The alleged demand for the Federal Government to initiate a giant daycare apparatus, with all the trappings of new bureaucracy and regulation, is a creation of the media who are pursuing a liberal agenda and of special-interest groups which seek to profit by a giant new federal spending project.
This became clear when some of the most prominent national media personalities attended a fundraising dinner for the Children’s Defense Fund, the chief organization lobbying for the baby-sitting bills known as the Dodd ABC bill in the Senate and Hawkins-Downey in the House. If you wondered why those opposed to these liberal spending bills are never invited to appear on television segments about child care, just look at the roster of who attended.
The list of attendees included Washington Post chairman of the board Katharine Graham, CBS 60 Minutes co-host Ed Bradley, PBS MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour co-host Jim Lehrer, NBC Today Show co-host Jane Pauley and her husband Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, CBS news host Charles Kuralt, and U.S. News & World Report’s former editor Roger Rosenblatt. Now you know why ONLY those lobbying FOR federal baby-sitting bills have been interviewed in news segments on those programs, and why news events of those opposed to federal baby-sitting bills are not covered by those publications.
Now you know why CBS 60 Minutes gave a cushy puff interview to Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children’s Defense Fund, with Ed Bradley pitching for the ABC bill, but never gave a minute of coverage to anybody opposed to federal baby-sitting. Now you know why MacNeil-Lehrer has repeatedly featured leading advocates of a federal takeover of preschool children, but has never given equal treatment to those who urge tax cuts as the way to help families with children.
Now you know why PBS “documentaries” on daycare featured such “authorities” as Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), chief sponsor of federal baby-sitting, and Governor Michael Dukakis (remember him?), but never any of the sponsors of tax cuts to better enable parents to raise their own children without interference from federal busybodies.
Now you know why the network TV morning programs manufacture “news” about child care in order to interview the likes of Betty Friedan and Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-CO), but censor out anyone who opposes daycare bills.
The conflict of interest is striking. The news people didn’t attend the fundraiser as reporters but as contributors to a cause, namely the Children’s Defense Fund, a lobbying and advocacy organization for institutional daycare of the type used in socialist Sweden. Roger Rosenblatt was quoted as saying at the dinner “It’s an opportunity to put our voices behind a good cause.”
Yes, indeed, the guests do put their “voices” behind federal daycare. They put their money there, too; the November 30 dinner raked in $400,000 for the Children’s Defense Fund’s lobbying coffers.
The obvious intent of the federal baby-sitting bills is so outrageous that even Congressman George Miller (D-CA) admitted that they are really about “creating a lot of state committees to lobby about child care.” “A lot,” indeed. The bills would create 38,000 local daycare commissions which would empower tax-salaried lobbyists to agitate for more taxpayer’s funds.
Congressman Thomas J. Downey (D-NY) described the advocates of federal baby-sitting as people who are “waiting for Lyndon Johnson to come back and sign the bill” and don’t realize that “the era of the Great Society is over.” The liberals who want to inflict us with federal baby-sitting are trying to take us back to the LBJ era of bigger federal spending for targeted constituencies.
The Children’s Defense Fund has an annual budget of $6 million and 90 employees. Naturally, this outfit expects to cash in with the flow of federal money that would come out of the federal baby-sitting bills and their 38,000 local commissions.
Another advocacy organization attempting to create an illusion of public demand for federal baby-sitting is the National Education Association (NEA). At the height of the Congressional debate on daycare last fall, the NEA sent 200 of its notorious “swat teams” to lobby Congress on this issue.
These swat teams are tax-salaried teachers from selected districts who are flown to Washington, D.C. at the NEA’s expense in order to lobby their Congressman. The NEA 1989 budget includes $7,834,161 for lobbying and political purposes, of which $586,016 is designated for expenses to send two members per district to Washington, D.C. to lobby their own Congressmen.
The whole world is moving away from socialism because it is a proven economic and political failure. The demand that Congress move toward government control and regulation of preschool children is coming solely from the liberal media and from the special-interest advocacy groups which are lining up for the gravy train of a new federal spending project.
