It’s not often that so many threads of topics about which one has been writing come together in a single story as in James Richardson’s USA Today essay about government schools in Washington, D.C., trying to salvage their client base:

Here, where traditional public school enrollment has dipped by 30,000 students in just the last 18 years, administrators believe the key to stemming the exodus of public school refugees lies in diverting precious resources from improving instruction to marketing.

To augment the hard sell being made door-to-door by principals, the school system even retained the pricey data miners who twice won the White House for President Barack Obama.

As noted in this space, recently, Rhode Island schools are starting to worry about competing with alternatives like charters and private schools, and our local and state governments are taking steps to change the competitive environment.  The experience of St. Jude Home Care at least hints at the risk of government’s abusing its hydra heads to give itself an advantage.  Meanwhile, D.C.’s use of Obama’s team for manipulating the public with intricate data and big money raises the same questions about whether it’s appropriate for government to be operating this way.

In plain terms, the government is taking money from taxpayers to pay for expensive tools for manipulating the public in order to make up for the competitive disadvantage that comes with prioritizing labor unions (whose mission is ultimately progressive activism).