Detroit: A Bees Nest of Islamic Terrorists

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I believe there are only two ways to defeat your enemies.  You must know who your enemies are and understand their mindset.  Our number one enemy in America and throughout the world is Islam itself.  When groups of hundreds or thousands gather at a building and advocate following and enforcing ‘Pure Islam’, there is a high probability violence will generate from these buildings that breed hate and violence.   What are these buildings called?  Answer: Islamic Mosques

I have conducted firsthand research in hundreds of mosques in America.  The research is not difficult (if you know what to look for and know the right questions to ask) and is conducted in a legal manner always.  If a mosque is advocating peace, tolerance, a desire for their members to contribute and fit into the melting pot of America, this is exactly what I report.  There are few of these mosques in America, but they do exist.

If a mosque is the breeding ground for hate, violence, and their leadership does not want their members to uphold the U.S. Constitution and live within the confines of American law, I will also report this.

As of 6 May 2014, there are 37 mosques in Michigan.  The largest mosque in America is in Dearborn, Michigan.  About four years ago my team and I visited Michigan to conduct research.  I can sum my analysis into three words: Dangerous-Dangerous-Dangerous.

The Detroit area hosts large groups of Shia Muslims who do not want anything in America, aside from using our beautiful land for future Shariah Caliphate property. There are also a large population of Sunni Muslims and the ever dangerous Nation of Islam Muslims.  They are all dangerous and are a grave threat to the innocent people living in the land of the ‘Detroit Tigers’ and ‘Detroit Lions’.

Are their media, law enforcement agencies, or politicians reporting to the American public on the dangers of Islamic terrorist groups and their supporters operating in the Detroit area?  No.  Even our Fox News journalists will not dare report anything negative on particular mosques that advocate treason and sedition against America.

So what do we do? Do we remain idle as our country’s leaders do?  Do we just turn our heads as millions of Americans do?  The answer is simple.  We must remain vigilant  and expose the Islamic terrorists operating freely in the Detroit area.  The intelligence obtained must be shared with all in America, and not filed away into a safe and given so high a security classification that most government officials would not be allowed to view and report even if they desired.

Within the next couple of weeks I will travel to Michigan and will again go on the front lines to obtain Islamic based terrorism spurting from mosques disguised as religious buildings.

If you desire to see more firsthand research and actual affidavit’s of my work at particular mosques, please consider donating to keep the word alive.  If I had the financial ability to do so myself I would have several researchers on the streets monitoring Islamic terrorists activity in America and providing the intelligence to you.  Essentially I would be doing what our media, law enforcement, and politicians are not doing.  Protecting America should be their number one concern, but it is not.

Would it not be nice and beneficial for Americans to know who are the leaders of a mosques in their area, what the mosque leadership is advocating, and if there is a danger to the public and our country?  Would it not be beneficial to know about a mosque that is advocating and practicing ‘Child Marriages’ as was the research referenced below determined?  You decide.

Affidavit sworn to on 24 April 2009 about a Mosque in Nashville, TN:

I, Paul David Gaubatz, declare under penalty of perjury that the following statements are true and correct and based on my own personal knowledge:

This sworn affidavit pertains to Islamic Centers operating within Nashville, TN, and the local authorities who are in my professional opinion jeopardizing the lives of innocent Muslim children at Al Farooq, Nashville, the citizens of Nashville, and our country.

  1. Background: I was a U.S. Federal Agent with a Top Secret/SCI clearance for approximately 15.5 years.  This was during the time period 1988 – 2003.
  2. In addition to my Top secret/SCI clearance, I was also briefed into many programs known to the public as “Black Projects”. These projects pertained essentially to Counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism issues.
  3. On 11 Sept. 2001, I was assigned as an (1811) civilian Federal Agent in Albuquerque, NM. I had primarily been assigned the duties of ‘Technology Protection’ in regards to our countries highest classification of technologies used to defend our country.
  4. After the attack on our country (11 Sept. 2001), I was assigned counter-terrorism duties on a full time basis and in late 2002, assigned to the Foreign Service Institute (U.S. State Department/Arlington, VA). My duties were to train full time in Arabic and counter-terrorism issues. The Arabic language was almost one complete year. During this time period I was sent to Jordan for a three week ‘immersion’ program to better understand the Arabic language, the culture, and Islam.
  5. In Jan 2003, before Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was requested to deploy as a U.S. civilian Federal Agent to ArAr Air Base, Saudi Arabia (within a few miles of Iraqi border). My full time duties were to collect intelligence involving potential attacks against U.S. Armed Forces personnel and to conduct counter-espionage against Saudi Arabian government/military, Iraqi, and other people in the ArAr area.  I led several counter-terrorism/counter-espionage expeditions.
  6. From Apr – Jul 2003, I was assigned inside (Nasiriyah, Baghdad, Basrah, and other cities) Iraq and my primary duties were counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.
  7. While in Iraq I interviewed numerous Iraqis in regards to terrorism against the U.S., the Islamic ideology pertaining to violent Jihadists activity, and the methodology of Islamic terrorists.
  8. While in Iraq I had the opportunity to discuss the training and tactics used by Islamic terrorist leaders and their supporters.
  9. I have received training on the Islamic terrorist ideology/tactics from people who were former members of Islamic terrorist groups and from Muslims who were investigating these groups themselves. These people included military and police officers who served under Saddam Hussein (former Iraq President).
  10. Since returning from Iraq in 2003, I have trained over 2500 U.S. law enforcement officers in counter-terrorism involving Islamic terrorist groups and their supporters.
  11.  I have discussed Islam and Sharia law with over 100 Imams and Islamic leaders in the U.S.
  12. I have listened to over one thousand plus hours of lectures by Islamic scholars/leaders that have been trained in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Iran.
  13. I have read over 5000 different publications, books, and brochures by Islamic scholars.
  14. In 2005, I hired a senior Council on American-Islamic Relations leader to provide me training on the operation of this Islamic organization.
  15. I have personally conducted first-hand research at over one hundred plus Islamic Centers in the U.S. The research involved speaking with the leaders, worshipers, and reviewing the materials they use to educate their worshipers (men, women, and children).
  16. I have monitored several ‘overseas’ based Islamic terrorist group internet sites.
  17. I have received numerous U.S. Government awards pertaining to my work in protecting our country, our technology, and U.S. Armed Forces personnel.
  18. I have worked jointly in counter-terrorism research and investigations with Muslims and non Muslims.
  19. My research is not biased. I credit the saving of my life and the saving of many U.S military personnel lives with several Muslims who risked their lives to protect ours. These Muslims and I both realize there are Islamic groups, their supporters, and Islamic scholars based in the U.S. that do advocate violence against innocent men, women, children, and pose a ‘grave’ security risk to our country.
  20. In Mar and April 2009, (last day of research was on 18 Apr 2009)  I conducted first-hand research at the Al Farooq Islamic Center, 1421 4th Ave. South, Nashville, TN, and businesses in the Nashville area operated/supported by the leadership of Al Farooq and its worshipers. The research involved speaking with leaders, worshipers, and reviewing the materials this Center and businesses use to educate their worshipers.
  21. Based on my qualifications listed in numbers 1 through 19, it is my professional opinion the leadership of the Al Farooq Islamic Center, 1421 4th Ave. South, Nashville, TN.

A: Does advocate violence against innocent Muslims and non-Muslims that do not adhere to and desire an Islamic Ummah (Nation) under Sharia Law in America.

B: Does advocate treason and sedition against the U.S. using violent and non violent tactics/methods as do such Islamic terrorist groups as Al Qaeda have and currently utilize.

