D.C. School Voucher Program, one of the very few federal programs that Obama doesn't like:

KILLING THE D.C. SCHOOL VOUCHER PROGRAM: Because protecting bureaucrats’ rice bowls is more important than, you know, actually educating.

UPDATE: “Democrats Resegregate DC School System.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader emails:

I keep thinking -hard- about what an amazing example the DC Voucher program could be… if it was really adopted as a cause celebre on the right. Not just as a punchline, but as a going concern.

There just aren’t that many recipients, and there’s a mighty strong overlap in DC between “underprivileged” and “permanent Democrat voters.” And these identical voters are personally steamed. They can recognize being completely jobbed. If there’s one spot to push to shatter this particular unholy alliance, it is precisely this spot.

Think of it as a reverse-ACORN. Scholarships are strictly need based – not race based. An endowment focused on K-12 instead of higher education.

I’m not quite sure the Glenn Reynolds DC Scholarship Fund has quite enough panache

But just think of the same idea with different marquee players:

The Ronald Reagan Scholarship Fund.

The Rush Limbaugh Scholarship Fund.

The Sarah Palin Scholarship fund.

Note: I would like to add the Milton Friedman School Voucher fund, since Friedman was one of the first in the U.S. to advocate this type of program. Since this is one of the few areas where I could possibly get behind a racial quota system, if anyone wants to establish a minority scholarship in my name, please call it the Whited For Black And Brown Education Fund. And if you think that's racist, just look at some of the eugenics-inspired requirements for other minority set-asides.

Back to Instapundit. Sorry for the digression.

What do you think? Reach out to these folks and raise some money? (More here). Though that bit about lacking panache kinda hurts . . . .

UPDATE: Arnold Kling likes the idea. “The conflict between voluntary charity and progressive tax-funded spending is a very interesting potential battleground. Progressives want to shift away from charitable giving and toward taxes, while libertarians (or civil societarians) ought to be aiming for the reverse.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Heather Benes writes: “I suggest a Thomas Sowell/Walter E. Williams scholarship fund for those D.C. kids.”

MORE: Reader Catherine Elkins writes:

I love this idea and wish it had been an option when doing my last minute year-end contributions last night! If you and/or others who may write you can get anything like this set up, I look forward to seeing links here to contribute. My guess is, the sooner it can be done, the better, so that some of these families can plan for the next school year with an idea of funds/funding available.

I’d offer to help but I don’t know the first thing about setting up scholarship funds. I’ll contribute, though!

Anybody know anything about setting up scholarship funds?

Posted at 9:40 pm by Glenn Reynolds