Palin slashes funds for teen moms?

"Palin Slashed Funding for Teen Moms", screams the Washington Post.

"What?!" you might say.

The lead paragraph leads you even further down the outrage path:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

That mean old Sarah Palin! Leaving teenage moms and their hapless babies shivering out in the snow!

But if you look at the image, you see the the cut earmark is not for a state program, but for a private charity called Covenant House:

Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.

So, how much of the cut money was supposed to go to teen moms? How much to other programs for teens? The article doesn't say. But the line item wasn't Passage House, it was Covenant House. Palin did not target teen moms. She cut government giving to a nonprofit that might have been earmarking some of the money for teen moms.

I looked up Covenant House Alaska on Charity Navigator and it wasn't there, though there are many other branches of Covenant House. They all are getting only a 1- or 2-star rating, which means that they are poorly managed financially, and that compared to other, similar organizations, little of the donated money goes to provide directly for the beneficiaries of the charity.

Other similar charities get 3- and 4-star ratings.

If Covenant House Alaska is performing as poorly as other branches of Covenant House, then Palin was right to slash their earmark until they got their house in order. Why should she give tax money to an organization that a savvy donor would pass by because they're not managing their funds well? Is it the job of the government to give money to people you'd be too smart to give money to yourself?

UPDATE: Sarah Palin did not slash funds for teen mothers. Nor did she slash funds for overall teen programs. Nor did she slash funds for Covenant House. What she did was reduce a massive increase in funds to a more moderate, but still substantial, increase. Are we gonna see a retraction? Yeah -- when that bear in Governor Palin's office gets up and starts dancing.