I’ve written extensively on the Democrats’ use of kiddie human shields to pimp everything from the health care takeover to the Chicago crony-lympics bid to the anti-obesity campaign.

Now, the Education Department is signaling that it will exploit its access to federal school lunch enrollees to dragoon more kids into the government health care empire.

Read:

I joined Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius last week to highlight the Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge to enroll five million children in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) within five years. A phenomenal coalition of partners, ranging from state governors to national advocacy organizations, has stepped up to the challenge to enroll kids and educate families.

I want to thank my good friend Secretary Sebelius for her extraordinary leadership and unwavering commitment to ensure that everyone has access to excellent and affordable health care.

…Our job is to make sure everyone knows how to enroll. There is a role for every member of the school community, including superintendents, principals, teachers, school nurses, and lunch room staff to get involved.

In fact, recent federal legislation has made it possible to use the school lunch application to do more than refer families to health coverage. Under certain conditions, school lunch programs can share information from a student’s application with Medicaid and CHIP, speeding up the process of getting children covered.

Three points:

1) The use of school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls raises all sorts of privacy red flags.

2) The idea that it is the federal educrats’ job to “make sure everyone knows how to enroll” demonstrates how extensive their mission creep has grown.

3) The liberal view on uninsured families is that they are ignorant of the government health insurance programs and more needs to be spent and done to conduct “outreach” and education.” But libs’ own surveys show that awareness of the program is plenty high. Many parents have simply chosen voluntarily to keep their kids out of big nanny clutches.

Via NCPA:

A survey commissioned by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide in June found:

* Awareness of the SCHIP program more than doubled in a single year, from 24 percent in 2000 to 57 percent in 2001.

* Similarly, 54 percent of parents now understand that their children may be eligible for the program, up from 36 percent last year.

Another study, conducted by the Urban Institute, found that 88 percent of low-income respondents had heard of SCHIP and/or Medicaid – but fewer than one-fourth (24 percent) of those ever inquired about the programs. As Figure I shows, of low-income parents whose children had no health care coverage:

* 22.1 percent said they “did not need or want” the program.

* 17.7 percent said they did not think their child was eligible.

* 9.5 percent thought there would be too many “administrative hassles.”

* 17.8 percent said their children had been enrolled in SCHIP or Medicaid at some time in the past year, but no longer were.

* 11 percent said they had applied but never enrolled their children.

…We know that virtually all those who said they didn’t want or need SCHIP or Medicaid consider themselves to be in excellent to good health. We also know that a large number (28.9 percent) of their uninsured neighbors and friends have had experience with these programs and rejected them by dropping out or by applying but never enrolling. Another 10 percent say the “administrative hassles” prevent them from enrolling.

People talk, and word gets around. SCHIP and Medicaid have been tried and rejected by nearly a third of low-income uninsured. People in good health say they don’t want it or need it – it is too much of a hassle. Besides, they know that if circumstances change, if one of the kids gets sick and needs serious care, they can get covered instantly. In many cases, they can enroll after they receive the care and have Medicaid pay the bill. They don’t see any need to pre-enroll just to satisfy some bureaucrat who wants to count noses.

The state marketing efforts and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s push for enrollment all try to pretend that SCHIP is not a government program. The Kaiser Commission report on the selling of SCHIP was explicit: “The ads are universally appealing and polished-looking, with a commercial feel. It is not immediately evident that the ads are for a government health program at all.” Consumer advocates might take exception to this deceptive advertising, but it doesn’t matter. Poor people are not stupid. They know what’s going on, and they know this is a government program. They reject it for the same reason the advertisements try to hide the fact. People believe that government programs aimed at the poor are degrading and stigmatizing. They may enroll the kids if the kids get sick and there is no other choice, but they aren’t likely to be happy about it.

Rather than wasting money on all this feel-good, happy talk trying to prop up a program people say they don’t want and don’t need, perhaps we should simply make the money available to the uninsured so they can go out and buy a real insurance policy, one they can keep when they have stopped being poor.

Empowering these families to make their own private health care choices, however, would mean relinquishing power — the very opposite of the Obamacare architects’ and federal educrats’ agenda.

As I’ve said before in explaining the true agenda behind the federal school lunch expansion: Cede the children, feed the state.

