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:

UPDATED: Summarizing the ObamaCare Bill for Rep. John Conyers

UPDATE:

John Stossel and 20/20 explains CanadaCare (in words and images even a Congressman can understand), and why America’s private, profit-based, individual choice healthcare system breeds inovation and attracts people from Canada and around the world who can’t get care under their government-run, “free healthcare” systems:

Certain members of our Demcrat Congressional leadership seem to be having great difficulty distinguishing between paid union thugs and actual constituents. Some have taken to calling citizen participants in our democratic process (i.e. protesters at congressional town hall events) “mobs.” To help Rep. Conyers and others reacquaint themselves with their voters, here is a great post with lots of annotated pictures of the “mob.” (http://thedanashow.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/meet-the-mob/)

ORIGINAL POST:

UPDATE: Pam Byrnes’ Quixotic Quest to Overturn Michigan’s “Proposal 8″

Here we go.  Thanks Pam Byrnes!  Of course, it has to be our fine Ann Arbor area state reps who once again lead the way into the type of chaos and contention visited upon California until Proposition 8 was upheld….  It’s great to see our legislators working hard to stir up trouble and spend more of the state’s bountiful financial resources on stuff we don’t need….  Pam, this is settled law in Michigan, and the 30 or so other states where the voters have actually had the opportunity to vote on the subject.  Please don’t re-open this can of worms….

Winning the ‘Race to Witch Mountain’

The Designated Conservative finally saw the (still reasonably) new movie Race to Witch Mountain last night.  With no time to offer up a full review for designated conservative parents out there, all I will say is…

Breaking News! – California Marriage Amendment Upheld

From Preserving Marriage for Califronia’s Future:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will…

The Subprime Marriage Crisis

This piece came across the Designated Conservative’s RSS Feed recently from “Sixteen Small Stones” (excerpt below – click here to read the whole piece).  The author draws a striking parallel between the financial mess the country is in and the oncoming family and marriage train wreck:

An analogy between same-sex marriage and the credit crisis

by J. Max Wilson

In order to draw my analogy, it is important to first look at how this economic crisis came about. As usual, even experts disagree about some of the roots of the crisis, and like the Great Depression, I am sure that they will be arguing about them for decades to come. However, most of the explanations I have seen point to the Housing Market Bubble , Subprime Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities as the crux of the crisis.

(T)he credit crisis was incubating for a long time before it actually hit. Laws and policies enacted nearly a decade ago, if not more, did not bear fruit until this last year.

A decade ago I was…

Homeschooling? Mainstream? I’m Shocked!

This piece came across the Designated Conservative’s digital desk this morning (excerpt below – click here to read the whole article).   I hope that the conclusion doesn’t surprise anyone these days….  

The closest I’ve seen to surprise that homeschoolers are everywhere was back in 2002-03 when our (former) Mayor and (former) Police Chief pushed for a “daytime curfew” ordinance to make it a crime for “school-age” children to be out on a public street or in a public place “during school hours.”  After homeschoolers packed a public hearing on the ordinance, the Police Chief backed down and the ordinance died. 

Home Schooling Goes Mainstream

By Milton Gaither

Everybody knows somebody who is teaching a child at home

“I never really told anybody about my music at school, only my really close friends,” Cheyenne Kimball told People Magazine in 2006. “Then [school officials] actually aired the show around the whole entire school, and that caused a lot of problems. I was a straight-A student and all of a sudden I didn’t want to go to school anymore because of the things people were saying. That’s why I’m homeschooled now.”  Cheyenne, winner of NBC’s America’s Most Talented Kid at age 12, recording artist, and star of her own MTV show, is just one of many high-profile Americans whose educational choice is home schooling.

Movie stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, married in 1997, home school their two children along with Will’s nephew. Why? “For flexibility,” Pinkett Smith told an Essence reporter, “so they can stay with us when we travel, and also because the school system in this country—public and private—is designed for the industrial age. We’re in a technological age. We don’t want our kids to memorize. We want them to learn.”

While home schooling may have particular appeal to celebrities, over the last decade families of all kinds have embraced the practice for widely varying reasons: no longer is…

Movie Reviews for Designated Conservative Parents

Family-friendly and kid-friendly movies with a good message are becoming ever harder to find.  “G” rated movies are a rarity, even fromWalt Disney Studios - which once defined the genre.  “PG” rated movies are hit or miss – they might be appropriate for children, or they might not.   Worse yet, today’s “PG-13″ rated movies look too much like older “R” rated films, illustrating the “ratings creep” phenomenon identified in a 2004 Harvard University study.

What is a parent to do?   We designated conservatives are here to help with our special feature on this site:  Movie reviews for kids by kids!

Click here or follow the link at the top of this page for all of the latest movie reviews from the Designated Conservative team.

 

BOLT on DVD – “Zoom Zoom!”

“Bolt“ is new animated movie from the recently ‘re-animated’ Walt Disney Animation Studios.   It premiered in theaters in 2008, and comes out on DVD later this month.  As part of our new feature for designated conservative parents, movie reviews for kids by kids, we offer the following review of “Bolt” authored by a crack team of under-18-year-olds:

Flash of Genius on DVD – In the Slow Lane for Kids

“Flash of Genius“ is new period film covering an ugly moment in the history of the U.S. auto industry.   It premiered in theaters in 2008, and comes out on DVD later this month.  As part of our new feature for designated conservative parents, movie reviews for kids by kids, we offer the following review of “Flash of Genius” authored by a crack team of under-18-year-olds:

“Igor” on DVD – “A Clockwork Orange” for Kids?

“Igor” is an animated movie from MGM Studios that premiered in theaters in 2008, and which comes out on DVD later this month.  As part of our new feature for designated conservative parents, movie reviews for kids by kids, we offer the following review of “Igor” authored by a crack team of under-18-year-olds:

And Now for Something Completely Different – Movie Reviews!

Family-friendly and kid-friendly movies with a good message are becoming ever harder to find.  “G” rated movies are a rarity, even from Walt Disney Studios – which once defined the genre.  “PG” rated movies are hit or miss – they might be appropriate for children, or they might not.   Worse yet, today’s “PG-13″ rated movies look too much like older “R” rated films, illustrating the “ratings creep” phenomenon identified in a 2004 Harvard University study.

What is a parent to do?  We designated conservatives are here to help with a new feature on this site:  Movie reviews for kids by kids!  To help the designated conservative parents among our readers, we are planning to periodically post reviews of new theatrical releases and new movies on DVD authored by a crack team of under-18 reviewers.  

Our first review is of “Bedtime Stories” - a brand new movie from Adam Sandler that opened in wide theatrical release on Christmas Day 2008.  With Adam Sandler, it’s hard for parents to know whether they’re going to get “50 First Dates” or “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan” – so this review should be a big help for parents looking for something to do to get their stir-crazy kids out of the house during Christmas break: