Send a Message: Vote “No!” on the proposed Washtenaw County Intermediate School District’s “Enhancement” Millage

VICTORY UPDATE: Washtenaw County’s Taxation without Representation

To our liberal, teachers union friends who spouted gloom and doom if this WISD millaged failed:

24,114 residents of Washtenaw County voted for the WISD millage for public schools yesterday.  Now, this designated conservative suspects that they were voting for a tax hike on the assumption that other “rich people” would pay the bill, but in the hope that they were willing to put up their share I offer the following suggestion:

If all 24,114 “yes” voters each donated just the $200 per year that they said the tax would cost the average county homeowner, they alone would provide over 80% of the $30,000,000 that this new tax was projected to provide to the schools.  Considering that this voluntary method would minimize collection/administration costs associated with the tax process, I suspect that their voluntary contributions would actually provide MORE funds to the schools than any tax.  Come on “yes” voters – it’s time to get your checkbooks out and support the schools!

THANK YOU!

To all our designated conservative friends in Washtenaw County, thank you for coming out yesterday in overwhelming numbers to say “NO!” to the flawed WISD “enhancement millage!  Thank you to all those that spearheaded the “Vote No” campaign!  Great job.

Now comes the hard part:  It’s time for designated conservatives to step in and lead our local public schools away out of the slow-death spiral the Michigan Education Association (MEA)-sponsored “leaders” have created for our children and grandchildren.

This Designated Conservative encourages like-minded folks to write to your school board members, district superintendents, and elected state representatives and tell them the unaccountable tax-and-spend, “this is the way we’ve always done things” mentality is no longer acceptable if we are to have a strong and vibrant public school system in Michigan:

Students Accept Majority Tyranny

The following commentary about the state of learning and teaching of government and political science in our public schools (excerpt below) crossed the Designated Conservative’s digital desk this week.   It is another excellent posting by…

Video Object Lesson for President Obama

Being President of the United States is a heady experience, and it can be very hard to stay humble and grounded – especially when a President comes into office with an excessively positive opinion of himself to start with…. Hopefully this video, once Homeland Security alerts him to it, will help our President stay more grounded in reality.

Please stay with it – the payoff is at the end:

You are here, Mr. President (on Earth that is – not the Moon!)

2010 Clean Sweep Congress

This Designated Conservative is tired from holding the keys of so many Washington D.C. Kool Aid-enebriated Republicans in the U.S. Congress, especially the U.S. Senate. I’m exhausted from fending off senato(R)s and (R)epresentatives who drank too much of the Pelosi/Obama spiked Kool Aid and still want to drive the policy bus.

In fact, my pockets were so full that I have to admit relief when My Beloved Friend and Highly Esteemed Colleague The Honorable Senior Senator from the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Arlen Specter came to me last week and said that he was leaving the party.  I gave him his keys after he promised that he was just going to walk across the hall to go home.  The Honorable Senator Specter has been such a high maintenance partier (always making a scene and wanting things his way) that I’m hoping that he doesn’t come back!

After the disastrous 2006 Republican majority and mortifying 2008 Democrat majority, I propose a new voting scheme for 2010:

Teach like it’s 1979

The blogger “A Conservative Teacher” has posted a great piece on a recent Vietnam War assembly that speaks volumes to the state of our public education system.  I encourage you to check it out.  Here is an excerpt:

…the students were really excited for this- they were talking in the classroom before the presentation about how it would be great to see some real heroes, about how it would be a great chance to learn real history and not the modified liberalized version they usually hear. So the students all crowded into the auditorium, full of excited chatter. (emphasis added)

And then the speakers will come out to speak to the students. The opening line of the presentation was “We support the troops, but that doesn’t mean we support war.” It went downhill after there- the speakers were all anti-Vietnam war protesters and anti-Vietnam war veterans.

As the presentation went on, the background chatter and attentive looks on students faces slowly faded away, to be replaced by the usual blank vacant stare that students assume on being brainwashed by leftism…

Reading the post took me back, way back to the Carter years.  For those that lived through them, they were unforgettable.  Stagflation, the Misery Index, Walter Cronkite’s 444 nightly reminders of the Iran hostage crisis, and the disastrous military rescue attempt that ended at Desert One.  It also took me to my memory of a group of high school teachers who, in 1979, would’ve happily sponsored the very same event.  

