I Got Iowa, They Got the Virgin Islands

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DES MOINES — While I was rattling the tip-jar to pay for my Iowa trip, Democrats were spending your tax dollars on tropical vacations:

A nonprofit backed by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) spent more than $2 million in federal funds to provide environmental education to Philadelphia high school students — including trips to a resort in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
For three years, the Caribbean-American Mission for Research, Education, and Action ran an exchange program for students at Overbrook High School and two island high schools.
The Philadelphia students and their adult chaperones stayed at the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef beachfront resort, on what the hotel website calls a “luminous white sand beach framed with the majestic turquoise waters of the Caribbean.”
Fattah’s longtime friend James P. Baker Jr. was paid as much as $142,000 annually to run the organization, far more than usual for charities of that size. One federal audit said students on one trip spent “less than half” their time learning about the environment.

Thanks to Mike in Ardmore for the tip. When President Herman Cain appoints me to my prestigious tropical island diplomatic gig, I’ll institute an “environmental education” program for bloggers.

18 comments

  3. I own a timeshare at Bluebeard’s Castle in St. Thomas, and am quite familiar with Marriott at Frenchman’s… there ain’t anyplace in Philly that compares, so I’d really like to know where the St. Thomas’s kids get shacked up in this “exchange program.”

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