C: Does pose a serious risk of educating innocent Muslim children into the violent aspects of Islamic terrorist groups and their violent activities directed against America.

D: This Islamic Center uses materials from convicted terrorist and supporters to educate their worshipers.

E: Is not a religious institution, but more in line with a political/government system.

F: The leadership ‘hit’ the children during study of the Quran and Sharia law and an audio/video was obtained as evidence.

G: The leadership is openly involved and advocates polygamous marriages, allegedly with children as young as 7 years old. A child at Al Farooq had mentioned ‘her’ husband. This is also on audio/video.

F: Additionally it is my professional opinion this Islamic Center has the support of personnel within the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department and/or Nashville Prosecutors office.

G: I have been informed a Nashville Metropolitan Police officer fears lawsuits from CAIR and they are involved in ‘Interfaith’ meetings with Nashville Islamic scholars.

H: The Child Protective Officer who allegedly investigated the child abuse allegations at Al Farooq conducted a poor job at best, and does not understand the Islamic ideology or Sharia law.

I: Recommendation to law enforcement: Conduct a thorough investigation of Al Farooq and its leadership (using federal or state authorities) due to the possible criminal violations by Metropolitan Police Personnel, Child Protective Services, and the local Nashville Prosecutors office.

J: Remove Al Farooq’s IRS approved non-profit and tax exempt status  as applicable.

K: My understanding is no formal investigation was conducted by law enforcement, although more than sufficient probable cause evidence was provided by me to LE authorities.

L: Somali owned businesses are involved in money laundering and support violence against innocent men, women, and children who oppose an Islamic Ummah (Nation) under Sharia law within America.

  1. Overall, I rate this Islamic Center and their related businesses located along Murfreesboro Pike, Nashville, TN as ‘High’ in regards to posing a threat to the security of the United States.
  2. Overall, I rate the local authorities as a ‘High’ risk to the security of the innocent Muslim children at Al Farooq, to the citizens of Nashville, and our country. This is based on my interaction/assessment of the local Nashville authorities. They are poorly trained in regards to understanding the mindset/ideology and tactics of Islamic terrorist groups and their supporters. The local authorities are intimidated by Islamic leaders/organizations, and are possibly illegally protecting the Islamic scholars from a thorough criminal investigation.
  3. As stated above this assessment and professional advice are based on my qualifications as listed in numbers 1 – 19 above.

Signature: Electronic Signature
Printed name: Paul David Gaubatz
Subscribed and sworn to me, this 24th (day of month) day of April (month), 2009.

RELATED STORY: Detroit: Muslim imam convicted of sexually abusing three of his nieces…

The New A.P. U.S. History Exam: Providing Opportunities for Indoctrination

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College Board dictates for the new Advanced Placement U.S. History exam have already garnered criticism. Jane Robbins and Larry Krieger charged that the new course of study “inculcates a consistently negative view of the nation’s past.” Units on colonial America stress “the development of a ‘rigid racial hierarchy’ and a ‘strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority.’” At the same time, the new Framework “ignores the United States’ founding principles and their influence in inspiring the spread of democracy and galvanizing the movement to abolish slavery.”

Advanced Placement (AP) teachers, of course, will need retraining for this; accordingly, Summer Institutes are being held across the country. I got a look at how teachers are pitched the new program at a session titled “Boundaries of Freedom: Teaching the Construction of Race and Slavery in the AP U.S. History Course” at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), “the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history,” in Atlanta this month. Identity politics and the assumption that conservatism is evil and backwards infused the conference. The AP session fit right into this year’s theme, “Crossing Borders,” highlighting the evils of the United States, in its past with slavery and segregation, and in its present in regards to “immigrants” (illegal aliens).

One of the AP panelists, Lawrence Charap, of the College Board, said that although there was no direct “coordination,” Common Core’s approach is being implemented in the AP and SAT exams by his boss, David Coleman, Common Core’s  architect and the new president of the College Board, which produces the AP and SAT exams. The new approach includes using the scholarly papers that one would find at this conference.

No More Facts, Ma’am
He told  high school teachers the new exams eliminate unnecessary memorization of facts and replace them with “historical thinking skills.” As examples of such irrelevant “facts,” Charap referred to Millard Fillmore and the Lend-Lease program.

The revisions to the exam began in 2006, at the request of college professors who said AP history tried to jam a college survey course, “a mile wide and an inch deep,” into a high school class, according to Charap. So the course has been redesigned to focus on skills, where students go in-depth and ask questions in an engaging way—traits AP shares with Common Core and the SAT. Accordingly, multiple-choice questions count for less of the score and have been reduced from 80 to 55, which Charap would like to reduce even further.

So what will replace facts about the thirteenth president or a controversial wartime program? Students will be tested for “skills,” in relating secondary (scholarly) sources back to the primary (historical) sources.

Dramatic Re-enactments
Such an exercise may sound good. But as I found out, it is a means by which teachers can impose their ideological views on students who do not yet have a foundation in history. The exercises showed that historically significant facts would be replaced with emotional exercises focused disproportionately on negative parts of American history. Two members of the AP development committee, UC-Irvine professor Jessica Millward and high school teacher James Sabathne, demonstrated how.

Millward said she brings her research on female slaves and their children in the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland into the classroom. She claimed her students use “critical thinking skills” and focus on concepts, like “freedom” and “bondage.” Millward also recognizes students don’t do the assigned reading, so she breaks them into groups and has them read assignments on the spot. The exercises include a visual timeline and scenarios in which students imagine a way to “resist and rebel” against, for example, the whipping of a six-month pregnant slave face down, her belly in a hole (to protect the future “property”). Millward then play-acts the slave owner. She praised the new “interactive exam” for allowing the freedom to recreate such experiences. She offered a list of online resources, such as the University of North Carolina’s Documenting the American South, the African American Mosaic, and Depression-era Works Progress Administration interviews at the Library of Congress, as well as secondary sources, including her article, “‘That All Her Increase Shall Be Free’: Enslaved Women’s Bodies and the 1809 Maryland Law of Manumission” in Women’s History Review. No one can deny her contention that slavery involves “heartbreak,” but she seems intent on exploiting it.

After one teacher in the audience noted that the U.S.’s share of slave trade was only 5 percent, the panelists suggested that that fact and the one that some blacks owned slaves should be downplayed to students. Clearly, the aim is to give high school students a limited, emotional perspective of white-on-black racism, instead of the larger historical one.

Racist White People
The next panelist, James Sabanthe, who teaches at Hononegah High School in Rockton, Illinois, heralded the new focus on “historical interpretations.” It became apparent from his, Millward’s and other teachers’ comments that although high school students are treated as adults who “think like historians,” they do not do the reading that real historians do. Because students do not read all 20 to 30 pages of a typical scholarly article, Sabanthe distributes excerpts among groups of students. As an example of an exercise, students would be asked to use their “historical thinking skills” to demonstrate change while comparing revolutions in France, Russia, and China, a conversation launched by asking students about prior knowledge of labor systems, Indians, servants, and racism.

For the unit on slavery, Sabanthe provided hand-outs, with sample readings. Half of his groups would tackle excerpts from Edmund S. Morgan’s “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox,” in The Journal of American History (June 1972), and Kathleen M. Brown’s Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, & Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (1996). The other half would read excerpts from Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (1998) by Ira Berlin, former president of OAH, and How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon (2008) by David Roediger, who writes from a Marxist perspective. These groups would make “t charts” and Venn diagrams, and discuss similarities and differences between the excerpts.

