The Patriot Post® · Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Fed
If you liked government health care, you’ll love government day care. That’s what Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is counting on with a new proposal sure to terrify any American who lived through the last Democrat takeover. Don’t worry, Warren says. It’ll be free. And, let me guess — if we like our babysitter, we can keep her?
“In the wealthiest country on the planet, access to affordable and high-quality child care and early education should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the rich,” Warren argued on Tuesday. And who better to solve that problem — or any problem for that matter — than government? “My plan will guarantee high-quality child care and early education for every child in America from birth to school age,” the 2020 hopeful explained. And, like everything else in socialist fantasy land, it’ll be “free” for lower-income families and “affordable” (where have we heard that before?) for everyone.
If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is. First of all, it’s not free. The price tag for this “complimentary” daycare-for-everyone idea is a whopping $700 billion over 10 years. That’s hardly gratis — especially for the Americans she plans to tax to pay for it. As far as Warren’s concerned, we can stick the country’s “ultra-millionaires” with this tab, along with everything else on the Democrats’ wish list. As usual, the Left’s formula for paying for their bad ideas is taking from those who have. They want to penalize Americans who are successful, instead of making it easier — though tax incentives and other means — for families to choose their own care.
The other problem — and it’s a big one — can be summed up in four words: “Similar to Head Start…” That’s how Warren and others are characterizing her program, since the federal government would set the rules and options for families who participate. But for anyone familiar with the 50-year failure of Head Start, that’s a huge red flag. Under Barack Obama, even HHS admitted that the after 48 years and 180 billion taxpayer dollars, the early education program offered “little” or “no” benefits for children. In fact, in some instances, Head Start even had harmful effects. Why would anyone want to expand an idea that wasn’t just a failure by Washington’s standards — but by children’s?
If Democrats like Warren truly believed that policies should be driven by “what works,” then it’s time to look beyond the government to real solutions — like parental choice. Ideas like this don’t work — not because parents are too involved, but because politicians are. As NRO’s Carrie Lukas points out, the Left is too busy imposing its own views on America to take families’ opinions into account. If they did, they’d see that they would be heavily subsidizing “parents’ least favorite care option — day care — while doing nothing to make all the others more affordable.”
Even Senator Warren didn’t put her own kids in day care. She flew in Aunt Bee! Yet her plan “assumes that most Americans want their children to attend day-care centers, when in fact, most parents would prefer to be able to care for their children themselves or rely on family-based care or the closest approximation to it. It also assumes that quality child-care centers are associated with positive educational and life outcomes for children. As Steven Rhoads and I detailed in a piece for National Affairs, much research points in the opposite direction.”
What’s worse, this proposal leads to what most parents are fighting to stop: more government indoctrination of children. Don’t think for a second that Democrats are going to give you the money to send your child to the day care of your choice. It’ll be a government-approved facility that meets certain standards that bureaucrats set — meaning, under extremists like Warren, it will probably exclude churches and other religious centers. The Democrats’ motivation isn’t lightening the load on families or making it easier for parents to work. It’s getting kids into the government pipeline earlier and earlier. The best and safest place for a child is with their parents. If you look at the curriculum in today’s schools, it runs completely counter to what moms and dads are teaching their kids at home — especially on the issue of human sexuality. That’s the model Democrats would be expanding here.
We want to break the government’s grip on our children. That’s why we need parental choice — not just in day care, but in everything.
Originally published here.
Arkansas Pulls the Trigger on Roe
While the U.S. Senate gears up for what should be a no-brainer vote on infanticide, the states are nudging their own needles to the pro-life side. Arkansas is the latest, thanks to Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) — and hardly the last.
Tuesday, with a nationwide protest over late-term abortion raging, Arkansas became the fifth state to make it clear where they stand if the issue ever returns to states. The minute Roe v. Wade is overturned, a growing number of states will already be prepared. Under the “trigger law” that Hutchinson just signed, Arkansas would immediately ban abortion if the ruling pro-lifers have been praying for ever came down.
Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota have similar laws on the books — and Kentucky and Tennessee may be next. “It’s time for the United States to redress and correct what many believe is a grave injustice and a crime against humanity which is being perpetuated by the decisions of Roe v. Wade,” said the Arkansas bill sponsor. Under the law, abortion will be completely outlawed, except in medical emergencies. It also, LifeNews points out, allows abortionists to be prosecuted.
“In 2017, the abortion advocacy group NARAL predicted that 13 states immediately would ban abortions if the high court overturns Roe. Last year, the Center for Reproductive Rights put their estimate at 22 states,” Michaiah Bilger reports. After another year like this one, who knows how high that number could go? If you live in Kentucky or Tennessee, help us get to 24! Contact your state leaders and support trigger laws like Arkansas’s.
Originally published here.
The Washington Post’s Claim to (De)fame
Most jobs won’t let you distort the facts and get away with it. But the media’s no ordinary institution. After years of passing off fake news as journalism, the press has gotten off easy. Sure, they’ve taken a hit for their lies at the polls, but most Americans agree: it’s time for them to take a hit in the wallet too. And Covington Catholic student Nick Sandmann may be finally be the one to make them pay.
It’s been a little over a month since the press raced to paint a group of innocent pro-life teenagers as a gang of Trump-loving thugs. The media’s narrative was so ferocious — so violently inaccurate — that the Kentucky school where the boys attended had to be temporarily shut down. Death threats flooded into the school at such a sickening degree that local police swarmed the parking lot when the campus finally re-opened. The original narrative was that the boys were harassing an older Native American named Nathan Phillips. Videos later proved that Nick and his friends weren’t harassing anyone — if anything, they were being harassed by the supposed victim.
But the nationwide damage — on every news channel and social media platform — had already been done. Nick’s story had taken a life-changing turn, and very few on the Left apologized for it. But outlets like the Washington Post will be sorry, his attorneys say now, especially if they have to fork over $250 million in damages. To the cheers of so many other victims of the media’s fake news, the Sandmann family is suing the newspaper for what it called “a modern-day form of McCarthyism.”
“The Post bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life,” attorneys wrote. “The Washington Post ignored basic journalistic standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump.” They knew the articles were “false and defamatory,” the suit alleges, but they ran with them in the hopes that others would republish them, “including media outlets and others on social media.”
Donald Trump, who’s spent more than two years as the liberal press’s punching bag, tweeted how thrilled he was that Nick was fighting back. “Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!” For the majority of Americans, who are sick of the media getting a free pass to lie and distort, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Maybe next time other outlets will think twice about smearing a conservative just to fit their narrative.
As we’ve seen with the Jussie Smollett embarrassment, that jolt couldn’t come soon enough. The Empire actor, who elaborately faked a hate crime, created the perfect environment for smoking out the liberal media who, as Ben Shapiro put it, are “more interested in pushing a Left-wing agenda than sticking to facts.”
“Why did so many on the political Left buy into the obviously incredible story from the moment that it broke? Because it perfectly fit narratives that the Left loves: the narrative of America as racist, homophobic hellhole; the narrative of Trump supporters as violent bigots; the narrative of Trump himself as an inspirational figure for such violent bigots. The story was too good to be true. So no one cared whether it was or not.”
It was Nick Sandmann all over again. The liberal mobs rushed to judgment, savoring the opportunity to show that every conservative American is an evil homophobic racist misogynistic sociopath. Now, those people — which include more than 50 media groups, celebrities and politicians — will finally be held accountable. Sandmann’s attorneys sent letters (warning of possible defamation suits to come) to everyone from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and CNN to actors Alyssa Milano and Jim Carrey.
Maybe they, like the folks at Vox, will try to pawn it off as “a relatively small incident that happened more than a month ago.” (Funny, it didn’t seem like a “relatively small incident” when most major news outlets had wall-to-wall bash-fests.) They’ll have a tough time persuading the courts of that. As George Washington University Law School’s Jonathan Turley points out, “The harm to the student is obvious, but the harm to journalism may be even more pronounced.”
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC Action senior writers.