Let’s Get Serious About Eliminating The Department Of Education

Let’s Get Serious About Eliminating The Department Of Education

By Dr. Thomas Patterson |

“The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2023.” If you’ve read this far, you have completed HR899, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie.

Abolishing the DOE isn’t a new idea. The department was created in 1979 by the Carter administration, fulfilling a campaign promise to the NEA, the teachers’ union, which in turn gave him their first ever presidential endorsement.

But skepticism over the department was present even at its inception. The bill passed by just four votes in a heavily Democratic House. Ronald Reagan, always concerned about over-centralized power, immediately campaigned to unwind it. Several Republican education leaders since have endorsed its elimination.

1979 hardly marked the beginning of a glorious new age for American education. Per pupil spending on education since then has more than tripled, inflation adjusted, but there is little to show for it.

Achievement scores have been stagnant and still lag many of our peer nations in the developed world. The racial gap in academic achievement persists in spite of the department’s high-profile efforts. The bureaucrats and interest groups receiving the funding are fine with it, of course, but for the rest of us, it hasn’t accomplished much.

The DOE isn’t really designed to make an impact. It doesn’t establish or approve a curriculum. It doesn’t operate one school or educate one student. It doesn’t administer or create tests. It doesn’t establish standards for colleges and universities. We wouldn’t want it to do any of those things, but it naturally raises the question: is the DOE needed at all?

The department has over 4,000 employees who do research and write policy papers on education that are read mostly by each other. They administer the beleaguered student loan program and federal aid for education. Over 500 workers toil in the Office of Civil Rights.

Senator Joni Ernst notes that 94% of the DOE‘s staff were deemed nonessential during a government shut down. As one official summarized, “it really is just a grant making entity with a huge bureaucracy.”

Americans rightly respect the importance of education and are apprehensive about failing to support anything labeled “education.” The department doesn’t stir public animosity like Justice, Homeland Security, and other cabinet departments often do.

J. Luke Wood, president of Sacramento State University and a former professor of education at San Diego State University, asserts the attempt to eliminate the DOE has nothing to do with federalism or any legitimate substantive argument. No, the real motivation is…racism!

Yes, those darn Republicans are at it again, advancing unrelated pseudo-arguments to provide cover for their race hatred. They are engaging in “racelighting” i.e., racial gaslighting which is an “act of psychological manipulation where people of color receive racial messages which distort the realities and lead them to second-guess themselves.”

Opponents claim HR899 is just an attempt to shape curricula that teach a “fairy tale” history, omitting the ills of slavery as well as ignoring Jim Crow, miscegenation, and redlining. Furthermore, they say it is purposely intended to strip civil rights protections for minority students.

Yikes! Just being around Republicans, you would never imagine that they are such over-the-top bigots. Then again, maybe it is Professor Wood and his ilk who are the racial dividers, seeing racism as the explanation for nearly everything.

If they are so concerned about the civil rights of minority students, why not embrace school choice and charter schools? These reforms have demonstrated their capability to actually improve educational outcomes and lift children out of poverty.

Some see HR899 as a quixotic endeavor. Maybe it is. Bureaucracies, whatever their failings, are skilled, aggressive, and usually successful at defending themselves.

But there is one overarching reason why the DOE needs to go. We can’t afford it.

America is in big trouble financially. We have normalized intergenerational fiscal theft to finance so much wasteful, politically motivated spending that we are now $32 trillion underwater. Interest on the debt is crowding out other priorities and $50 trillion is in view. Still the Biden administration, with an election looming, continues to propose yet more new spending programs.

Instead, we should be desperately seeking out nonessential expenditures that could be cut without any significant harm. The Department of Education is an ideal place to start.

Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.

Why Proposed Rural Groundwater Control Legislation Is Bad For Arizona

Why Proposed Rural Groundwater Control Legislation Is Bad For Arizona

By Rep. Gail Griffin |

There has been a lot of talk recently about rural groundwater bills not getting a hearing at the Arizona State Legislature.