But upon reading Sabanthe’s hand-out, it became clear the excerpts do not stand alone. Sometime surnames pop up, with prior references obviously in an omitted section. His assignment, to annotate the primary document, “’Decisions of the General Court’ regarding William Pierce’s Plantation, Virginia, 1640,” and relate it to Brown’s feminist tract, is bewildering. Students would need considerable direction. Instead of the full narrative of a textbook, history book, or full article that they could digest for themselves, students turn to their teacher for direction. Of course, this leaves wide open opportunities.

Trauma—From Whom?
This activity, according to the hand-out, fulfilled AP U.S. History Curriculum Framework, 2014, “Key Concepts,” pages 35-39, which focused on the especially racist qualities of the British system, for example: “Unlike Spanish, French, and Dutch colonies, which accepted intermarriage and cross-racial sexual unions with native peoples . . . , English colonies attracted both males and females who rarely intermarried with either native peoples or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy” and “Reinforced by a strong belief in British racial and cultural superiority, the British system enslaved black people in perpetuity, altered African gender and kinship relationships in the colonies. . . ”

With all the attention on abuses of slavery, it’s no wonder that one of the teachers, who teaches in an Orthodox Jewish school, wondered how she should handle the only black student in her class. In response, Millward acknowledged that these topics bring up anger and white guilt. “I believe in educational affirmative action,” she said and suggested removing the black student from the class discussion to avoid “trauma.”

Quite obviously, the “trauma” is a problem of the teachers’ own making—now to be reinforced by the College Board.

The new AP exams, like Common Core, presumably are inspired by what “engages” students. From what I heard at this and other panels, the revisions come from what engages, and profits, teachers developing the exams.

Although Sabathne said he is getting away from textbooks, he also said he has been working with Charap and publishers on new AP-aligned history books and guides. Sabathne encouraged teachers to sign up for his upcoming week-long AP session in St. Petersburg. The huge publisher Bedford-St. Martins has been working with the College Board on new books and was a “platinum” (highest level) sponsor of the conference. Norton Publishing (silver sponsor) is also coming out with new books. Charap optimistically said that in three years there should be a good bank of materials to prepare students for the new AP exam.

No doubt there will be, at the expense of taxpayers who subsidize the indoctrination.

Florida: Protest against Broward School Teacher for Religious Persecution

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unnamed (1) - EditedIn an email Danita Kilcullen states, “I received a phone call from Jack at 1:15 p.m. saying to get dressed and get down to the court house by 2:00 for a press conference with this family.  I alerted a few people in my neighborhood, grabbed my TEA Party FL t-shirt and cap, USMC flag, and two U.S. flags and headed down.  Maryann met me there.  Surprisingly, there were 6 or 7 TV affiliates from the Press.  Funny, this has gone nation-wide, but not a word from the Sun Sentinel.”

“When I left the conference my mind was racing:  This teacher should be fired, she should be required to take ‘sensitivity’ therapy and training, and should  be ordered to attend a class on the Constitution of the United States.  The attorney for Giovanni and his family stated over-and-over that she had clearly violated the U.S.Constitution.  Maryann and I were able to briefly speak with the attorney and the Rubeo family,” wrote Kilcullen.

This protest is being organized against a Broward County Florida school teacher who humiliated a 12-year-old boy in front of an entire class after she caught him reading the Bible during free reading time.

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Swornia D. Thomas. Photo courtesy of Washington Times.

The teacher Swornia D. Thomas, at Park Lakes Elementary School in Fort Lauderdale, ordered Giovanni Rubeo to pick up the telephone on her desk and call his parents. As the other students watched, the teacher left a terse message on the family’s answering machine.

“I noticed that he has a book – a religious book – in the classroom,” she said on the recording. “He’s not permitted to read those books in my classroom.”

The Liberty Institute, a legal firm that specializes in religious liberty issues, is now representing the Rubeo family. They are demanding that Giovanni be allowed to read his Bible during free reading time. They also want the school to issue a written apology to the boy.

Read the full story at FoxNews.com.

RELATED STORIES: 

What happens when Dad protests sexual smut assigned to his 9th grader will floor you
Teacher caught on video manhandling kindergartner will make your blood boil

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of Liberal Logic 101.

Does a Benghazi Select Committee Matter? by Amy Payne

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House Republicans are moving to set up a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks. The House could vote this week on establishing the panel, which House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said would be led by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor.

Helle Dale, a Heritage expert who has followed the Benghazi scandal closely, said this “could be a giant step toward unraveling the real story behind the Benghazi attack, which cost four brave Americans their lives, and the cover-up that has denied Americans the truth.”

See four essential questions the Benghazi select committee should tackle

What is a select committee, and is this move useful? The Foundry asked Heritage legal expert Hans von Spakovsky.

The Foundry: What is a congressional select committee?

Hans von Spakovsky: Select committees can be set up to perform a particular function, often to perform a specific investigation. They are usually created by a resolution that specifies the duties and powers of the select committee, including when its authority will expire. Such committees are particularly useful when jurisdiction over a particular subject is shared by several regular committees, which can lead to confusion and conflicting actions.

Who sets it up, and what jurisdiction/authority does it have?

In this case, Speaker John Boehner has announced his intention to set up the committee and appoint Rep. Trey Gowdy as its head. The House still has to vote to establish the committee. The resolution setting it up (which hasn’t been released yet) will establish its jurisdiction, but in general, select committees can subpoena and depose witnesses, call them to public hearings, and hire lawyers to work as special investigators.

How does a select committee differ from appointing a special counsel to investigate something?

Only the Attorney General can appoint a special counsel to investigate a matter. For example, House Republicans are also talking about asking for a special counsel to look into the IRS’s targeting of conservative nonprofits. The chances of Eric Holder granting that are just about nil.

Does it have the power to punish people?

If, for example, they decided to vote someone in contempt of Congress—for failing to appear or provide testimony—the full House would have to approve that. If Congress had to enforce a contempt citation in federal court, a judge could order the witness who is in contempt to provide testimony, and if the witness doesn’t, the judge could impose jail time or a civil fine. You know, it probably hasn’t been done since the 1800s, but the House does have the power to seize someone who is in contempt of the House. The sergeant-at-arms can seize someone and put them in a jail cell in the House.

What kind of results have select committees produced in the past?

One of the most well-known select committees was the Church Committee chaired by Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho) in 1975 that investigated intelligence gathering by the CIA, NSA and FBI. Its findings led to new laws imposing restrictions on how we gather intelligence, which some believe are at least partly responsible for the intelligence failures related to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

So are select committees focused on producing new laws?

On Benghazi, I think this committee would be driving toward finding out exactly what happened; why the security of the consulate in Benghazi was so inadequate; what failures there were at the State Department and potentially the Pentagon for not being able to respond once the attack started; and coming up with recommendations to prevent anything like this from happening again. In addition to legislative recommendations, they could make recommendations for disciplining or terminating employees if they find wrongful behavior.

It’s been some time since the Benghazi attack on Sept. 11, 2012. Is it helpful to start the investigation now?

A select committee would not have to start from scratch; it would have the benefit of all of the information uncovered to date by the committees in the House of Representatives that have been investigating these matters. But this committee would have the advantage of a single-minded focus on the issue—including dedicated staff—as compared to the regular House committees that have numerous other responsibilities and duties in many different areas.

I had thought this would have happened sooner, but thank goodness it’s finally happening.

Is this just for show, or will it have substance to it?