For those of you who may have forgotten, radical leftist Democrat Rep. Jim McDermott earned the infamous moniker “Baghdad Jim” after traveling to Iraq in the fall of 2002 for a Saddam-backed junket before the U.S. invasion.

McDermott is also the defiant lawbreaker who leaked a tape of an illegally tapped phone conversation by GOP leaders to the New York Times. McDermott was found by a federal appeals court to have violated the rights of GOP Leader John Boehner, who was heard on the 1996 call involving former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and was ordered to to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The court ordered McDermott to pay Boehner more than $700,000 for leaking the taped conversation. The figure includes $60,000 in damages and more than $600,000 in legal costs. A court had to force McDermott to pay the money — now up to $1 million. It’s unclear how much he has actually ponied up since that ruling.

Which brings us to March 2010: McDermott is still in office, backed by corruptocrat Democrat leaders. He took to the House floor over the weekend to condemn conservatives (including yours truly) and “Teabaggers” for their “indecency.” Our crime? Having the audacity to question Democrat pro-health care takeover anecdotes and to challenge their indecent kiddie human shield strategy.

You’re one to talk about “indecency,” Baghdad Jim.

Here is Larry Scary O’Donnell — who can usually be seen frothing at the mouth with bulging neck veins as he melts down on MSNBC — sloooowly reading a teleprompter as he chastises me, Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck for “attacking” 11-year-old Marcelas Owens. Nice to see your Valium working, Larry:

As usual, he gets basic facts wrong — like accusing Rush and me of being “desperate to catch up” with Beck. Actually, he’s got the timeline upside-down, as the enraged Media Matters chronology correctly lays out here.

My syndicated column raising inconvenient questions about Owens’ case appeared was published on March 10 and my follow-up post on Harry Reid hiding behind Owens was published on March 12.

Rush addressed the Democrat exploitation of Owens on March 12.

Beck then discussed the case on March 15.

Also wrong: At 3:28, O’Donnell falsely claims I called the parents of S-CHIP poster child Graeme Frost “spoiled brats” — a misattribution which he also regurgitated from Media Matters.

Also moronic: At 6:45 in the video, O’Donnell says conservatives can’t find a single person on Medicaid or Medicare who is unhappy with his/her coverage. Ahem, meet NYTimes columnist Nick Kristof’s favorite health care poster boy, John Brodniak.

Facts, schmacts.

At 7:25 in the video, liberal columnist Chris Hayes of the Nation decries the tendency of conservative pundits to “raise questions and point out errors.” God forbid we do that. Doing the health care anecdote-vetting the Left won’t do? FASCISTS!!!

O’Donnell dubs our analyses of Owens and his left-wing activist grandmother’s claims “childish attacks.” But it’s immature demagogues like O’Donnell who refuse to grow up. I repeat what I said about the NYTimes’ shoddy, gullible, unquestioning coverage of the story four days ago:

The Times fails to mention that Owens’ grandmother and family have been longtime activists for the left-wing, single-payer advocates of the Washington Community Action Network or that the boy and his grandmother traveled to Washington with sponsorship from the Astroturf lobbyists of the Health Care for America Now outfit, which characterized Marcelas as an “insurance abuse survivor.”

Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence that any health insurer ever “abused” Marcelas. Never mind that the family has made no claim that Marcelas himself has survived without insurance (in Washington state, low-income children have been covered either through Medicaid, SCHIP, or the SCHIP expansion program Apple Health for Kids). Newsbusters is also covering the MSM’s soft-shoe coverage of the Democrats’ use of the Owens’ kiddie shield here, here, and here.

Not that gullible health care sob story coverage is anything new to the Times. See: Unbelievable update: The crappiest NYTimes column on Obamacare just got crappier; Update: Kristof’s disingenuous non-response.

The usual hyperventilating from the Left — horrible conservatives “targeting” poor, innocent kid! conservatives “assault” poor, innocent kid! — just proves my point. Despite President Obama’s repeated admonition that health care reform is a “complex issue that can’t be reduced to snippets,” it’s exactly what Reid, Murray, Schumer, and his Owens’ grandmother propped up young Marcelas to do. Anyone who questions the narrative and absolute moral authority of the kiddie human shield is a heartless, right-wing stalker who should be vilified, if not arrested.

As always, the current ruling majority is incapable of holding an adult discussion on the costs and consequences of its plans.