Over the years, proposed legislation has gone by many names, including “Groundwater Conservation Areas,” “Special Management Areas,” “Rural Management Areas,” and “Local Groundwater Stewardship Areas.” It also includes “Sustainable Groundwater Management Plans.”

Regardless of the name, the concept is the same, and all are bad.

While the idea of “local control” might sound good, the actual provisions are far from local or voluntary.

Instead of requiring a local vote of the community, these bills would allow as few as two people in some counties to establish irreversible groundwater control districts throughout the county.

Instead of being elected by the people, the members of these districts would be appointed by the Governor.

Instead of requiring a unanimous vote of county supervisors to adopt the most stringent assured water supply regulations in the nation, these bills would require only a simple majority.

Instead of applying equally across the entire watershed, these bills would allow only “portions” to be designated, meaning that individual properties could be singled-out for their water use, such power plants, farms, mines, hydrogen production facilities, or any business.

Instead of reducing the size of government, these bills would create new layers of government and give additional taxing, zoning, planning, and condemnation authority to a small group of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to decide the community’s economy and tell you what you can and cannot do with your private property.

Instead of voluntary conservation requirements, these bills would allow mandatory reporting requirements, groundwater supply rations, and groundwater withdrawal fees (taxes).

Instead of holding government officials accountable for public funds, these bills would allow the Governor to give up to $50 million each year to any non-profit organization or Indian tribe, regardless of geographic location, political ideology, or conflict of interest.

Instead of respecting the right to privacy, these bills would intrude into the personal lives and affairs of rural Arizonans and require active monitoring devices on private wells, including ranchers and farmers litigating water rights in ongoing stream adjudications.

Instead of authorizing temporary measures to help restore aquifer health, these groundwater control districts would be forever.

Instead of limiting absolute power, these bills would allow the unelected members of the board to essentially rule by fiat by establishing “local management goals” that would allow them to do whatever they want as the board.

Instead of requiring water to be put to “beneficial use,” these bills would open the door to “water markets” wherein water could be turned into a “commodity” and sold to the highest bidder, hoarded, and exported out of the district to big cities, environmental non-profits, and private corporations.

Instead of narrowly tailoring government power to prioritize human life and prosperity, these bills would allow the board to expand the definition of an “assured water supply” to require not only enough water for human activity over 100 years, but also enough water to protect endangered species, streams and rivers, and fish and wildlife habitat for 100 years (or longer). In other words, no water for people; only for the environment.

All of these are fraught with abuse and are unworkable for Arizona.

Thus, “local control” (in this context) is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, designed to trick voters into thinking the bills do something other than what they actually do.

We must do everything we can to identify bad legislation before it gets a hearing. And we must find solutions that make sense for Arizona and help strengthen our responsible use and management of water and natural resources.

We do have solutions moving forward, and we will continue to explore additional solutions that can help to address rural groundwater in Arizona.

As an elected official, I am committed to working with anyone who is willing to work with me and others to find reasonable solutions.

Until then, I will continue to fulfill my duty to the public to support good legislation, and oppose bad legislation, on rural groundwater management in our state.

Gail Griffin is a Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives serving Legislative District 19, which includes areas of Greenlee, Graham, Cochise, and eastern Pima Counties. Griffin chairs the House Natural Resources, Energy & Water Committee and is co-chair of the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Water Security.

Democrats Are Quickly Transforming Into The Party Of Censorship

Democrats Are Quickly Transforming Into The Party Of Censorship

By Betsy McCaughey |

A Pew Research poll released July 20 found that 70% of Democrats think the government should restrict what appears on social media, a dramatic change from five years ago when a majority of Democrats supported a free marketplace of ideas.

It’s no wonder, considering the drumbeat of warnings from leftist politicians and their liberal media allies about “disinformation” and “misinformation.”

But be warned: Democracy cannot survive for long if one of the nation’s two major political parties wants to put blinders on the public, limiting their access to information and canceling political opponents. That’s a rigged system. Ask the Iranians, Russians or Chinese.

A House hearing on July 20 held by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government showed that the Biden administration is already censoring social media on a massive scale, putting blinders on all of us.

