Obama's Phony Promises: Yet Another Example

Cato@Liberty is all over the release of a recent study by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) which looked at the positive effects of the very expensive Head Start program.

And basically… there aren't any long term positive effects: "virtually all academic effects disappear by the end of 1st grade." Adam Schaeffer quotes the HHS report here:

Looking at effects on participants does not change the overall patterns found in the main analysis, which show that Head Start improved children's language and literacy development during the program year but not later and had only one strongly confirmed impact on math ability in a negative direction. (For the 3-year-old cohort, kindergarten teachers reported poorer math skills for children in the Head Start group than children in the control group.)
And Andrew Coulson notes that the mainstream media coverage of this report of expensive failure has been…
Nada. Zilch. Rien du tout, mes amis.
Now: Candidate Obama's website still has the promise:
Obama and Biden review the federal budget line by line and eliminate programs that don't work work or are unnecessary.
Here's Obama in his first debate with John McCain:
We've got to eliminate programs that don't work, and we've got to make sure that the programs that we do have are more efficient and cost less.
Here's Obama in his second debate with John McCain:
I want to go line by line through every item in the federal budget and eliminate programs that don't work
And here in a January 11, 2009 interview with George Stephanopoulos:
Well, you know, these are going to be major challenges. And we're going to have to make some tough choices. Now what I've done is indicated to my team that we've got to eliminate programs that don't work.
… and I'm pretty sure the Google could dig up some more examples; Obama seemed to have an internal hotkey programmed to regurgitate the phrase on demand.

So, Mr. President: Head Start doesn't work. What are you going to do about it?

Fearless prediction: nothing. So far the only education program that the Obama Administration has successfully eliminated is one that did work: the voucher program that allowed poor D. C. kids to attend private schools.


Last Modified 2011-02-04 1:29 PM EDT

"Help Us, Scott Brown. You're Our Only Hope."

No, I haven't heard a campaign ad with that actual phrase. But some have come close.

Our cable provider serves us up a lot of "Massachusettes" stations. Which have essentially become unwatchable, because every other ad is a Scott Brown ad. Or an anti Scott Brown ad. And they're the same ads, over and over.

That's not much of an exaggeration. The Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat, Martha Coakley, has basically given up on trying to persuade people to vote for her. Instead, the ads point out that Scott Brown is a puppy-blending, kitty-kicking Republican. This parody, by a Beantown talk station, isn't too far off the mark:

(Via Campaign Spot, which also has some actual ads, if you'd like to share my pain.)


Last Modified 2012-10-05 5:17 AM EDT