(Makestickers.com)

***

Attacks on Fox News for vetting President Obama’s Ohio poster patient, Natoma Canfield, in 3, 2, 1…

Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.

Natoma Canfield’s battles with cancer and with insurance companies have become a centerpiece of President Obama’s campaign to pass a health care system overhaul.

Natoma Canfield, the cancer-stricken woman who has become a centerpiece of President Obama’s push for health care reform, will not lose her home over her medical bills and will probably qualify for financial aid, a top official at the Cleveland medical center treating her told FoxNews.com.

Though Canfield’s sister Connie Anderson said her sibling is afraid she’ll lose her house and Obama warned at an Ohio rally Monday that the patient is “racked with worry” about the cost of tests and treatment, she is already being screened for financial help.

Lyman Sornberger, executive director of patient financial services at the Cleveland Clinic, said “all indications” at the outset are that she will be considered for assistance.

“She may be eligible for state Medicaid … and/or she will be eligible for charity (care) of some form or type. … In my personal opinion, she will be eligible for something,” he said, adding that Canfield should not be worried about losing her home.

“Cleveland Clinic will not put a lien on her home,” he said.

On Wednesday, I told you about how the Democrats have resurrected the kiddie human shield strategy to salvage their health care takeover plans. My column introduced you to the boy featured in the clip — Marcelas Owens, who just turned 11:

One of President Obama’s youngest lobbyists – 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Washington state – traveled to D.C. on Tuesday on the dime of astroturf group, HCAN (Health Care for America Now). His 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. According to the family, Ms. Owens – a single mother of three — lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She received emergency care and treatment throughout her illness, but died in 2007.

Young Marcelas – goaded by his left-wing activist grandmother and promoted by Democrat Sen. Patty Murray — is now a regular on the pro-Obamacare circuit and is leading a congressional sit-in until the Democrat plan passes. He admits he doesn’t understand the complexities of health insurance reform and doesn’t “think it’s anyone’s fault” that his mom passed away. “But they could have done more” for her, he says.

It’s a heart-wrenching story, but the tale raises more questions than it answers. Washington state offers a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’s mom. Why didn’t she enroll? Second, she died nine months after she reportedly lost her health insurance. By the time she lost her coverage through her employer, she was apparently already in dire health straits. It’s not clear that additional doctors’ visits in the subsequent months would have prevented her death.

All that said, the Owens’ case demonstrates the flaws of the employer-based system of health insurance. It needs real reform. Unfortunately, the current crop of Democrat plans would leave the employer-based system fully intact. What we need are grown-ups to start over from scratch and leave the kids on the playground.

But just as he elevated youngster Graeme Frost to champion the S-CHIP entitlement expansion, Harry Reid put Marcelas Owens in front of the cameras to help deflect tough health care policy and political questions. It worked. Here’s the superficial coverage from the NYTimes, which touts Marcelas as “a new face in the health care debate” and swallows the Owens’ family story whole without asking a single question of any independent state agency or outside source for verification:

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday sought to put a human face on the health care debate, and a cute face at that.

Marcelas Owens, a fifth-grader from Seattle who turned 11 on Wednesday, joined Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other senior Democrats at a news conference on Thursday.

“We know health reform is not about numbers, it’s about people,” Mr. Reid said. “It’s about pain, real pain, suffered by real people.”

The boy’s mother, Tiffany Owens, died of pulmonary hypertension in 2007 at age 27 after losing her health insurance because she could no longer work. Ms. Owens had been an assistant manager at a Jack in the Box restaurant.

Imagine them taking any conservative opponent’s life story at face value (see: Joe the Plumber).

The Times fails to mention that Owens’ grandmother and family have been longtime activists for the left-wing, single-payer advocates of the Washington Community Action Network or that the boy and his grandmother traveled to Washington with sponsorship from the Astroturf lobbyists of the Health Care for America Now outfit, which characterized Marcelas as an “insurance abuse survivor.”

Never mind that there is not a shred of evidence that any health insurer ever “abused” Marcelas. Never mind that the family has made no claim that Marcelas himself has survived without insurance (in Washington state, low-income children have been covered either through Medicaid, SCHIP, or the SCHIP expansion program Apple Health for Kids). Newsbusters is also covering the MSM’s soft-shoe coverage of the Democrats’ use of the Owens’ kiddie shield here, here, and here.