Hearing witness D. John Sauer, special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, described preliminary findings by a federal judge that Biden staff in the White House, the FBI, the Department of Health and Human Services, and almost every other executive department meet regularly with social media executives and pressure them to remove or demote criticisms of Biden economic and energy policies, Biden family members, and even items that depict the first lady in an unflattering way. According to Sauer, “millions of American voices” have been silenced in violation of the First Amendment.

Sauer cited some 18,000 communications from Team Biden to tech executives orchestrating a vast ongoing censorship operation.

Yet Democratic lawmakers were unfazed by this shocking evidence, and hardly questioned the witness. The U.S. Constitution and the future of our democracy be damned.

Rep. Stacey Plaskett laid out the Democratic Party’s distorted interpretation of the First Amendment, insisting that not all speech is constitutionally protected and offering hate speech as an example.

Plaskett and like-minded Dems need a refresher course on the Constitution and American history. The Supreme Court has ruled again and again that all speech, especially speech we like the least, is protected. That includes Nazi marches and cross burnings, as odious as these are. Who needs a constitutional amendment to protect speech everyone likes?

In 2017, the Court ruled unanimously in Matal v. Tam that the First Amendment requires “we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate,’” citing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s dissent in the 1929 case United States v. Schwimmer.

Rep. Gerry Connolly aimed his wrath at witness Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose views on vaccines and other pandemic policies were censored. Connolly said this censorship “was not big brother government trying to exercise its will on an innocent population. It was public health measures to protect lives.”

Connolly’s wrong. Censoring scientific debate was a lethal mistake. If competing scientific viewpoints, especially about masking and lockdowns, had been considered, harm to schoolchildren, business owners, and many others might have been prevented. Turns out, official government policy was based on “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

During the hearing, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, battered Kennedy with accusations of antisemitism and racism for his outrageous comments about the disparate impact of COVID on different ethnic groups. But when he tried to respond, she barked “reclaiming my time” and “ask the witness to stop talking.”

Whether you think RFK Jr. is loony or a viable presidential contender, as a witness he should have been treated with civility. Wasserman Schultz’s abuse is reminiscent of how Sen. Joseph McCarthy browbeat witnesses during the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. Those hearings ended abruptly when McCarthy was asked, “Have you no sense of decency?” Wasserman Schultz should have been confronted with the same question.

The attacks on RFK Jr. were a sideshow. The main event was the Democrats’ concocted defense of censorship. The Democrats’ own witness — civil rights attorney Maya Wiley — testified that “the ability of every person to have access to accurate and reliable information is a cornerstone of our democracy.”

Wiley’s slippery language is meant to evade the real issue: Who decides what is accurate and reliable?

Wiley was asked directly by Rep. Chris Stewart, “Do you trust the government to determine what facts and views the American people are exposed to?” She replied, “I think I’m struggling with the question.”

Tell Democrats the answer is a resounding “no.”

Trusting government to be your eyes and ears is crazy.

Daily Caller News Foundation logo

Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Betsy McCaughey is a contributor to The Daily Caller News Foundation and a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Stopping The Unelected Bureaucrats: Unleashing The Holman Rule On The Swamp And Deep State

Stopping The Unelected Bureaucrats: Unleashing The Holman Rule On The Swamp And Deep State

By Paul Burton |

Let us diagnose the problem, namely we have bureaucrats that are behaving as an unelected fourth branch of the federal government. It does not matter which agency we look at; they are oversized, bloated with funds allocated for redundancies, and worse, they are using our tax dollars to harass, investigate, and intimidate those that threaten their power.

We have come to the point where a former president has been indicted for acting lawfully regarding documents, and potentially indicted again for what is in essence a treason charge to prevent him from seeking the presidency in 2024. We have candidates for the United States House of Representatives (possibly the U.S. Senate as well) having their bank accounts closed to strangle off the flow of funds to run a campaign. Does anyone believe that the closures of accounts were not directed by these bureaucrats, or at the minimum, like social media companies in the 2020 election cycle, (likely occurring even now in the 2024 cycle) coordinated by and between the companies and the bureaucrats?

