Political Payola

Photo: Columnist Armstrong Williams accepted money from the Education Dept. to support the No Child Left Behind Act in 2003, but insists that his column (now cancelled) wasn't paid for by the Bush Administration.





Remember the uproar over Armstrong Williams being paid $241,000 by the Education Department (and Maggie Gallagher and her $21,000 contract for writing nice things about Bush's "healhty marriage" plan)? Well, USA Today has the followup:

"One Sunday last October, readers of The Dallas Morning News opened their newspapers to an angry op-ed penned by Marcela Garcini, a self-described 'ninja parent' who took the Dallas school system to task for dragging its heels on No Child Left Behind, saying it was 'limiting the future and opportunities for our children.'. . . .

"Garcini wanted readers to know that, thanks to NCLB, students in 'failing' schools now had the right to transfer to better-performing schools. 'It's time to say "basta!"(stop!). Our children don't want, nor does any child deserve, to be left behind.'

"Appearing 23 days before the Nov. 2 election, her piece read like an ad for President Bush's 2002 education reform law, a cornerstone of his domestic policy. But what readers never knew was that, for all practical purposes, it was an ad—paid for, in part, by taxpayers, through a grant from the Bush administration.

"In 2003 and 2004, Garcini's nonprofit group, the Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options (CREO), received two unsolicited grants, totaling $900,000, from the U.S. Education Department, to promote school choice and tutoring options for Hispanic children. But in two op-eds in the Morning News and a third that appeared in two Spanish-language publications earlier in 2004, Garcini never disclosed, as was required by law, that CREO had received the government grants.

"Federal investigators probing the department's public relations contracts this week say the department has given nearly $4.7 million to groups including Garcini's to promote administration education priorities since 2002, but that in 10 of 11 cases examined, the groups didn't disclose -- in print, on radio or in other media, such as brochures or handbooks -- that taxpayer funds were used."

Give me a moment while I get over my shock.


-Twiz