Not that gullible health care sob story coverage is anything new to the Times. See: Unbelievable update: The crappiest NYTimes column on Obamacare just got crappier; Update: Kristof’s disingenuous non-response.

The usual hyperventilating from the Left — horrible conservatives “targeting” poor, innocent kid! conservatives “assault” poor, innocent kid! — just proves my point. Despite President Obama’s repeated admonition that health care reform is a “complex issue that can’t be reduced to snippets,” it’s exactly what Reid, Murray, Schumer, and his Owens’ grandmother propped up young Marcelas to do. Anyone who questions the narrative and absolute moral authority of the kiddie human shield is a heartless, right-wing stalker who should be vilified, if not arrested.

As always, the current ruling majority is incapable of holding an adult discussion on the costs and consequences of its plans.

Gives a whole ‘nother meaning to No Child Left Behind…

(Makestickers.com)

***

Commenter Bob on Staten Island: “I am glad Senator Reid sees this eleven year old as an equal, because I see most of congress as equal to eleven year olds.”

***

On a separate note: Reid’s wife and daughter were involved in a serious car crash in the Beltway area Thursday afternoon. Liberal readers are already e-mailing that I am an evil #*&^% for exposing Reid’s tactics while his relatives have sustained injuries. I wish only the best for his family. But the unfortunate traffic accident doesn’t make Harry Reid immune from criticism. It’s another bad shield.

***

Proving my point again:

ongress wouldn’t listen to people like Tiffany Owens talk about the need for affordable health care coverage, but maybe they will listen to her 11-year-old orphaned son, Marcelas.

Owens died, her family says, because she developed pulmonary hypertension and was unable to work. When Owens lost her job, she lost her health coverage and could not afford to buy any on her own. Owens fought for passage of health care reform in her final days, and now her son is carrying on in her memory.

“I’m telling the members of Congress that the health care bill should be passed because everyone deserves health care,” Marcelas said during an interview on MSNBC.

“The health care system is broken, and it caused my mother’s death,” Marcelas added.

Talk about wisdom coming from the mouth of babes.Marcelas is an articulate and heart-wrenching example of why we need health care reform in this country.

My column shines light on the Hail Mary strategy of the Demcare-peddlers: Quick, hide behind the children! Just a reminder that President Obama will be in St. Charles, Missouri today for a closed-door, invitation-only Kabuki health care speech to high school students and then he’ll be heading off for a fund-raiser with Claire McCaskill. Tea Party activists are organizing two counter-protests — get all the info on the who, what, where, when at Gateway Pundit.

The column notes two new developments — Hill buzz over some Senate Democrat leaders’ plan to attach the nationalization of student loans to the health care reconciliation bill and the use of a new, dubious poster boy for Demcare, Marcelas Owens. The story doesn’t add up, and as usual, anyone who questions the logic and holes in these anecdotes will be labeled a “stalker.” Been there, done that…

***

Desperate Dems cling to human kiddie shield
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

Have you noticed something about the audiences that President Obama has cherry-picked to cheer his government health-care takeover road show? They’re getting younger and younger. Today, Obama brings the traveling campaign to St. Charles High School in St. Louis, Missouri for a closed-door, invitation-only speech. If he doesn’t end the endless “No More Time For Talk” talks soon, he’ll be peddling Democrat reconciliation tactics on Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob Squarepants.

But desperate times call for demagogic measures. True to form, the Obama White House is wielding the human kiddie shield as its last-stand defense for Demcare.

On Monday, Obama surrounded himself with a ticketed-only crowd of Arcadia University college students in Pennsylvania (sprinkled with purple-shirted officials from the Service Employees International Union, natch). The Washington-based commander-in-chief traveled outside his Beltway bubble to a campus bubble to trash the political climate which he leads.

“That’s just how Washington is. They can’t help it,” he pontificated as the idealist young students nodded like empty bobbleheads. “They?”

You won’t be surprised by Obama’s biggest applause line of the speech: Peddling a Big Nanny provision in the Senate-passed health care bill that requires insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Vowed Santa Obama: “If you’re a young adult, which many of you are, you’ll be able to stay on your parents’ insurance policy until you’re 26 years old.” Whoops and huzzahs erupted from the eager wards of the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State.