How do we stop these appointed office holders and faceless bureaucrats? Step one is restoring stronger investigative powers to the U.S. House of Representatives. Once the bad actors are identified, we de-monetize their offices or divisions in that agency and in some cases, terminate the federal employee abusing the powers of their office. Is this legal? YES!

The Holman Rule (House Rule XXI, Clause 2(b)) was authored by William Holman of Indiana in 1876. The Rule amends appropriations legislation to reduce salaries or fire specific federal employees or cut existing programs (departments / divisions) within an established agency of the federal government.

The Rule was first in effect during the years of 1876 through 1895 and again from 1911 to 1983. Democrats pulled it from the “Rules of the House,” and it was not reinstated again until the 115th Congress (2017-2019). In the 116th Congress, Democrats yanked it from the Rules of the House once again. When Republicans, under the speakership of former Congressman Paul Ryan, took the House in 2017, the Holman Rule was brought back. However, then-Speaker Ryan, didn’t allow the Rule to be used in defense of a sitting president.  

Rational Americans knew by mid-2019, at the latest, that the investigations into the president were politically founded and paid for by the Democratic nominee for president from the 2016 election. So why didn’t the House investigate and terminate the out-of-control bureaucrats? Some cited the only challenge of merit ever made against the Holman Rule in 1946.

At the height of McCarthyism, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the use of the Holman Rule to terminate 39 suspected communists was unconstitutional and cause for such terminations was not met. The Court ruled that terminations based only on political ideology were not cause for termination of a federal employee (while not citing free speech, it was implied). Even given the ruling, the Holman Rule was upheld as constitutional on its merits but was used outside the bounds of the Rule itself.

Effectively, the U.S. Supreme Court left cause-based salary reduction, termination, and liquidation of agency divisions as constitutional. How does that help in the 119th Congress coming into office in 2025? It gives those like me the ability to call for investigations of all federal agencies that are abusing their assigned powers.

Once the individual(s) or division(s) are identified, we can use the Holman Rule to terminate the individual employee or shut down the division in violation for cause. Those causes could be abuse of power, political targeting of opponents, malicious prosecution, and the list goes on and on.

In summation, there are those like me out there that will take the fight to them on your behalf but the funding and votes to win must come from you.

Paul “PT” Burton is a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District.

Phoenix Wants To Eliminate Parking Spaces In Another Ridiculous Push To Become A 15-Minute City

Phoenix Wants To Eliminate Parking Spaces In Another Ridiculous Push To Become A 15-Minute City

By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |

How much do you like to walk in 110-degree heat? If you’re a resident of the city of Phoenix, you may need to start getting used to it if the city council gets its way.

proposed ordinance in Phoenix is looking to significantly reduce the minimum number of parking spaces it requires for apartments. Currently, Phoenix requires a minimum of 150 parking spaces for every 100 one or two-bedroom apartments. Under the proposed ordinance, that number would decrease to 125 spaces. But that’s not the end of it. For new affordable apartment complexes near light rail stations, the requirement for most would be reduced to zero! Yes. Zero parking spaces at an apartment complex. Have you caught on to their agenda yet?

If you’ve been keeping score, you already know that—in just this year—climate change zealots have been seeking to prohibit gas stoves; put limits on things like lawn and garden equipment, motorized boating, and water heaters; and ban the internal combustion engine. Now, this latest attempt to reduce parking spaces makes it clear. They want to force you out of your air-conditioned car to walk in 110-degree heat with your reward being to wait for a bus or light rail. But that’s not all…

>>> CONTINUE READING >>> 

What Is Mightier Than Both The Pen And The Sword?

What Is Mightier Than Both The Pen And The Sword?

By Cheryl Todd |

The pen might be mightier than the sword, but apathy defeats them both.

The phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword” implies that ideas trump action.

Apathy is a complacent and marked lack of interest. The opposite of love, it is said, is not hate but indifference.