I think it will have substance to it. And it’s important because four Americans were killed, and it looks like they were needlessly killed—that if the right security steps were taken, they would not have died. I think this is very important for the future safety of American diplomatic personnel.

Remembering Benghazi: A Timeline in Photos

RELATED STORY: Poll: 72% want the truth about Benghazi

Florida: Court collision pushing Pinellas Term Limits case toward Supreme Court

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Crash!

The April 16 decision by the Florida 2nd District Court of Appeals excusing Pinellas County from enforcing its voter-approved 8-year county commission term limits law collided head on with a 2011 decision from the 4th DCA which required that they be enforced. Indeed, after the Florida Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the 4th DCA decision, every county in Florida is enforcing their county term limits except Pinellas.

Why is Pinellas so special?  In its April 16 decision, the 2nd DCA did  not answer that question. In fact, its only response was: “Affirmed.” No explanation was given at all!

That won’t do. It is pretty clear this case must be settled in the Florida Supreme Court as the conflict between the two decisions are so stark.  Must counties enforce their voter-approved charter amendments or not?

It is an important question that affects all 20 of Florida’s charter — or ‘home rule’ — counties, not just the 12 whose voters have opted to impose term limits on their county politicians.

On this basis, the Pinellas citizens who have been defending the Pinellas term limits law in court have filed for a rehearing, requesting the court revisit its decision or at least provide an explanation that they can bring to the Supreme Court.

It is difficult to see what the defense the county politicians have. The case set out in the good guys’ Motion for Clarification appears incontrovertible:

  1. Voters overwhelmingly approved 8-year term limits on county commissioners and constitutional officers in 1996.
  2. In Cook (2002),  the Florida Supreme Court (in a split decision) struck down the term limits on constitutional officers, but did not address county commission term limits.
  3. The Pinellas charter’s severability clause (7.01) clearly provides that if one section of the charter is found unconstitutional, others survive.
  4. As an example of this under Florida law, Florida voters approved in 1992 term limits on both federal Congress members and state legislators. When the U.S. Supreme Court shot down Congressional term limits in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), the Congressional term limits were nullified but — per Florida’s Ray v. Mortham (1999) — the state legislative term limits still stand.
  5. In 2011-12, the 4th DCA and then the Florida Supreme Court both unanimously affirmed the constitutionality of county commission term limits and also reversed their earlier decision regarding constitutional officer term limits as well.
  6. All Florida county term limits on the books today have been ruled constitutional and are being enforced, except in Pinellas County. There is no reason why Pinellas should be treated differently.

Due to the conflict between the DCAs, appellants Maria Scruggs and H. Patrick Wheeler argue the 2nd DCA owes the public — and the Supremes — an explanation. If we get one, it will be due to the hard work and personal sacrifice of these two individuals.

On Selling Classical Liberalism by Alberto Benegas-Lynch, Jr.

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Some say we classical liberals should do a better job of “selling ideas.” And maybe we should, but I have my doubts. Indeed, transmitting ideas is a different process altogether. And I base my own conclusions in the wisdom of Leonard Read.

When a consumer buys a product, he has to understand what kind of service the good in question will provide. But it is not at all necessary for him to be aware of the production process involved. (For example, when you buy toothpaste, you expect the product to clean your teeth.) On the other hand, when someone puts an idea forward—if the listener is neither a fanatic nor a fundamentalist—it often will be necessary for her to grasp the causal chain involved in its production, so she can fully understand the idea. It would be difficult for someone, say, to understand how DNA works without first understanding something about genes, as well as something about molecules.

Further, the selling process does not apply to ideas—especially in relation to classical liberalism—because our worldview does not specify (nor could it) what will result from the adoption of a truly open society. And yet a salesman incapable of explaining the result of buying and using the product he intends to sell would not be in business for very long.

In other words, selling a good or a service is generally not the same as transmitting an idea.

Of course, such does not contradict any criticism by those who think we classical liberals fail to transmit our ideas skillfully. In fact, I think we often do a poor job, and because we tend to be easier on ourselves than on others, we should reconsider our communication defaults. Instead of complaining about others’ inability to understand what freedom really means, we certainly ought to work on our modes of presentation and polish our messages. And of course we should do more homework—both about how people receive messages and how best to craft them.

An Open Adventure of Thought

Having said all this, I want to return to another reason the selling process is not adequate for the marketplace of ideas. I am inspired to do so by Leonard Read’s The Coming Aristocracy, although in some respects I will give a different turn to what he expressed.

When freedom is adopted, the adventure of thought remains open. Karl Popper writes in The Poverty of Historicisim that “future knowledge is not possible in the present.” This will never be understood by authoritarians who act as if they know what will happen in their own lives, not to mention in the lives of the billons of other people, with innumerable relations among them.

The almost infinite unforeseen consequences of their actions, in the context of ever-changing conditions, are unknowable. Only the monumental presumption of knowledge by statists allows them to move with such confidence, as if information were pulled from a shimmering well in the temple of State (instead of dispersed among billions). But knowledge cannot be concentrated in the hands of bureaucrats, however arrogant. And their power is really just concentrated ignorance.

Thomas Sowell, in Knowledge and Decisions, explains that the matter would not be in any way solved if there were available computers with gigantic memories, because the data simply do not exist before these uncountable actions take place. This is also why Ludwig von Mises has demonstrated that without private property and prices, economic calculation is impossible. It’s why price interference by planners distorts the allocation of resources, which in turn means we are unable to read market signals correctly. And this leads to misinformation, malinvestment, capital overconsumption, and, finally, reduced wages and incomes in real terms.

Of course, all of this isn’t easy to “sell,” even in an overview. Neither, of course, is suggesting to the uninitiated that they read Sowell’s Knowledge and Decisions or Mises’ “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.”

Semantics

Still, Warren Nutter helps to clarify some of the semantics in this debate in one of the pieces collected in Political Economy and Freedom. Specifically, Nutter distinguishes between “development” and “progress.”

In the first case, “development” is more of the same (a tumor has developed, for example, which can be forecasted) and that is why planners often use this expression; in the second case, however—despite contemporary socialist buzzwords—the future, real “progress,” is open and unknown, and thus cannot be planned.

The trust of classical liberals in freedom is based not only on iterative experiences of success, but in the need for each person to decide how his or her own life is to be lived. Instead of being domesticated by governments, people can govern themselves and determine their own destinies, which amounts in any case to an unplanned harmony.

In the final analysis, can we seriously suggest an idea whose results we cannot predict? But this is precisely the advantage of freedom: We can trust in people to manage their own lives. If there are those who prefer to delegate decision-making powers to others—instead of supporting socialist political trends that extend this delegation to everyone, with or without their consent—they can appoint tutors, consultants and counselors who cannot so easily rob people of their dignity.

It is as if those that appreciate and love freedom were to cry as loud as they possibly could, “Let me be human! Let me manage my own affairs!”

As the Adams—Smith and Ferguson—taught, each individual pursues his own particular interest, but if they are to become successful they must satisfy others’ needs. In this way they participate in the creation of an order that was not in their initial purposes (nor in their faculties) to create.

Government, in this stage of cultural evolution—despite the fertile, continuing debates on externalities, public goods, and prisoners’ dilemmas—is to protect justice. That means, as Roman Ulpiano famously put it, “to give each one what belongs to each one.” Such is a tribute to the sanctity of the institution of property rights.

As Hayek explains, ideas are a complex phenomenon that require a difficult and long chain of reasoning—especially in the field of social sciences where there are no laboratory experiments. On the other hand, as we said, for the selling process the marketer need only concentrate on the benefits of the final product. This is the reason the teaching process demands so much reading and time with instructors.

This is the long way. But it may be the only way.

Sales Redux

By the same token, it is not acceptable to connect liberal ideas to marketing, because such normally requires the ability to detect (and in rarer cases inspire) what people want so as to provide it. In our case, on the contrary—although it may be paradoxical—to a great extent liberals must work against the trends of the ideas market (since people can want socialist redistribution—or at least can be inspired to believe they do) in order to protect the market process itself. If statist ideas should prevail, the market would largely disappear.

Finally, in another sense, ideas are not subject to being sold in another way. That is, a person who maintains the virtues of integrity and decency will not sell his or her principles. As Al Pacino said in Scent of a Woman, “There isn’t nothin’ like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is no prosthetic for that.”

ABOUT ALBERTO BENEGAS-LYNCH, JR.

Alberto Benegas-Lynch, Jr. holds two doctorate degrees, one in Economics and one in Business Administration, is president of the Economic Science Section of Argentina’s National Academy of Sciences, author of 17 books and a former member of the Board of the Mont Pelerin Society.

Study: Why Catholic schools have “switched” to charter schools

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Sector-Switchers

For a free copy of the Sector Switchers study click on the image.

For decades, Catholic schools, particularly inner-city Catholic schools, have seen declines in enrollment and an increasing need for subsidies from their dioceses. Many dioceses, however, have been unable to shoulder that burden, forcing schools to close. In response to difficult financial circumstances, the archdioceses of Indianapolis, Miami, and Washington, D.C., put a new twist on the typical story, “closing” a set of their inner-city schools, but allowing them to reopen as independently managed public charter schools.

That phenomenon raises interesting questions about the future of urban Catholic schooling. In this paper, we examine, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the effect of this conversion on the schools and communities involved.

By tracking enrollment information from before and after the conversion for both schools that switched as well as schools with similar demographics, we are able to conclude:

  1. Switching from private to charter significantly increased enrollment in affected schools.
  2. Switching from private to charter meaningfully increased the percentage of minority students in the schools.

Through interviews with key personnel in those school systems, we discovered several interesting implications from the decision to convert schools.

The question of what to do with struggling inner-city Catholic schools is still an open one. Evidence in the academic literature, confirmed by the lived experiences of the school leaders we interviewed, makes a strong case that private school choice programs can stem the tide of private school closures. But, as more communities consider school choice (both public and private) as a policy to give more options to low-income families, it is important to emphasize that how those programs are structured affects the schools that will be able to participate—and ultimately the set of choices available to families.

Florida League of Women Voters Celebrates Voter Fraud?

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The Florida League of Women Voters appears to be against any strenuous review of voting rolls with the intent of removing ineligible voters. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner in 2013 began a process called “Project Integrity“. The idea was to check Florida voter rolls against the Department of Homeland Security SAVE database to insure those in Florida illegally do not vote. The Secretary’s office would verify someone is on the SAVE database and registered to vote in Florida, then that name would be sent to the local Supervisor of Elections (SOE), who would then re-verify if the voter is ineligible. The SOE would then remove that name from the voter rolls.

Project Integrity has been opposed by the Florida League from the start.

“Using the federal SAVE Program to conduct this ‘cleaning’ of the voter rolls is like taking a chihuahua on a hunting expedition — it is an inappropriate tool for this application,” says League President Deirdre Macnab. The League will be watching to ensure that the rights of eligible voters are not undermined. “We urge the Secretary’s office to look for ways to engage the state’s electorate and use the Department of State’s resources to make the voting process more accessible to citizens, rather than more strenuous,” Macnab concluded.

When Secretary Detzner stopped Project Integrity the League celebrated that decision stating “Florida voters should be delighted by this news.” We sent the following questions to Macnab:

  1. Should voter rolls be updated to remove all those not eligible to vote?
  2. Should voter rolls be updated to meet federal and state laws on voter eligibility?
  3. In a press release on suspension of Project Integrity the FL League of Women Voters stated “ Florida voters should be delighted by this news.” 
    Should illegal aliens be allowed to vote? If so, how many and why?
  4. Why do you use the word “purge” in your press release? Purge implies ethnicity. Ineligible means illegal. Does the League agree?
  5. Your presser states “Previous purges initiated by the Department of State have resulted in embarrassment for the state of Florida and have done nothing to make our elections process more secure.” What does updating voter rolls have to do with security? What are you referring to when you state “embarrassment for the state”. Please send me a poll or study that has this as a finding.
  6. You state, “Prior to the 2012 election, over 182,000 registered voters were inappropriately targeted by the state as potentially ineligible.” Where did you get this number?
  7. There are examples of people who are contacted and later retained on the voter rolls. Is it not proper for local Supervisors and the Secretary of State to check eligibility? Why is it inappropriate to look at potentially ineligible voters?

We received the following reply from Macnab on April 2, 2014:

Every voter takes an oath when they register to vote and pens their signature to the registration form. A new voter pledges that the information provided is both accurate and truthful information. To violate that oath is a felony, punishable by law. In the same vein, we should take the same precautionary steps to honor any voter’s oath before we consider removing them from the voter rolls. Unfortunately in Florida, we have seen instances where eligible voters are removed, with faulty and inaccurate voter list maintenance instituted by the Secretary’s office. The League believes only eligible voters should vote, and we have a process that is working: we know that the independently elected Supervisors of Election and their staff at the county level are working every day to ensure that lists are up to date and that only eligible voters are in fact voting. There are a number of news stories available if you Google this subject that can provide back up to the numbers you mentioned.

On that same day National Review Online reported:

North Carolina’s Board of Elections found that tens of thousands of registered voters from the state have personal information matching that of registered voters in other states, and appear to have voted in states other than North Carolina in 2012. In some cases, votes were cast under names of individuals who had passed away before Election Day.

The review searched databases in 27 other states and 101 million voter records for information such as matching names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers.

The review found that 35,570 North Carolina voters from 2012 shared the same first names, last names, and dates of birth with individuals who voted in other states. Another 765 Tar Heel State residents who voted in 2012 had the the same names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as voters elsewhere.

Read more.

The updating of voter rolls is the responsibility of each of Florida’s 67 Supervisors of Elections. Removing those ineligible to vote is a constant battle. Floridians would think that any effort to insure only those eligible vote and those eligible do vote would be a top priority of the Florida League of Women Voters. However, that may not be the case.

RELATED STORIES:

Florida: 3,000 Voter Registrations List a UPS Store as a Residence
The Stolen Election of 2012
League of Women Voters Assists Radical Leftist Dream Defenders

The Stolen Election of 2012

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The April 2, 2014 edition of National Review Online contains a blockbuster story detailing the results of a widespread vote fraud investigation conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Elections. In their review of the 2012 General Election, the board searched some 101,000,000 voter records in databases of 27 other states, using the same names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of individuals who voted in the North Carolina General Election.

What they found provides convincing proof that Democrats were not going to take any chances in 2012; they were not going to allow Mitt Romney to ruin Barack Obama’s chances for a second term. What the study of the 2012 election shows is that 35,570 North Carolina voters shared the same first names, last names, and dates of birth with individuals registered to vote in other states. Another 765 North Carolina voters had the same first names, last names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as those who voted in other states, stretching credulity to its absolute limits. Barack Obama carried North Carolina in 2012 by a margin of just 14,177 votes (0.33%). To what extent were those voters residents of North Carolina who also voted in 27 other states, or were many of them residents of 27 other states who also voted in North Carolina?

In another recent study by the State of Virginia, it was found that some 44,000 Virginia voters are also registered to vote in Maryland. Of course, fraudulent voting by Democrats is not unique to North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. For Democrats, vote fraud is a way of life… standard operating procedure. And if the Republican Party had any leaders fit to be called leaders, they would see to it that the voting statistics of every state in the nation are evaluated in exactly the same way as the North Carolina voting age population.

For starters, the North Carolina attorney general should hold a press conference, extending an invitation to the 765 North Carolinians with the same first names, last names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers as individuals who were found to have voted in other states to come forward and identify themselves. Those individuals should be allowed to plead guilty to felony vote fraud, pay a hefty fine, and lose their voting rights for a period as prescribed by law.

Of course, not all those who engage in vote fraud could be expected to self-identify themselves. In such cases, the North Carolina attorney general should conduct forensic examinations of absentee ballots held in North Carolina and other states, lifting latent fingerprints from absentee ballots and subjecting signatures to expert handwriting analysis. Those who fail to self-identify, but whose latent fingerprints are later found on absentee ballots should be indicted, tried, subject to a heavy fine, and sentenced to prison. Upon being sentenced for felony vote fraud they should also lose voting rights as prescribed by law.

Federal law requires that all state election boards retain absentee ballots for at least twenty-two months following an election. Many states require ballots to be retained for twenty-four months, or longer. So it is essential that investigators conduct studies of double voting within two years following an election or much of the evidence of vote fraud will be destroyed.

In a recent speech before Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Barack Obama attempted to rally his base by charging that Republicans are attempting to suppress the black vote in the coming 2014 General Election. Demonstrating once again that he is the dimmest bulb on the porch, he said, “The principle of one person-one vote is the single greatest tool we have to redress an unjust status quo.  You would think there would not be an argument about this anymore.  But the stark, simple truth is this:  The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago.”

Of course, as is the case with almost everything Obama says, he was not speaking the truth; he was only saying what he thought would appeal to his low-information base. The fact is, except for Democrat-sponsored fraud, the right to vote has not been threatened at all in recent decades, compared to the years between the Civil War and the mid-1950s. In those years Democrats used the KKK to intimidate and/or murder thousands of blacks for no other reason than that they insisted on the right to vote. Yes, the one person-one vote principle is a critical concept in our system, but that means one person-one vote, not one Republican-one vote and one Democrat-two votes or three votes, as most Democrats see as their birthright.

He went on to say, “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote…” So if that is a true statement, it must also be correct to say that Republicans have led efforts to make it impossible to board an airplane, to cash a check, to make purchases with credit cards, to enter public buildings, to sign up for food stamps, to sign up for unemployment benefits, and to purchase beer, wine, liquor, and cigarettes. But we all know that’s not the case, so once again Obama is caught telling untruths to people who are either too dumb or too gullible to know that they’re being propagandized by a four-Pinocchio liar.

The truth is, since the vast majority of those behind prison bars are registered Democrats… those who’ve either attempted to disrupt the social order or who’ve attempted to enrich themselves at the expense of others… it is only fair to say that it is Democrats who are directly responsible for most of these impositions on our time and integrity.

He said, “Now, I want to be clear! I am not against reasonable attempts to secure the ballot.  We understand that there has (sic) to be rules in place.  But I am against requiring an ID that millions of Americans don’t have.  That shouldn’t suddenly prevent you from exercising your right to vote.  So, yes, we’re right to be on guard against voter fraud.  Voter fraud would impinge on our democracy, as well.  We don’t want folks voting that shouldn’t be voting.  We all agree on that. Let’s stipulate to that, as the lawyers say.”

Unfortunately, with an attorney general like Eric Holder, Obama can stipulate all he wants to. It means about as much as a doctor stipulating that a patient suffers from a terminal, but curable, disease, but then prescribes no course of treatment. Eric Holder has been handed irrefutable evidence of vote fraud crimes by Democrats, all of which have been filed in the “round file.”

Then, suggesting to his gullible listeners that vote fraud is not a problem, he offered a few statistics. He said, “One recent study found only 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation in 12 years… 10 cases.  Another analysis found that, out of 197 million votes cast for federal elections between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters… out of 197 million… were indicted for fraud…”

Since a great many Democratic precincts regularly produce far more than ten cases of in-person voter impersonations, the people who put words on Obama’s teleprompter must have searched long and hard to find a source that would attest to only 10 cases in the entire United States in a 12 year period. Since Obama failed to cite the source for his statistics, one might suspect that they came either from Eric Holder or from the PR office at the Democrat National Committee.

It apparently escaped Obama’s attention that, in 2012, in precincts all across the country, in major cities with heavy Democratic majorities and powerful Democratic machines, Mitt Romney was completely “skunked,” receiving not a single vote out of hundreds of thousands of votes cast. This, of course, is not only a statistical improbability, it is a statistical impossibility, but it went completely unchallenged by Romney and the Republican National Committee.

Giving a tip-of-the-hat to a former racist Democrat president, Obama told his nearly all-black audience that, at the time Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, some of his advisors were recommending caution, saying, “Well, all right, just wait.  You’ve done a big thing now; let’s let the dust settle, don’t stir folks up.” But Obama quotes Johnson as replying, “No, no, I can’t wait.  We’ve got to press forward and pass the Voting Rights Act.  About this there can and should be no argument.  Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

Of course, that represents only Obama’s sanitized version of what Johnson may have said at the time. According to two Democratic governors who flew with him on Air Force One, what LBJ actually said was, “I’ll have those n_ _ _ ers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

The point is, African-Americans are rarely told the truth about where white Democrats actually stand on the issue of race. If the Republican Party had leaders worthy of the title, they would begin to tell them the truth, treating them as if they are grownups.

To the best of my knowledge, only one fraudulent voter in the entire state of Ohio went to jail for vote fraud in 2013. According to a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Melowese Richardson was convicted of voting 5 times for Barack Obama in 2012. She was released on March 11, 2014, after serving only eight months of a five year sentence on the grounds that she is mentally ill… a condition not uncommon among Obama voters.

It’s long past time that Republicans moved forward with a national voter registration database, tying every registered voter to a name, address, birth date, and Social Security number. It’s also long past time that we began making a lot more Melowese Richardsons, whether Democrats or Republicans. And if we don’t have Republican leaders with the stomach for the task, then it’s time to get new Republican leadership. We don’t have to jail all Democrats who commit fraud… we could never build enough jail cells… we only have to jail enough of them to make the rest wonder if perhaps they’ll be the next to hear a knock on their door.

RELATED STORY: Judges and Voter ID If the state provides free IDs, is there really an “unjustified burden” on poor voters? 

Florida’s In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens Violates Federal Law

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While I am a strong believer in states rights under the 10th Amendment, I also believe that states should follow existing federal laws. Following and enforcing immigration laws, for example, has been the rallying cry for Republicans and some Democrats. If Florida is harmed by  an immigration law then Governor Scott should work with the state congressional delegation to alter or abolish the law. The Florida legislature should not pass and Governor Scott sign a law that violates federal immigration law.

Case in point is the Florida legislature passing HB 851 giving illegal aliens in-state college tuition. This effort has been fully embraced by Governor Rick Scott, former Governors Jeb Bush and Bob Martinez  in the name of “lowering the cost of tuition for all Florida students.” The problem is HB 851 violates federal immigration law and requires Florida to provide the same in-state college tuition rate to all citizens of the United States.

According to  Hans A. von Spakovsky and Charles D. Stimson giving in-state college tuition to illegal aliens violates federal law. The following is the full text of their November 2011 column titled “Providing In-State Tuition for Illegal Aliens: A Violation of Federal Law“:

Federal law prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State”—unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States. Today, 12 states are circumventing this federal law, and the legal arguments offered to justify such actions are untenable, no matter what other policy arguments are offered in their defense. Because at least one federal court of appeals has held that there is no private right of action under the specific statute in question—§ 1623 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996—the U.S. Department of Justice must enforce this statutory provision against states that have violated federal law. Yet even as it sues states like Arizona and Alabama for trying to assist the enforcement of federal immigration law, the U.S. government refuses to sue states that are incontrovertibly and brazenly violating an unambiguous federal immigration law. Such inaction is unacceptable: The President and the Attorney General have an obligation to enforce every provision of the United State’s comprehensive federal immigration regulations—including the federal law prohibiting state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State.”

In 1996, Congress passed—and President Bill Clinton signed into law—the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA).[i] Section 1623 of this federal statute prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State” unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States.[ii] Today, 12 states[iii] allow individuals who are in the United States illegally to pay the same in-state tuition rates as legal residents of the states[iv]—without providing the same rates to others. By circumventing the requirements of § 1623 these states are violating federal law, and the legal arguments offered to justify such actions are untenable, no matter what other policy arguments are offered in their defense.

A Nation of Laws, Not of Men

The United States is a country of immigrants—men and women who sought opportunity and freedom in an exceptional new land. Americans take pride in their heritage and this country’s generous policies regarding legal immigration. Yet, as citizens of a sovereign nation, Americans retain the right to decide who can and cannot enter this country—and what terms immigrants and visitors must accept as a condition of residing in the United States. As mandated by the U.S. Constitution, Congress sets America’s immigration policy. State officials have considerable influence in Congress over the crafting of immigration laws, and they may take steps to help enforce federal law.[v] However, state officials cannot act contrary to a congressional statute.

America is a “nation of laws, not of men,” and thus her citizens must abide by the rule of law. But even if the operation of the rule of law was not imbedded in the U.S. Constitution and legal system, every generation of Americans should re-affirm its virtue and security. These concepts, ancient as they are, and quaint as they may sound to some, provide the bedrock principles of this nation’s constitutional republic. To abandon them in individual cases—where, for example, it seems opportunistic or personally appealing—is to render them unavailable in the preservation of all other rights.

The Constitution, the States, and Immigration

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4 of the United States Constitution provides that Congress has the power to “establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Over the decades, Congress has done just that, imposing a variety of conditions on those who wish to immigrate (e.g., such individuals must do so openly and in accordance with established legal process) and on those who might be visiting (e.g., such individuals must not overstay their authorized visit).

Unambiguous federal law regarding who may receive the benefit of in-state college tuition is part of these conditions. Specifically, § 1623 of IIRIRA provides that

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizens or national is such a resident.[vi]

Thus, it is obvious that Congress meant to prohibit state colleges and universities from offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens unless the state institutions also offer in-state tuition to all students, regardless of whether they live in the state or in another state. Congress may have assumed that state colleges and universities would not be able to “afford” offering in-state rates to everyone because these schools rely on the higher tuition from out-of-state students to help subsidize public colleges, and thus they would not offer in-state rates to illegal aliens.[vii] But the law itself provides a choice and only requires states to treat out-of-state citizens and illegal aliens equally.

IIRIRA, once signed into law by President Clinton, should have settled this issue. But some states have continued to offer lower tuition to illegal aliens without offering the same to all students—a direct violation of federal law. Specifically, 12 states have circumvented the express language and clear intent of the statute by erecting proxy legal justifications for offering in-state tuition to illegal aliens. These states have asserted these legal arguments in courts and forced others to waste time and resources in litigation to try to enforce federal law. Such state policies not only violate federal law; they also:

  • Encourage illegal immigration;
  • Are fundamentally unfair to students from out-of-state who are U.S. citizens; and
  • Force taxpayers to subsidize the education of illegal aliens.

Beyond these immediate concerns, there is another, larger issue at stake: the federal government’s preeminent power to regulate immigration. The Supreme Court has held that the “[p]ower to regulate immigration is unquestionably exclusively a federal power.”[viii] However, not every state action “which in any way deals with aliens is a regulation of immigration and thus per se pre-empted by this constitutional power, whether latent or exercised.”[ix] In order for a state statute affecting immigrants (legal or illegal) to be valid, it cannot be expressly preempted by federal immigration law and must “not otherwise conflict with federal law.”[x]

State laws that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens are both expressly preempted by, and in conflict with, § 1623—unless the state also provides in-state tuition rates to all other American students regardless of their state of residence. However, none of the states that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens have changed their state laws to provide such tuition rates to out-of-state students who are U.S. citizens.

Circumventing Federal Law 101

To avoid IIRIRA’s mandate that in-state tuition be determined “on the basis of residence within a State,” some state lawmakers have created alternative criteria through which students might qualify for in-state tuition. Such alternative criteria are intended to act as a substitute for actual residence, which, in turn, creates the patina of compliance with the federal statute: Since residence is not at issue, there is, so these states argue, no conflict between federal and state law. In reality, however, the states are targeting illegal aliens for in-state tuition.

Maryland’s Senate Bill 167, which was signed into law by Governor Martin O’Malley (D), is a typical example of such chicanery. This bill exempts individuals, including “undocumented immigrants,” from paying out-of-state tuition if the person attended a secondary school in the state for at least three years, graduated or received a GED in the state, proves that he or his parents have filed Maryland income tax returns annually for the three years the student attended school in Maryland, and states that they will file an application to become a permanent resident.[xi]

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler provided a dubious legal opinion regarding Senate Bill 167 to Gov. O’Malley on May 9, 2011. Gansler concluded that federal law (in particular, 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a)) does not preempt Senate Bill 167. The opinion suggests that Senate Bill 167 is not subject to the preemptive effect of § 1623(a) because the former “looks to factors such as time of attendance in Maryland schools and graduation from Maryland schools to define an exemption from nonresident tuition” [xii] and not residence. There are at least two problems with that legal analysis.

First, federal law permits a state to grant in-state college tuition to an illegal alien only if the state affords the same benefit to non-Maryland residents. The purpose of that law is to allow a state to treat illegal aliens like nonresidents for college tuition purposes: If the state does not charge more to the latter than to in-state students, then it may charge the same amount to illegal aliens (who, in an abstract sense, are akin to non-Marylanders). But Maryland’s law does not use that formula; Gansler claims that the bill does not require “residence” in Maryland to attend college and receive in-state tuition since it looks to “time of attendance” in Maryland high schools.

However, the regulations of the Maryland Board of Education authorize local schools to require “proof of the residency of the child” for admission into public schools for kindergarten through high school.[xiii] In fact, the Web site for the Prince George’s County Public Schools says that “proof of residence shall be a prerequisite of admission to the public schools” and parents and guardians who are registering their children for school the first time must file an “Affidavit of Disclosure as required by law, verifying their legal residence in Maryland.”[xiv] Montgomery County also tells parents enrolling their children for the first time that “all students…must provide verification of age, identity, residency, and immunizations.”[xv]As the state’s attorney general, Gansler has constructive knowledge of this residency requirement. The fact that he ignores it throws into question the premise on which his entire legal opinion rests.