As I’ve reported before, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it’s these very government health care mandates that contribute to rising health care costs.

But there was no time for higher learning at Arcadia University. Out: education. In: adulation. “I love you!” screamed a cult follower in the stands. “Love you back,” Obama responded.

Now, comes word from The Hill that Senate Democrat leaders want to graft Obama’s single-player plan to nationalize the student loan market onto the Senate health care reconciliation bill. That way, Obama’s college-age foot soldiers can argue that a vote against Demcare is a vote against The Children.

How low can they go? One of President Obama’s youngest lobbyists – 11-year-old Marcelas Owens of Washington state – traveled to D.C. on Tuesday on the dime of astroturf group, HCAN (Health Care for America Now). His 27-year-old mother, Tiffany, died of pulmonary hypertension. According to the family, Ms. Owens – a single mother of three — lost her job as a fast-food manager and lost her insurance. She received emergency care and treatment throughout her illness, but died in 2007.

Young Marcelas – goaded by his left-wing activist grandmother and promoted by Democrat Sen. Patty Murray — is now a regular on the pro-Obamacare circuit and is leading a congressional sit-in until the Democrat plan passes. He admits he doesn’t understand the complexities of health insurance reform and doesn’t “think it’s anyone’s fault” that his mom passed away. “But they could have done more” for her, he says.

It’s a heart-wrenching story, but the tale raises more questions than it answers. Washington state offers a plethora of existing government assistance programs to laid-off and unemployed workers like Marcelas’s mom. Why didn’t she enroll? Second, she died nine months after she reportedly lost her health insurance. By the time she lost her coverage through her employer, she was apparently already in dire health straits. It’s not clear that additional doctors’ visits in the subsequent months would have prevented her death.

All that said, the Owens’ case demonstrates the flaws of the employer-based system of health insurance. It needs real reform. Unfortunately, the current crop of Democrat plans would leave the employer-based system fully intact. What we need are grown-ups to start over from scratch and leave the kids on the playground.

Nanny State Gone Wild: Defining dependency up
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

The greatest gifts you can give your children can’t be boxed and bowed. Consider the timeless gift of self-sufficiency – a stubborn thirst to leave the nest, make it own your own, and live as a free-willed adult. It’s a concept that Big Nanny Democrats are sabotaging at every legislative turn.

Several times during the sneaky weekend debate on the government health care takeover bill this past Sunday, Democrats hailed a provision requiring insurance plans that cover dependents to provide benefits to children up to age 26. Democrat Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Harkin both specifically championed the unfunded mandate in their floor statements.

This manifestation of the Nanny State is especially galling given the massive levels of generational theft that the Democrat majority has presided over the last year. If they truly cared about the physical and financial well-being of young Americans, they’d stop piling on expensive regulations that simply put affordable health insurance out of their reach. I propose a new symbol for the Democrats. Out: Donkey. In: A giant adult pacifier.

I can tell you what most fiscally responsible parents are thinking when they hear the feds “taking care” of everyone else’s adult “children” for them by confiscating their tax dollars and forcing private companies to comply: You’ve got to be kidding me. Yes, Virginia, there are still some of us left who believe our children shouldn’t depend on a government-manufactured umbilical cord as they approach their third decade on earth.

Nonetheless, there are now an estimated 20 states that have already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children. The slacker mandates cover “kids” ranging in age from 24 to 31. And it’s these very government health care mandates that are driving up the cost of insurance. Health policy researcher Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Institute reported that in New Jersey, Nanny State peddlers claimed the adult kiddie protection law would help 100,000 uninsured young adults. “Yet in two years, only 6% of that estimate has been realized. The primary reason—health insurance is still too expensive.”

Wisconsin has experienced similar results. “Whenever you insure somebody whom you didn’t insure before there’s some additional risk,” insurance expert James Mueller told the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal. Mueller points to the premium increases that have followed over coverage mandates on employer-sponsored plans. “The problem with all these good ideas is there’s funding necessary,” Mueller said. In Wisconsin, adult children are not only covered, but also the children of those “children” if they live in single-parent homes.

