Politics: Welcome Naw, Unwelcome Bush

The Liquid List would like to welcome a new blog on the block, from the mind of (we hope) frequent reader AB, Naw appears so far to be a little bit of everything, with Aaron's sharp insights thrown at whatever sits still long enough.

It is via Naw that we learn about President Bush getting more deeply involved in the DC voucher debate.

Republican House members have been chomping at the bit to get a federally-sponsored voucher program up and running somewhere, and there's no target as delicious as a majority-black city with no voting member to get in their way. Voucher proponents in general want to foist vouchers on a couple cities to demonstrate their mythical functionality. But the facts about vouchers are hard to ignore:

Cleveland's voucher program which was upheld last spring by the Supreme Court, devotes about $35 million in taxpayer money last year to send 99% of participants to religious schools.

Milwaukee's voucher program allows private schools to eschew accountability and ignore students with disabilities, serving as a de facto discrimination against them. The cost to taxpayers? $60 million a year.

In Florida, taxpayers are being told by Jeb Bush that the state can't afford to reduce class sizes in critical areas, but a voucher program supposedly to benefit students with disabilities is actually facilitating discrimination against them while costing taxpayers nearly $60 million.

The coup de grace of the entire recent voucher mess in Washington is that DC mayor Anthony Williams (D-Stupid) made a deal with official back-stabber and D.C. Committee chair Tom Davis (R-Evil). In the end Williams threw his support behind the very same DC vouchers plan that Bush endorsed in the story Naw points to above. And what did Williams get in the deal? Screwed. If Williams supported $15 million for vouches in DC, Davis promised up tp $75 million for public schools in DC. And Davis' bill has exactly no dollars for DC public schools. I, for one, am shocked!