The largest union in the U.S., with more than 3.1 million members, is the teachers union, less known to the public by it’s proper name, the National Education Association (NEA).

In 2007 alone, the NEA spent more than $32 million on political lobbying, and more than $80 million on contributions almost exclusively to left-wing activist groups and non-educational causes like the Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic GAIN, National Council of La Raza, and even the now nefarious ACORN. According to John Berthoud, “Between 1990 and 2002, 95% of NEA candidate and party donations went to Democrats.”

That’s quite the stranglehold, eh?

Beyond totally undermining the media-promoted perception that lobbying is perpetrated mainly by corporations or right-wing enterprises — indeed, of the top 20 all-time lobbyists, only 3 at the bottom tilt their contributions to Republican representatives, most lean heavily towards Democrats — these facts explain how Democrats can be so brazen in their opposition to school choice while practicing it for their own children.

[Wall Street Journal] Michelle and Barack Obama have settled on a Washington, D.C., school for their daughters, and you will not be surprised to learn it is not a public institution. Malia, age 10, and seven-year-old Sasha will attend the Sidwell Friends School, the private academy that educates the children of much of Washington’s elite.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden’s grandchildren attend Sidwell — as did Chelsea Clinton — where tuition is close to $30,000 a year. The Obama girls have been students at the private University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, where tuition runs above $21,000. “A number of great schools were considered,” said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Obama. “In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.”

Note the word “selected,” as in made a choice. The Obamas are fortunate to have the means to send their daughters to private school, and no one begrudges them that choice given that Washington’s public schools are among the worst in America.

Most D.C. parents would also love to be able to choose a better school for their child, but they lack the financial means to do so. The Washington Opportunity Scholarship Program each year offers up to $7,500 to some 1,900 kids to attend private schools, but Democrats in Congress want to kill it. Average family income for kids in the voucher program is about $22,000.

Mr. Obama says he opposes such vouchers, because “although it might benefit some kids at the top, what you’re going to do is leave a lot of kids at the bottom.” The example of his own children refutes that: The current system offers plenty of choice to kids “at the top” while abandoning those at the bottom.

Jonah Goldberg adds the hypocrisy isn’t the issue, rather, “The scandal is that these politicians tolerate such awful [public] schools at all… The Democratic Party continues to tolerate this sort of thing because public school teachers continue to be reliably liberal voters. And their unions cut big checks.”

This, to me, is just beautiful. It really underscores the arrogance of Nancy Pelosi. These fools on Capital Hill better realize that just because they are beholden to union dollers doesn’t mean that fellow free-trading nations are.

[Wall Street Journal] In a grim world economy, the news that Canada and Colombia signed a free trade agreement at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima last week is something to celebrate. Unless you are an American farmer or manufacturer.

The Canada-Colombia FTA will expand bilateral trade by lowering tariffs on a wide variety of products. Some Canadian agricultural products — including wheat, barley and lentils — and many manufactured goods will enter Colombia tariff-free immediately. Running in the reverse direction, Colombian producers will find a more open Canadian market and Canada’s consumers will have more choice at better prices. The agreement will also give new legal protections to investment and improved market access in services.

It’s what you call a win-win. But not for American exporters who compete with Canadians in Colombia. Because Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blocked a vote in Congress on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, American goods will automatically be more expensive than those from Canada by the amount of the existing tariff. If the United Auto Workers thought their Caterpillar exports were losing global ground before, wait until they compete on this not-so-level playing field.

Here’s Jerry Bowyer. I guess the second time is farce.

Ronald Reagan summed up the economic philosophy of the 1970s in one brilliant sentence: “If it moves, tax it; if it keeps moving, regulate it; and if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Doesn’t that sum up to a T the economic era which we have just entered?

We’ve taxed American business to the limits of its tolerance, and by so doing driven a vast number of jobs and amount of capital overseas. Downsized corporations have become easy political targets onto which we load highly expensive labor and environmental regulations.

Eventually, large sectors like banking and auto manufacturing will grind to a halt, and then the political class will advise giving them massive grants of taxpayer money. Of course, that money has to come from someone, so new taxes are proposed, and the cycle begins again.

We saw that pattern largely disappear in the 1980s, banished by the Reagan Revolution. Unwilling to learn from our mistakes, Japan adopted the tax-regulate-subsidize model in the 1990s. It still hasn’t escaped.

“The biggest thing to take from that day is what Marines can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity to fight. A small group of Marines met a numerically superior force and embarrassed them in their own backyard. The insurgents told the townspeople that they were stronger than the Americans, and that day we showed them they were wrong.”