As he rammed this mandate and the mountain of other government regulations buried in Demcare, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid promised on Sunday: “We are reshaping the nation. That’s what we want to do.” Indeed, this defining dependency up phenomenon is part of the larger push for single-payer-by-proxy. The other universal health care Trojan Horse signed into law this year – the expansion of SCHIP (the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) – welcomed more non-“children” into the government insurance fold.

Both political parties have advocated federal waivers to use SCHIP funds for adults, including parents of Medicaid/SCHIP children, caretaker relatives, legal guardians, and childless adults. According to the General Accounting Office, SCHIP-funded expenditures on adults nationwide “totaled about $674 million in 2006.” J.P. Wieske of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance notes that the bennies incentivize parents to drop their private coverage in order to take advantage of free or discounted health insurance for their children. “It has become a program for the middle class at the expense of the poor.”

This is the engine that will power the Demcare architects’ most naked, radical ambitions: “Health care as an inalienable right,” as Sen. Harkin put it. How? By breeding a massive permanent culture of dependency and bottomless debt in the name of the “children” from birth through quarterlife — and beyond.

My syndicated column today digs a little deeper into President Obama’s September 8 speech to schoolchildren. The school guides now featured front and center on the www.ed.gov website were developed by the White House Teaching Fellows — a group which includes several activist educators as you’ll see below.

Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in old neighborhood pal and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers’ pedagogical philosophy. It was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge way when the two served as board members of the educational foundation — and it is the Washington Obama way now.

***

Obama’s classroom campaign: No junior lobbyist left behind
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

“ABC” stands for All Barack’s Children. On September 8, young students across the country will be watching television. Yes, they’ll be parked in front of the boob tube and computer screens watching President Obama’s address on education.

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan dispatched letters to principals nationwide boasting that “This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation’s school children about persisting and succeeding in school.” But the goal is not merely morale-boosting. According to White House event-related guides developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching Fellows, grade-school students will be told to “listen to the speech” and “could think about the following:”

*What is the President trying to tell me?

*What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

After the speech, teachers will ask students:

*What do you think the President wants us to do?

*Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

Obama’s White House Teaching Fellows include Chicago high school educator Xian Barrett, a fierce opponent of charter schools who founded a “Social Justice Club” and bussed students to protests and Michelle Bissonette, a Los Altos, Calif., teacher who is “focused on developing my leadership as a more culturally and racially conscious educator.”

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

And last year’s presidential campaign saw disgraceful abuses of power by pro-Obama instructors. In New Rochelle, New York, elementary students were given an in-class assignment to color in drawings of Barack Obama – including a picture of a campaign button featuring his face and the slogan “Students for Obama 2008.”

In Cumberland County, N.C., a fifth-grade-school teacher turned a “civics” discussion into an unhinged harangue against a girl who said her family supported John McCain.

Nor can the Democrats’ strategy of using kiddie human shields to advance their legislative agenda be overlooked in the context and timing of Obama’s speech. Children have been front and center of the Left’s push for an ever-increasing government role in health care – from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s use of seventh-grader Baltimore school kid Graeme Frost to push for the massive S-CHIP entitlement expansion, to President Obama’s none-too-coincidental choice of Massachusetts 11-year-old town hall questioner Julia Hall (the daughter of a prominent Obama activist/organizer who assailed Obamacare critics’ “mean” signs), to the Kennedy family’s decision to put grandson Max Allen on center stage to pray for health care reform at his uncle’s funeral last week.

So when the Department of Education directs schools to gather children ‘round the TV monitors for Obama’s pep talk and then do this…

• Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in those areas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic so community and country goals come more readily.

• Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change.

***

Postscript: Stanley Kurtz’s invaluable investigation of the Obama/Ayers/Chicago Annenberg Challenge ties last fall is must-read. A very timely and relevant excerpt:

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago’s public schools. The funding came from a national education initiative by Ambassador Walter Annenberg. In early 1995, Mr. Obama was appointed the first chairman of the board, which handled fiscal matters. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation’s other key body, the “Collaborative,” which shaped education policy.

The CAC’s basic functioning has long been known, because its annual reports, evaluations and some board minutes were public. But the Daley archive contains additional board minutes, the Collaborative minutes, and documentation on the groups that CAC funded and rejected. The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

…The CAC’s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.

In works like “City Kids, City Teachers” and “Teaching the Personal and the Political,” Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? “I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist,” Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, “Sixties Radicals,” at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

…CAC translated Mr. Ayers’s radicalism into practice. Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate with “external partners,” which actually got the money. Proposals from groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn).

