by J. Christian Adams | Mar 23, 2021 | Opinion
By J. Christian Adams |
Congress is considering a bill that would strip Arizona of one of its most basic powers – the power to govern their own affairs.
A monster 700 page bill called H.R.1 has already passed the House of Representatives that takes away power to run Arizona’s elections and send it to Washington D.C. The bill would do so many bad things there isn’t space to cover it all.
It would mandate ballots to roll in ten days after the election. It bans voter ID. It prohibits Secretary of State Katie Hobbs from cleaning voter rolls from deadwood, a task she has gotten very good at.
H.R.1 takes the power away from the people’s representatives to draw legislative lines. It even mandates that criminals convicted of voter fraud get their right to vote back!
That’s just the beginning. It also pays political candidates running for Congress a salary with your tax dollars, as hard as it is to believe.
Not only is H.R.1 full of bad ideas, it fundamentally transforms the relationship between Arizona and the federal government. The most fundamental power the states kept in the Constitution was the power to structure their own political system.
If the states did not keep this power 234 years ago under the new Constitution, there would not have ever been a United States. The politicians in Congress supporting H.R.1 want to undo that original Constitutional agreement. They are the new nullifiers, trying to extinguish the original designs of our founding documents.
Power is best kept closest to the people, not in Washington D.C. Our elections are decentralized and given to the states to run because decentralization helps preserve individual liberty. The founders knew when power is centralized, especially power over elections, bad things tend to happen.
Elections certainly have consequences. But there are limits to what Congress can do, even a Congress completely controlled by the Democrat Party.
America has gotten this far because our Constitutional bargain kept power over elections with the states. Nobody in Washington D.C. has the power to undo that bargain. If they try, it will be a destabilizing blow to our Constitution.
Christian Adams is the President of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a former Justice Department attorney and current commissioner on the United States Commission for Civil Rights.
by AZ Free News | Mar 23, 2021 | Opinion
A culture is far deeper than politics. It’s a national identity encompassing history, education, arts and entertainment, science, health, relationships … everything constituting the core values of any country.
Individualism has traditionally been the common denominator anchoring all other aspects of America’s cultural distinctiveness. Valuing sovereignty of the individual makes American culture exceptional; therefore, “Cancel Culture” warrants attention.
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Mar 19, 2021 | Opinion
By Free Enterprise Club |
How much longer will the government allow Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, and Apple to run amok? Is their penchant to play speech police enough? Google-owned YouTube has a history of deplatforming and demonetizing conservative organizations. And by now, you probably know that Twitter didn’t hesitate to ban President Trump while he was still the President of the United States.
Or what about their influence on this past November’s election? Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg alone gave hundreds of millions of dollars to election offices to influence local elections. And as you can probably assume, it wasn’t to ensure the process remained fair and nonpartisan.
Or could it be Big Tech’s uncanny ability to collude with each other to serve their own interests? Just ask Parler how it went when Apple, Google, and Amazon conspired to remove the new social media company from the internet—an objective that Apple still appears to be committed to.
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by AZ Free News | Mar 19, 2021 | Opinion
Early this month, Democrats pushed through President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pork barrel COVID-19 bill with only Democratic support. Then, House Democrats passed H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” in a totally partisan 234—193 vote.
There is a reason you are seeing all these party line votes. It is because the Democratic Party is not operating as individuals representing distinct districts of Americans. The Democratic Party is operating as a machine—a machine designed to drive a single agenda and impose it nationwide.
In vote after vote, we are watching Democrats, many of whom represent politically mixed, diverse districts and states, falling in line to vote for whatever Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tell them to—with no regard for what the people they represent back home want. No Democratic Senator or House member seems to care or question what is in these bills. They are simply doing what they are told.
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by AZ Free News | Mar 18, 2021 | Opinion
Championed by the left as a win for the people, the Democrat COVID “relief” plan is little more than a blue state bailout with handouts to special interests and expansion of progressive policies. As if the billions of taxpayer dollars being funneled away wasn’t enough, Schumer snuck a provision into the package that would prohibit states from cutting taxes and providing relief to their taxpayers. Not just this year, but through 2024.
Yes, that means that in addition to only a dismal fraction of the “relief” going directly to taxpayers, further relief through state tax cuts would be barred.
It’s a simple principle: good behavior ought to be rewarded, and bad behavior punished. Yet the Democrat’s blue state bailout does the exact opposite, extracting billions from states that budgeted responsibly and mitigated economic shutdowns while rewarding blue states whose budget shortfalls are of their own making – stemming from bad policies pre-pandemic and even worse during the pandemic.
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by Catherine Barrett | Mar 15, 2021 | Education, Opinion
By Catherine A. Barrett |
Continuous learning, hybrid learning, and blended learning are terms utilized in defining teachers’ return to school by March 15. Online learning occurred between the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and this period where teachers are required to return to school, to their designated classrooms. However, students are granted the option to participate in remote learning.
The opinions regarding the return to classrooms proposals vary, with some vehemently opposing it. For instance, teachers disagree with each other, citing the overplaying their hand in letting students suffer through distance learning. There are also lingering questions concerning teachers’ silence over time, with reasons such as a fear of retaliation and isolation being cited. Teachers point to the fear of their contracts not being renewed and the subsequent “blow back” from not engaging in group think. In my opinion, this is quite unbelievable because this is a free world. Teachers should be heard, and after this, a return-to-work framework that favors them should be put in place.
Those supporting returning to classrooms, especially parents, argue that the right to accessing proper education was violated through remote education. Furthermore, individual learning strategies were not adequately addressed, resulting in the plans becoming ineffective over time. This resulted in substantial learning disparities between students. My opinion, based on the above, is that the option of remote learning should not be granted to students since the learning plans may not work.
In conclusion, I concur that teaching is a calling. Therefore, the debate concerning returning to classrooms should involve heavy consultation with teachers to formulate an appropriate return-to-work strategy. This will require cooperation from teachers and parents, and will be vital through the start of the healing process. However, I oppose the idea that those viewing the task as hard should quit their jobs because we need everyone’s input for an adequate return to class strategy. Therefore, instead of them quitting, they should offer ideas to facilitate learning in a post-Covid world.
Catherine Barrett is an Arizona Governor’s Master Teacher and currently Chair of citizens initiative petition, A Classroom Code of Ethics For Public Schools K-12. You can find her on Twitter @ReadersLeadPD, and on Facebook at Yes4Ethics
Catherine Barrett is an Arizona Governor’s Master Teacher and currently Chair of citizens initiative petition, A Classroom Code of Ethics For Public Schools K-12. You can find her on Twitter @ReadersLeadPD, and on Facebook at Yes4Ethics