• Who are we as taxpayers that we continue to subsidize a public school system that has failed so completely at responding to the changing needs of our children?  There are alternatives and even more alternatives after all!
• Who are we as a nation that we allow such mediocrity and shallowness of thought to be passed on to our children in our public schools?
• Who are we as parents that we accept the indoctrination of our children by zealous partisans under the guise of education?
• Who are we as a conservative movement that we continue to meekly yield to the left the high ground of teaching the coming generation about the true principles upon which our country was founded? – that is life, liberty, freedom, and limited government.
• Who are we as a community that we accept such shoddy and outmoded teaching as described by A Conservative Teacher? 

Wake up, America!  It’s no longer 1979.  Our military is no longer the post-Vietnam shadow it once was, and Vietnam is no longer the last war we fought – although it fortunately remains the only war we fought to lose.  We are at war with an enemy the likes of which we haven’t experienced before, and yet we are winning.  We have so much to be proud of with regards to our military, our country, and our veterans.  For teachers to continue to pretend that it’s 1979 is educational malpractice, and it is up to us to let them know.

Wake up American teachers!  It’s no longer acceptable for you to teach

…how students need to always end wars and agitate against any war that we are engaged in (and) how it was patriotic to be against America…

Wake up American parents!  Be aware of what your children are being taught.  Arrange to visit their classrooms, and be prepared to intervene to help your child be successful.  The hearts and minds of our children are under assault, and the institutional knowledge that is so necessary for the success of our “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is being lost as our public schools have radicalized the curriculum. 

Wake up American taxpayers!  Our tax dollars are supporting criminally mediocre public schools that are failing to prepare our children for college, the workplace, and even simply to function as thinking and reasoning adults in our society.

UPDATE:  Well, something has changed in teaching since 1979 after all.  I read a bit further into A Conservative Teacher’s blog and found this gem.

I’m so glad I read 1984 recently- I actually hadn’t read it until a couple years ago- in high school, the advanced students didn’t read Animal Farm and 1984, and instead read highly intelligent liberal drivel. But my brother and I often talk about these books nowdays, as America sadly descends into the fascism and socialism that was described in them.

One of my brother’s disagree’s with me- he says it won’t be 1984 that we see, but rather a Brave New World- happy, fluffy, smiley-faced fascism. This actually fits with an earlier post of mine called “Happy-Nicing Ourselves into Dictatorship.”- Maybe there is something here- doped up kids, random sex, mindless entertainment, no morality or religion. Just gnostic overlords ruling over us stupid masses- a heartless, ghastly prison, with walls painted up with bright murals of MLK and Mother Earth singing kumbya. Kind of like the school I teach at right now!

At least in 1979 those high school teachers I mentioned above were still requiring their students to read George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984.  Brave New World wasn’t on the required list, but was recommended reading. 

“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike.  No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs.  The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”  - Orwell, Animal Farm

 

 

 

 

 

Barack Obama v. The Constitution of the United States

UPDATE:  Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has another first class update on the issues and history behind Senator Obama’s refusal to make public those documents that would lay this issue to rest.  I was especially intrigued by the reference to some of Obama’s Chicago attorney friends’ efforts dating back two years to try and remove the reference to “natural born” citizen from the Constitution.  Why would they even bring this up if there was no question regardingBarack Obama’s eligibility to serve as POTUS?

UPDATE 2:  The deeper I look into Barack Obama and this “natural born” citizen business, the more of a “sticky wicket” it seems to become for Mr. Obama.  Now, a group of Washington state residents have sued to have Obama’s votes set aside because is is not a natural born citizen, AND because he ran under a false name.  According to this local news article, Barack was adopted by his step-father while living in Indonesia as a child, and took “Barry Soetoro” as his legal name.  What a swamp!  Barry/Barack Soetoro/Obama, step up and be a man – either provide the proof of natural born citizenship or admit that you cannot and take the consequences! (thanks to Atlas Shrugs for the reference)

Original post:

So, here we are days away from the Electoral College’s constitutionally required meetings in the 50 states (with Michigan’s 17 Democrat-Obama/Biden electors scheduled to gather in Lansing), and the questions about where Barack Obama was born are still percolating around the Internet.  Why?  Because the United States Constitution says that to be eligible to serve as President of the United States, a person must be a natural born citizen.  

What does “natural born citizen” mean?  Under U.S. law, it means:

• Anyone born inside the United States
• Any Indian or Eskimo born in the United States, provided being a citizen of the U.S. does not impair the person’s status as a citizen of the tribe
• Any one born outside the United States, both of whose parents are citizens of the U.S., as long as one parent has lived in the U.S.
• Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year and the other parent is a U.S. national
• Any one born in a U.S. possession, if one parent is a citizen and lived in the U.S. for at least one year
• Any one found in the U.S. under the age of five, whose parentage cannot be determined, as long as proof of non-citizenship is not provided by age 21
• Any one born outside the United States, if one parent is an alien and as long as the other parent is a citizen of the U.S. who lived in the U.S. for at least five years (with military and diplomatic service included in this time)
• A final, historical condition: a person born before 5/24/1934 of an alien father and a U.S. citizen mother who has lived in the U.S. 

