Unlike Illinois, who won’t allow recall, the State of Michigan does. There is currently a recall effort taking place against the Speaker of the House, Andy Dillon. This effort started after he helped push through a the first tax increase since 1983. (Hat tip: Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Publius Forum)
Citizens in his district are gathering signatures currently at libraries and township offices. Speaker Dillon is not thrilled with this effort. Employees of his office are driving hundreds of miles back to the township and are intimidating the citizens in a process known as blocking. This technique is to surround the petition gatherer and intimidate anyone who actually wants to sign the petition. Imagine citizens wanting to hold their elected officials accountable and being harassed by employees of the officials themselves. Watch the following video and see for yourself what is taking place in Michigan.
For more information, read the post over at Publius Forum.
We have equal opportunity corruption here in Illinois. Both Republicans and Democrats take part in the bribery, kickbacks, and influence peddling. Our previous governor is in jail, the current governor is under investigation and just think about how many other elected officials, their staff and their cronies who are in jail, on trial or under investigation currently. With the criminal records Illinois politicians are piling up, just imagine the thugs our elected officials would use here on us?
There is a move here in Illinois to pass a recall law, but do you really think they are going to pass a law that would allow us, the citizenry to hold them accountable for their actions? It’s not going to happen and if it does, it is going to be so restrictive, it will be just another useless law designed to make the politicians appear that they actually care about what “we the people” think.
We can fight back. Many of you probably don’t know this, but we have a chance this fall to take back our State from the politicians this fall. Every 20 years, a mandatory vote is held giving the citizens of Illinois a chance to have a Constitution Convention. The last vote was in 1988 and the last convention was in 1970. That convention allowed our State, City and Municipal governments to run rough shod over us. In essence, it allowed the State to use citizens as it servants instead of the State serving the citizens.
Go watch the video and be amazed at the arrogance of another Cook County elected official. The quote that got me was when she said, “Am I just an employee of the County?”.
The Wall Street Journal had an Editorial about the homeschool ruling in California. I had previously written about this here and here. Below are a couple of excerpts [Emphasis mine]:
In the annals of judicial imperialism, we have arrived at a strange new chapter. A California court ruled this month that parents cannot “home school” their children without government certification. No teaching credential, no teaching. Parents “do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote California appellate Justice Walter Croskey.
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That so many families turn to home schooling is a market solution to a market failure — namely the dismal performance of the local education monopoly. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association, the majority of states have low to moderate levels of regulation for home schools, an environment that has allowed the option to flourish, especially in the South and Western U.S. Between 1999 and 2003, the rate of home-schooling increased by 29%.
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If John McCain wants an issue to endear him to cultural conservatives, this would be it. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama rarely stray from the preferences of the teachers unions, but we’d like to know whether they really favor the certification of parents who dare to believe they know best how to teach their children.
This is the whole crux of the home school debate, are parents qualified to educate their own children or should parents be certified by the State? The answer should be NO to anyone who loves freedom. If you are hesitating to answer No, think for a minute what that means. You are saying the the government has the right to tell you how to raise your child. What’s next, parental discipline certification? parental birth certification? The unintended consequences of this step into parental rights will very likely lead to the complete take over of child rearing authority by the government.
As the quote reminds us, be careful who you choose to elect as our next President. We must elect the candidate who believes in the freedom of the individual instead of the power of the State. It would nice to have each of the candidates weigh in on this question with a straightforward Yes or No answer as to whether they support certifying parents or not.
uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality education
Here are a few quotes from the Palm Beach Post [Emphasis mine]:
Low graduation rates in Palm Beach County show the school district has failed its students, especially minority children, by not providing a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high-quality education,” according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union.
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The suit alleges that the district is violating students’ rights to a high-quality education as outlined in the state constitution.
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Hansen said the organization intentionally left out specific remedies to allow school district officials to do what they think is best to improve achievement.
So, we have students rights being violated and the same school district that is violating this rights will be left to come up with their own solution to fix the problem. Sorry, but if they could have fixed the problem it would have been done already. The school officials will just go to the teachers unions and the teachers unions answer will be give us more money. Thus never solving the problem but making education even more expensive and you’ll get an even more entrenched bureaucracy.
The teachers union doesn’t want change, they want protection. This is why they fought the voucher system. They don’t want competition that would force them to improve educational outcomes. They want status quo and more money.
I bet the right lawyer could take this same clause and use it toward the goal of funding all children equally. The argument is simple. The education bureaucracy has failed our children. They allow unequal funding based on residence. To end this the State provides money equally to each school age child. This money can then be used at any accredited school of the parents choosing. The parents are then in charge of the money and competition will abound.
I have written about this very topic many times before. Here are just a few of the links to those stories:
Bruno Behrend of Extreme Wisdom has also picked the story on his blog. He opens with this line:
The Daily Herald covered Tom Cross’s brilliant plan to keep all of you dumb and stupid. Being dumb and stupid, most people seem to support plans to make them even more so.
House Republican Majority Leader Tom Cross is introducing legislation that will limit the free speech here in Illinois. He wants to ban robo calls.
At a news conference scheduled for today in Geneva, House Republican leader Tom Cross of Oswego, state Rep. Tim Schmitz, a Batavia Republican and state Rep. Ruth Munson, an Elgin Republican, are expected to call for new restrictions on the use of such calls.
I understand why politicians, especially the corrupt ones we have in Illinois want to limit free speech, but why do so many citizens want to give up one more freedom? I am including a few of the citizen comments:
I agree that these calls must be stopped. I pay for home telephone service so that I can call other people, and so that I can invite other people to call me.
I do NOT pay for home telephone service just to make it easier, cheaper and more convenient for some politician to feed me their propaganda.
The notion that my phone is just another campaigning tool is an outrage and if it takes legislation to stop the practice, so be it.
posted by RegularGuy
THANK YOU! I hated these bombarding phone calls as much as the twice-a-day mailings. It was ridiculous!
posted by Me2
Bruno sums it up best in his sarcastic response to these commenters:
“Take my freedom, I’m not using it.” Yecch!
At the rate we’re going in Illinois, there will soon be no need to even vote. Those of you who still care about free speech need to speak up before all your freedoms are gradually taken or given away by politicians and people who don’t want to be bothered with actually knowing the facts.
I have personally used robo calls in my school district. Because of their use, my group was able to get about $7,000,000 abated back to the taxpayers. Without robo calls supplementing the neighborhood walks, the effort would have failed. We didn’t have the money to advertise on the radio or the paper. We only had a website, letters to the editors, robo calls and our feet. This is a free speech issue and not just about calls somebody thinks are annoying.
“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children.”
The Courts are once again ruling against the rights of the individual and forcing the will of the State onto its residents. This is Judicial tyranny and it has to be stopped. Each day, we as citizens are losing our rights to an out of control judiciary. The courts have eroded our personal property rights with the Kelo decision. They have been gradually eroding our rights as parents to raise our children in the manner that we think is best. Now they take that one step further and say the State has the final say in how we educate our children.