Mr. Obama once conducted “leadership training” seminars with Acorn, and Acorn members also served as volunteers in Mr. Obama’s early campaigns. External partners like the South Shore African Village Collaborative and the Dual Language Exchange focused more on political consciousness, Afrocentricity and bilingualism than traditional education. CAC’s in-house evaluators comprehensively studied the effects of its grants on the test scores of Chicago public-school students. They found no evidence of educational improvement.

…Mr. Ayers is the founder of the “small schools” movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to “confront issues of inequity, war, and violence.” He believes teacher education programs should serve as “sites of resistance” to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his “Teaching Toward Freedom,” is to “teach against oppression,” against America’s history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming “guilt by association.” Yet the issue here isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

On June 2, I called attention to the Democrats’ plans to complete a government tobacco takeover.

The next step took place today while America slept. Another day, another industry grab:

Congress struck the government’s strongest anti-smoking blow in decades Thursday with a Senate vote to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in cigarettes, drastically curtail ads and ban candied tobacco products aimed at young people.

Cigarette foes say the changes could cut into the 400,000 deaths every year caused by smoking and reduce the $100 billion in annual health care costs linked to tobacco.

The legislation, one of the most dramatic anti-smoking initiatives since the U.S. surgeon general’s warning 45 years ago that tobacco causes lung cancer, would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Here’s the roll call vote. Only 17 Nays:

Banks? Check.

Auto industry? Check.

Housing market? Check.

Health care? Getting there.

Tobacco? Why the hell not?

The Senate took a step Tuesday toward giving the government some controls over the tobacco industry, bolstering the chances that a long-sought goal of anti-smoking advocates will finally be realized.

The 84-11 Senate vote to consider the bill came a month after the House overwhelmingly passed a similar measure giving the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Sixty votes were needed to advance the legislation, and the success in reaching that threshold increase the likelihood that the Senate will move to a final vote by the end of the week. If the House concurs with the Senate measure, it would go to President Barack Obama, who is ready to sign it into law.

The Senate vote came on a day when Obama is to meet Senate Democratic leaders on courses they may take to bring down the runaway costs of health care.

Supporters of the FDA legislation, such as the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association, say controls over tobacco products would be a good place to start: they say tobacco use kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, resulting in $96 billion in health care costs.

Under the measure, the FDA could restrict tobacco marketing, specifically to young people; order changes to the ingredients in tobacco products; and require more prominent health warnings. It would ban remaining tobacco-brand sponsorships of sports and entertainment events and restrict vending machines to adult-only facilities. It would bar the use of “reduced harm” descriptions such as “light,” “mild” or “low.”

It would impose a fee on cigarette manufacturers to pay for FDA regulation.

The FDA would not have the authority to ban cigarettes and other tobacco products.

“The FDA would not have the authority to ban cigarettes and other tobacco products.” Well, of course not, silly. They need the taxes to pay for S-CHIP, Obamacare, etc., etc., etc.

***

I particularly like this detail: “Under the measure, the FDA could…order changes to the ingredients in tobacco products.”

Dried arugula flakes?

Via the WSJ:

Dan Nemets, a sophomore at Central Michigan University, likes the TV show “Family Guy,” heavy-metal musician Ozzy Osbourne and a good pipe.

Mr. Nemets took up pipe smoking 18 months ago after strolling into a pipe and tobacco store near the Mount Pleasant campus with a friend. Mr. Nemets can’t smoke in his dorm room but has networked with other youthful smokers on Facebook in the Collegiate Gentlemen’s Pipe Smoking League.

“They say everyone has an inner child,” the 19-year-old says. “I guess I have an inner old man.”

Friday is International Pipe-Smoking Day, when a number of puffers will unite to protest tobacco taxes and smoking bans. They will also engage in slow-smoking competitions to see who can keep a pipe going the longest. Each contestant is given just two matches. Events, which will go on all weekend, are promoted by the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association.

Health advocates may warn of oral cancer, mouth lesions and rotting teeth, but Mr. Nemets and his online brethren are in the vanguard of an unlikely set of smokers taking to the brier — people in their 20s.

“They’re eager to learn,” says 71-year-old Vernon E. Vig, president of the New York Pipe Club and the United Pipe Clubs of America. Mr. Vig started smoking a pipe as an undergrad at Carleton College 53 years ago. “Back then, everyone smoked a pipe,” Mr. Vig says. His group, which meets monthly in Manhattan, has seen a definite increase in college students and young professionals, he says.

What are the Big Nanny liberals gonna do? Remember: While they spend tens of millions on government smoking cessation programs, they depend on smokers to fund their universal health care expansions.

What to do? What to do?

He warned us. After signing the universal health care Trojan Horse S-CHIP bill into law yesterday, President Obama took his “next step” this afternoon — quietly signing a memorandum revoking the Bush administration’s attempts to ensure that government-funded health insurance for working poor people actually went to working poor people.

The road to Hillarycare is paved with incremental encroachments:

President Barack Obama made more children from middle-class families eligible for government health insurance Thursday by lifting a directive imposed by his predecessor.

In 2007, the Bush administration said it would strictly adhere to guidelines that limited the scope of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

A year later, it backed off its threat to penalize states that enrolled middle-class children without first proving they had enrolled nearly all poorer children first.

In a memorandum issued Thursday, Obama completely lifted the restrictions, which many governors and Democratic lawmakers said were nearly impossible to meet.

Obama said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services that “tens of thousand of children have been denied health care coverage” because of the directive.

Under the restrictions, at least 95 percent of poor children eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP had to already be in those programs before states could begin using federal funds to cover higher-income children.

Also, states covering higher-income children had to make sure individuals were without health insurance for one year before they were allowed to get government-sponsored coverage.

Obama’s memo was issued a day after he signed legislation that will enable about 7 million children to continue coverage through SCHIP and allow another 4 million to sign up.

“The way I see it, providing coverage to 11 million children through SCHIP is a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American,” Obama said Wednesday at a White House bill-signing ceremony.

How about lighting up with these? Et tu, President Obama?

Caption: A box containing Obama cigars is displayed at the Segovia cigar factory in Nicaragua’s northern province of Esteli February 4, 2009. While U.S. President Barack Obama tries to kick an old smoking habit, a Nicaraguan company has produced the latest in a flood of merchandise trying to cash in on his popularity — “Obama” cigars. Granada Cigars, a small outfit based in Nicaragua’s tobacco-growing north, is using local and Cuban leaves to hand-roll cigars wrapped with a band that says “Obama 44,” to commemorate the 44th U.S. President.
REUTERS/Oswaldo Rivas

(link)

As expected, the House today gave final approval to the S-CHIP government health care expansion funded with a massive tax hike on smokers. President Obama is set to sign the bill amid great “progressive” fanfare. The kiddie human shield strategy strikes again.

The roll call vote is up here. The vote was 290-135.

I’ve broken down the list of Republicans who supported this universal health care Trojan Horse. Take note:

Austria
Bono Mack
Buchanan
Cao
Capito
Castle
Dent
Diaz-Balart, L.
Diaz-Balart, M.
Ehlers
Emerson
Frelinghuysen
Gerlach
King (NY)
Kirk
Lance
LaTourette
Lee (NY)
LoBiondo
McCotter
McHugh
Miller (MI)
Moran (KS)
Murphy, Tim
Paulsen
Petri
Platts
Rehberg
Reichert
Rogers (AL)
Ros-Lehtinen
Simpson
Smith (NJ)
Thompson (PA)
Tiberi
Turner
Upton
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)

***

Take heed: President Obama said at the signing that this is just the “first step.”

For once, a moment of pure ideological candor.

Also: Obama’s praise for the provision loosening of eligibility for legal immigrants and their children (a “first step” toward allowing illegal aliens to partake of the bounty) garnered the most applause from the audience and members of Congress.

Rep. Steve King’s statement in opposition to the S-CHIP expansion says it all:

(Hat tip: Ian Schwartz at RCP)

The GOP Senators voting YES to raising taxes in a recession in order to subsidize not-poor families and not-children “children” and non-citizens who don’t have to prove their citizenship:

Alexander (R-TN)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN) ***Note: He’s leading the Gang of 14 charge on the Generational Theft Act in the Senate***
Hutchison (R-TX)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)

Keep an eye on them during the upcoming stimulus battle. And turn up the heat.