If President-elect Obama was born in Kenya (as rumors and Kenya’s sealing of Obama’s records suggest), then he is ineligible to serve as President.  Things get even weirder if one includes the other Internet rumor that Obama’s mother renounced his U.S. citizenship when they lived in Indonesia.  

This is why I have avoided discussing this topic, until an American Thinker article entitled “Why the Barack Obama Birth Certificate Issue Is Legitimate” caught my eye today.  Author “Joe the Farmer” analyzes the whole mess, from archaic Hawaiian state laws to the latest evaluation of the various lawsuits putting pressure on Obama to release his original Certification of Live Birth (which is apparently different from the alleged Certificate of Live Birth that has been posted on various websites.

Why get all worked up about this?  Shouldn’t Barack Obama be allowed to become our 44th President since he was elected by a majority of U.S. voters?  The same could be said for others, like star California Governor Schwartzenegger (who came from Austria as an adult) and our own Michigan star Governor Jennifer Granholm (who moved from Canada as a child).  However, the Constitution has the final say.  That’s why it is important – to uphold the Constitution, something which virtually all public officials in this country swear (or affirm) to do, including Senator Obama.

The Supreme Court will very soon take up this issue, which may come as a surprise to those that get their news from CNN and MSNBC.  President-elect Obama and his legal advisors have had weeks and even months to lay this mess to rest by simply making public the documentation needed to show he satisfies the constitutional requirements – but he hasn’t done it yet!  I’m amazed that the Democratic National Committee didn’t require exactly this before he stepped out on the stage in Denver to accept the nomination.  It seems like that is nothing more than doing the necessary due diligence to avoid this sort of constitutional “buyer’s remorse!”

More than 145,000 Americans have signed an online petition asking Barack Obama to release documentation proving his status as a natural born U.S. citizen before the Electoral College meets to certify his election to the highest office in this land.  In a constitutional republic, that is an eminently reasonable thing for the people to expect before Mr. Obama accepts the high office of President.

Trust in democracy?

The most important and lasting civil rights-related changes in the U.S. have come through either direct votes of the people, or through their representatives in state legislatures or the U.S. Congress.  Examples include the Civil War-era constitutional amendments and Civil Rights Act of 1871, women’s sufferage (19th amendment), Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc.  

What offends me as an American and a voter is when unelected judges short-circuit democracy with rulings like the one in California back in May.  When judges legislate from the bench we are as likely to get a Dred Scott-like decision as we are a Brown v. Board of Education one.  Anything that has to go through the scrutiny of a public vote or legislative action is more likely to stand the test of time.  

I trust the people and our elected representatives far more than I trust our Supreme Court to make good law and public policy.

For me, legislating from the bench occurs where justices move beyond interpretation of the law by putting their finger into the air of public opinion to test which way the winds of popular culture are blowing.  One of the worst recent examples of this was the US Supreme Court’s Kelo v. City of New London decision involving the use of eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another for economic development purposes.  On the US Supreme Court, the main finger-wavers seem to be Justices Souter, Kennedy, and Ginsberg.

The Kelo decision went far beyond interpretation of law into setting public policy better left to state legislatures.  The resulting public outcry led to a rash of state constitutional amendments and new laws that effectively repudiated the Kelo decision.  Rather than ease redevelopment in older cities (a public policy choice and the obvious intent of the court majority), Kelo had the effect of actually making it far more difficult and expensive for older communities to redevelop problem areas.

The success of Proposition 8 shows that the California Supreme Court overreached back in May and was slapped down by the voters – just as President Jackson once slapped down Chief Justice Marshall (not Jackson’s best moment, but a good example of the effective limits of judicial authority).  In the wake of the disastrous Dred Scott decision, it took two decades and the patient work of a new generation of justices to rebuild the Supreme Court’s moral authority.  These ought to be warning signs for justices who may consider themselves to be some kind of super-legislature to humble themselves a bit and stick to the law.

If gay marriage is good public policy, then proponents ought to be able to marshall good arguments and enough supporters to defeat Proposition 8 (or the similar laws and referendums passed in 29 other states).  That they weren’t able to in a Democrat landslide election says a great deal about whether or not gay marriage should be the law of the land.