– An anonymous U.S. Marine sniper who personally killed 20 Taliban fighters in Shewan, Afghanistan.

Related: Embed Michael Yon reiterates, “The Iraq War is over.”

From Ace of Spades: Surprise! 9th Circuit Blocks Drilling In One of Few Places Congress Permits It

…Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic — an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache — continues to provoke strong reactions. He has blamed what he calls the misguided fight against global warming for contributing to the international financial crisis, branded Al Gore an “apostle of arrogance” for his role in that fight, and accused the European Union of acting like a Communist state.

Now the Czech Republic is about to assume the rotating presidency of the European Union and there is palpable fear that Klaus will embarrass the world’s biggest trading bloc and complicate its efforts to address the economic crisis and expand its powers. His role in the Czech Republic is largely ceremonial, but he remains a powerful force here, has devotees throughout Europe and delights in basking in the spotlight.

– IHT.

“Citi never sleeps,” says the bank’s advertising slogan. But its directors apparently do. While CEO Vikram Pandit can argue that many of Citi’s problems were created before he arrived in 2007, most board members have no such excuse. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has served on the Citi board for a decade. For much of that time he was chairman of the executive committee, collecting tens of millions to massage the Beltway crowd, though apparently not for asking tough questions about risk management.

The writers at the Deal Journal blog remind us of one particularly egregious massaging, when Mr. Rubin tried to use political muscle to prop up Enron, a valued Citi client. Mr. Rubin asked a Treasury official to lean on credit-rating agencies to maintain a more positive rating than Enron deserved. What signal will President-elect Barack Obama send if his Administration, populated with Mr. Rubin’s protégés, allows this uberfixer to continue flying hither and yon on the corporate jet while taxpayers foot the bill?

– Wall Street Journal.

We just learned this week that CitiBank was one of the four failed banks that paid Bill Clinton “$2.1 million for 13 speeches he delivered on their behalf between 2004-2007.” So, in effect, your tax dollars from the bailout go in part to Bill & Hillary Clinton.

Ain’t life grand!

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s idea of “change,” is to fill his cabinet with former Clinton administration people, the very same people who created this Fannie/Freddie-Community Reinvestment Act nightmare.

Bret Stephens finds it ridiculous that we’re talking about piracy on the open seas as though it’s something new, or that we can’t learn from history.

By the 18th century, pirates knew exactly where they stood in relation to the law. A legal dictionary of the day spelled it out: “A piracy attempted on the Ocean, if the Pirates are overcome, the Takers may immediately inflict a Punishment by hanging them up at the Main-yard End; though this is understood where no legal judgment may be obtained.”

Severe as the penalty may now seem (albeit necessary, since captured pirates were too dangerous to keep aboard on lengthy sea voyages), it succeeded in mostly eliminating piracy by the late 19th century — a civilizational achievement no less great than the elimination of smallpox a century later.

The problem? Simple, says Stephens, it’s our hand-wringing legalese international community. The U.S. claims “that there is no controlling legal authority,” so that as long as the Somali pirates don’t attack U.S. ships they can’t do anything. NATO has declined to act. And the United Nations, useless as ever, has managed to create legal nightmares (such as requiring the pact-signing nations to first send boarding parties in lieu of military action) that actually make less likely that a lawful nation’s warship would ever interfere in the activities of piracy.

The McCain camp finally starts to realize what fiscal conservatives knew years ago — McCain’s lack of fiscally conservative economic principles would hamstring his election chances.

[Business & Media Institute] As it turns out, swaying from conservative principles doesn’t always pay off for a Republican presidential candidate. Sen. John McCain learned that lesson that hard way.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to McCain’s failed campaign, said Nov. 19 that McCain’s support for the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector was the “key strategic policy error of the entire campaign.”

“We also make mistakes,” Holtz-Eakin told a group of conservatives at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “There’s no doubt about it–20/20 hindsight. I think the key strategic policy error of the entire campaign, that is mine, is believing that the bailout bill would help.”

This isn’t news. Redistributing taxpayer money (and to people whose business models were apparent failures at that) isn’t a good way for a supposedly conservative candidate who is not tight with his base to woo them.

To Democrats, “recount” means stacking the deck with liberal activists.

BRECKENRIDGE, Minn. — A woman who worked for Al Franken earlier this week during the Senate recount in one county ended up counting ballots as a nonpartisan volunteer here Saturday in a recount that grew heated at times.

No shananigans there. Move along, move along.