Let’s get to the issues that fire me up and deplete the blogsphere.
Democratic Presidential candidate, and New Mexico’s part-time left-wing governor, Bill Richardson, is doing something he promised not to do. I know, I’m as shocked as you are 
Richardson, who has repeatedly stated that he would not run for President on his race, has decided to play the race card anyway.
Richardson accused the Univision network of offending Hispanic voters because they wouldn’t allow him to answer questions in Spanish. All of the Democratic candidates were given questions in Spanish that were then translated so they could answer in English.
Apparently, no one got the memo that Richardson is the ‘official’ spokesman for all Americans of Hispanic heritage.
Poor King Bill. I guess the fact that he is trailing the Democratic front runners in Florida and Nevada have nothing to do with this pathetic political grand standing
Of course, those of us from New Mexico who are familiar with Governor Richardson know all to well that his ‘word’ is as good as pewter.
There is a very important election taking place this coming November between education reformers and education unions over the issue of school choice.
I proudly support school choice. I proudly support anything that gives taxpaying parents THEIR money back so that they can decide where to send their children for their educational needs. I proudly support anything that embraces and implements the same free market/free choice principles that have made our capitalist system what it is today.
Competition makes for better service, quality and customer treatment. The same can be said of what school choice does for public schools.
Utah’s coming election battle is over a law that Utah Governor Jon Huntsman signed that created the nation’s first universal school choice program. The program allows for every child in Utah to be eligible to use a school voucher, which is their parent’s tax dollars, by 2020 to help pay for private schooling. This allows for competition with the public school system which forces reform within the public education system bettering all.
In 1990, Milwaukee, Wisconsin created the first school choice program that targeted low-income students. The program, which began with only 337 students, now helps more than 17,000 students attend private schools in Milwaukee. The program has proved popular with parents (also known as the taxpayers) and is improving the quality of Milwaukee’s public schools by forcing them to reform to compete.
Ohio followed soon with its own school choice program targeting students in Cleveland. Soon after, Florida created their own statewide school choice program for children in low-performing public schools. Florida’s program proved so successful, and gained such wide approval from parents and lawmakers, that the only way it was stopped was by a lawsuit brought against it by the education union bosses.
Finally, the U.S. Congress created a school choice program for disadvantaged kids in Washington, D.C. which has also proven successful for students, parents and the public school competition.
Sadly, the usual education union bosses and their left-wing allies are using the same fear tactics to kill this badly needed reform. They are saying that it will leave low-income children behind in crumbling and badly funded public schools. This is an interesting attack since all of the school choice programs mentioned above have actually helped low-income students specifically.
What really burns me is how the education unions claim that the money involved for education funding is theirs. It is NOT! That money is the taxpayers and they have the right to use THEIR money to make sure that their kids get the best education they can.
It is amazing how much education funding goes up every year, yet, productivity and test scores go down. More money will not cure a crumbling education bureaucracy controlled by union bosses that refuse to listen or reform. Allowing parents to use their tax dollars to help pay to send their kids to the school of their choice is the best thing to happen to public schools. Allowing competition forces reform.
The same arguments were made by government bureaucrats and union bosses against allowing then new companies FedEx and UPS from offering private package delivery which was then only done by the United States Postal Service. Yet, the success and competition created by FedEx and UPS forced the U.S. Postal Service to reform into the improved agency that it is today.
School choice is parent choice. School choice is taxpayer choice. School choice is free choice. School choice is reform.
Let’s hope that the voters of Utah embrace this message of free choice and reform.
Fresh from banning private property owners from allowing smoking in their establishments, some Arkansas lawmakers want to go even further in the effort to expand big/nanny government by banning chewing tobacco in public.
Arkansas State Representative Pam Adcock, Democrat, is planning on introducing legislation that would ban chewing tobacco from the floor of the Arkansas State House.
Her reason for the ban? She thinks it’s gross.
That’s right, she wants a government ban just because she thinks it’s gross. This is another shining example of the threat to freedom and private property posed by the self-righteous. Other elected officials that have pushed smoking bans are now pushing fat taxes, trans-fat bans, gun bans, metal baseball bat bans and etc.
Just goes to show how allowing self righteous do-gooders to ban smoking, in violation of private property rights, leads to other freedoms, choices and private property rights being curtailed simply because the ‘nannies’ think it’s ‘gross’.
