On Nov. 4 The Salt Lake Tribune, the largest daily newspaper in Utah, published a report titled “Six percent back them …” It was promoted prominently from the Tribune's Page 1.
The report was a one-sided forum (roughly two-thirds of a news page published in the largest edition of the paper just before an important election) for spokespersons of three prominent conservative policy-development organizations and an activist front group. The Sutherland Institute is based in Utah. The Hoover Institution and the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation are in California and Illinois, respectively. Parents for Choice is a Potemkin-like front of the nationwide "school choice" movement in Utah.
The report seemed to suggest that these organizations are fighting on behalf of the poor.
If that’s the case the Trib's reporter and editors, not to mention its readers, have fallen for a cynical rhetorical strategy devised by Robert Enlow of the same Friedman Foundation. Enlow advised “school choice” activists to appropriate social justice themes of the civil rights movement. They sell better.
In a statement a few years ago Enlow said, “In 1996, when the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation was founded, the school choice movement had a very fractured message. There was a lot of conservative rhetoric, a focus on how markets work, and a lot of groups speaking with a lot of different voices – nothing really cohesive. It was right-wing white folks who were delivering the message, and that doesn’t sell very well.”
The Tribune is only as credible as its sources. In picking the Hoover Institution, one of the three "think tanks" cited, Tribune readers were exposed to well-honed, focus-group tested messages of an organization influential in developing President Bush’s economic policy; for forging strong ties between right-wing ideologues, right-wing think tanks and right-wing policy makers; and for employing scholars many of whom have worked for various Republican presidential administrations - Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and the current President W. Bush.
Before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned last year, there were eight Hoover “fellows” advising him.
Make no mistake. These groups and spokespersons have been obstacles to social justice, meaningful education reform, and racial and economic equality. In many instances, their funders have put their inheritances to work for that agenda. Their long-term initiatives have resulted in policies (tax, fiscal, regulatory policies) that have played a prominent role in America's widening gap between the "haves" and "have-nots."
It’s too bad the Tribune did not find anyone to point that out.
1 comments:
So let me get this strait. You object to the Tribune article because they only quoted sources that know what they're talking about (because they're actually involved in what the article discusses), and didn't also include sources such as yourself who have little to no involvement with the school choice movement other than to paint it as elitist, deceptive, and right-wing?
So what you're really unhappy about is that fair reporting gave a positive light to something you disagree with. Out of curiosity, did the thought that those quoted in the Trib article really do want to help the poor ever cross your mind? Did the thought ever occur to you that actions that qualify as "help to the poor" could extend beyond those that come through government mandate? Or are you stuck in the narrow-minded paradigm that if freedom and letting good people make their own decisions are involved, then the policy must be elitist and is not truly helping the poor, despite any evidence to the contrary?
It's time for the Democratic party in Utah to stop blinding itself to the fact that one of the best ways to help the poor is by helping them to help themselves, not by just providing them everything they need through government force. The former is a truly charitable act, the latter is a coercive and paternalistic one that only encourages the poor to remain in their poverty. This is why vouchers truly help the poor and why the public school system continually fails to do so.
It's time for the Democratic Party leadership to act more like those think tanks it so quickly dismisses and actually think about education reform. It's time that the goal of reform, and not the method of it, became their first priority. Once this happens then maybe the Democratic Party will become the party that actually helps the poor, rather than just the party that claims to do so but because of its own myopia fails because it can't see past the bureaucratic process. Once this happens then maybe the Democratic party will become a help, and not a hindrance, to the poor in the state of Utah.
Once this happens, THEN they'll be quoted along with the Hoover Institution, the Sutherland Insitute, and the Friedman Foundation in discussions of helping the poor through education reform; not because they should be entitled to the air time, but because they've qualified themselves enough to deserve the air time.
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