In the real-world application of Rochambeau (a.k.a. Rock, Paper, Scissors), pen beats sword but apathy smothers both.

Our Founding Fathers and Mothers embodied the idea that individual liberties were worth picking up a sword to fight for and thus secure an inheritance of freedom for all future generations. Men and women fought, bled, starved, and died to have the opportunity to write our U.S. Constitution and our Bill of Rights. The ideas enshrined in those documents, including the Second Amendment, were penned to give every American Citizen a road map for navigating the future.

The sword was, and is, necessary to fight in defense against those who would place the boot of tyranny on the necks of individual citizens. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are incompatible with Big Government control-driven taxes, regulations, and a never-ending conveyer belt of rights-killing laws piling one on top of the other.  

Imagine if no one would have bothered to pick up the pen or the sword in our Founders’ era. Our grand experiment in freedom would have never been born, and billions of people would have been robbed of these precious and unique American values. Ideas are only useful when put into action.

The gift of life is worthy of protection. The right to protect life is natural and God-given and codified in the Second Amendment. Keeping and bearing arms, including swords, guns, and knives is precisely protected by our U.S. Bill of Rights. These protections, it is written, “shall not be infringed.” Only, they are infringed. A little more each year. And never more than under the current President and his administration.

What is the response of American citizens? Is it a full-throated rebuke of those attempting to steal our inheritance and diminish our ability to protect life? Or is it a deafening and apathetic yawn?

I asked the experts.

Pro-Second Amendment organizations exist at both the national and state level, including Citizens Defense Leagues (CDL). These organizations are designed to connect citizens quickly and easily with the core issues, the current legislative concerns, and how citizens can use their voices to stop bad laws and support good laws.

Philip Van Cleave, President of Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) says, “Apathy is a serious and long-standing problem with gun owners unless their rights are under severe and immediate threat. In Virginia, only a small percentage of the millions of gun owners are actively engaged in the work we do. To them I say, Get involved! Help make a difference! Join both a state AND a federal gun rights group.”

The President of the Arizona Citizens Defense League (AzCDL), Michael Gibbs tells us, “Since 2005, the Arizona Citizens Defense League has been instrumental in ushering 62 rights-protecting bills being signed into law by 3 different governors despite having a membership of less than 1% of Arizona firearms owners. While this speaks of the power of individual activism, can you imagine what we could accomplish if even 10% would become involved in advocating for their rights?”

In the state of Connecticut where the political balance is heavily Democrat and anti-gun, the President of the Connecticut Citizens Defense League (CCDL), Holly Sullivan, has this to say, “Too many of us tend to shy away from tough conversations, allowing the anti-gun narrative to gain traction. We need to normalize the discussion of blatant attempts to undermine the Second Amendment both with our legislators as well as in our communities. If we allow the other side to control the narrative, rest assured that they will.” 

Alan Gottlieb, Founder of the national organization, Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), offered this, “In the United States while we have over 90 million gun owners, only about 6 million actively work to protect their Second Amendment rights. In fact, way too many do not even show up to vote in protection of these rights. The SAF hosts an annual free event, called Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) designed specifically to encourage the public to become more informed and involved in protecting our rights. We will be in Phoenix, AZ this year—come join the fun!”

Apathy is allowing our rights to be chiseled away with each new freedom-killing law and regulation. Evil prevails when good men and women stand silent

Joining any of these organizations is an excellent and easy step in reversing that inaction and indifference. None of us can do everything. But all of us can do something. Take the advice of Philip Van Cleave, “Write Letters to the Editor in your local newspaper or digital news outlet. Correct misinformation on guns in online chat groups or wherever you can do so. And engage with your elected officials. Even a handful of people contacting a legislator on a specific topic can make a big difference.”

Cheryl Todd has an extensive history of being a Second Amendment Advocate. Along with being a Visiting Fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum, she is the owner of AZFirearms Auctions, Executive Producer & Co-Host of Gun Freedom Radio, the founder of the grassroots movement Polka Dots Are My Camo, and the AZ State Director for the DC Project.