No one who lives in, and went to high school in, for example, Wyoming, could satisfy the eligibility requirements of Senate Bill 167; the new law does not apply to non-Marylanders. As such, because the Maryland bill does not put non-Maryland residents on a par with Marylanders, the bill cannot give illegal aliens a break on state tuition.

Second, Gansler’s letter states that “the entire purpose of the bill is to design a law that will enable the State to continue to provide services to young undocumented aliens.”[xvi] The purpose of the bill, therefore, is to achieve the result that Congress outlawed in 8 U.S.C. § 1623(a)—granting in-state college tuition to illegal aliens without also granting that benefit to non-Maryland residents.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly struck down state legislation enacted to evade federal statutory or constitutional requirements. Indeed, the Court has rejected such legislation even when state lawmakers do not reference a suspect or disfavored classification:

The states have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control, the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the general government.[xvii]

For example, in 2000, the Court struck down a Hawaiian statute that limited voting in certain elections to individual descendants of those who lived in Hawaii prior to 1778.[xviii] The statute’s eligibility requirements made no mention of race but were an obvious pretext for Polynesian heritage.

These state statutes that are intended to provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens are similar pretextual attempts to evade the federal immigration statute.

The Martinez Legal Fig Leaf

The few federal cases on this issue filed by citizen university students and their parents against such state laws have not reached the substantive merits of the preemption issue because the courts have held that individuals do not have standing to sue under this statutory federal provision.

For example, in Day v Bond, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit brought by nonresident citizen university students and their parents against the state of Kansas. Section 1623 does not create a private right of action and the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring an equal protection claim.[xix] The court held that the injuries claimed by the plaintiffs failed to satisfy “the requisite standing criteria.” These injuries included:

  1. The denial of equal treatment caused by the Kansas law that made it impossible for nonresident U.S. citizens to obtain the same in-state benefits;
  2. The increased tuition faced by the plaintiffs since the burden of subsidizing illegal alien beneficiaries is passed along to other students through tuition hikes;
  3. The harm that results from competition for scarce tuition resources; and
  4. The extra tuition paid by nonresident plaintiffs during the academic year over the in-state tuition paid by nonresident illegal aliens, as a consequence of the discriminatory law.

On the other hand, illegal aliens who have sued states for denying admission to post-secondary institutions as a violation of their constitutional rights have had their lawsuits thrown out on the merits. InEqual Access Education v. Merten,[xx] a Virginia federal district court held that, although illegal aliens had standing to bring suit, Virginia was under no obligation to allow illegal aliens to attend Virginia colleges and universities. Virginia’s law was not preempted by federal law and did not violate due process: “It defies logic to conclude that…Congress left states powerless to deny admission to illegal aliens.”[xxi] The court concluded that the “persuasive inference to draw from § 1623 is that public post-secondary institutions need not admit illegal aliens at all, but if they do, these aliens cannot receive in-state tuition unless out-of-state United States citizens receive this benefit.”[xxii]

As the National Conference of State Legislatures notes in a report on in-state tuition for illegal aliens, in order to try and “maneuver around the [§ 1623] requirements, the eleven states that have enacted laws granting in-state tuition rates to undocumented students have tried to word the legislation so that it is contingent on high school attendance and graduation, and not based on residency within the state.”[xxiii]But Texas bases its definition of residency for college admission on an individual (or his parent) establishing domicile in Texas not later than one year before the academic term in which the student is enrolled in college or graduating from a Texas high school who “maintained a residence” continuously for three years before graduation.[xxiv] Similarly, California bases residency on high school attendance in California for three or more years and graduation from a California high school.[xxv]

The California Supreme Court bought into this legally questionable argument in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California.[xxvi] The court recognized that the question of federal preemption of California’s residency law depended on whether the three-year high school attendance requirement is an “exemption based on residence within California.” However, the court held that the requirement that a student attend a California high school for three years and graduate was not a residency requirement. It overturned the California Court of Appeals, which had come to the legally straightforward conclusion that the California law was intended to benefit illegal aliens living in the state and the “wording of the California statute…creates a de facto residence requirement.”[xxvii] The court of appeals did not consider it relevant that the eligibility criteria did not correlate 100 percent with residency.

The California Supreme Court made the illogical claim that because § 1623 is not an “absolute ban” on illegal aliens receiving such tuition benefits, that section of federal law is not in accord with the expressed intention of Congress in its immigration legislation to “remove the incentive for illegal immigration provided by the availability of public benefits.”[xxviii] The court also ignored the fact that the state had adopted the law specifically to benefit illegal aliens living in California and that the overwhelming majority of those who qualified for the benefit were only illegal aliens.

While this legally erroneous decision may be the law in California (at least for the time being), it is not the law anywhere else in the country. Although the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition of certiorari filed by the plaintiffs, it is black letter law that such a denial has no precedential effect whatsoever;[xxix]this issue has not yet been decided on the merits by any federal court.

And yet, offending states continue to ignore the clear language provided by a federal court in the Mertendecision, and instead rely on the preferred outcome found in a state supreme court ruling—a shortsighted and legally specious approach to governing.

Unwise Public Policy

Giving illegal aliens a financial break at state colleges and universities is not only illegal; it is also immensely unpopular with American taxpayers. An August 2011 Rasmussen poll found that 81 percent of voters oppose providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens. Seventy-two (72) percent of voters believe parents should be required to prove their legal residency when registering their children for public school.[xxx]

These results, however, should hardly come as a surprise: In 2005, it was estimated that the cost to taxpayers of providing in-state tuition in California was between $222.6 million and $289.3 million, while the cost to Texas taxpayers was between $80.2 million and $104.4 million.[xxxi]

Granting financial preference to illegal aliens also discriminates against otherwise qualified citizen students from outside the state. Furthermore, states that offer in-state tuition to illegal aliens act as a magnet for more illegal aliens to come to the state. Arguments to the contrary are unpersuasive, and not supported by the facts.

An Obligation to Enforce Federal Law

States that offer in-state tuition for illegal aliens are in violation of federal law. In doing so, these states are also acting against the will of the American people.

The applicable statute and the case law are clear: If there is no private right of action under § 1623, the U.S. Department of Justice must enforce this statutory provision against states that have violated federal law. Yet even as it sues states like Arizona and Alabama for trying to assist the enforcement of federal immigration law, the U.S. government refuses to sue states that are incontrovertibly and brazenly violating an unambiguous federal immigration law.

The President and the Attorney General have an obligation to enforce the provisions of the United States’ comprehensive federal immigration regulations—including the federal law prohibiting state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State.”

ABOUT HANS A VON SPAKOVSKY AND CHARLES D. STIMSON

Hans A. von Spakovsky and Charles D. Stimson are both Senior Legal Fellows in the Center for Legal & Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation;  von Spakovsky served as Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Justice Department (2002–2005) and Stimson was a federal prosecutor and later Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (2006–2007).

Florida Legislature Passes Two Landmark Bills: Textbooks and American Laws for American Courts

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Senator Hays

Florida Senator Alan Hays.

After four years of trying in the face of misinformed opposition, an amended version of American Law for American Courts (ALAC) SB 386 passed the Florida Legislature this week.  The Senate sponsor of SB 386, Senator Alan Hays, Republican of Umatilla, said on Monday, April 28th when the Senate voted to pass the measure by 24 Republicans to 14 Democrats:

I am delighted that my colleagues in the Florida Senate passed SB 386 – The Application of Foreign Law in Certain Cases -this morning.

It is my fervent desire to make sure everyone in a Florida courtroom is  protected from the imposition of any foreign law that may diminish the rights of that person which are afforded by our US and Florida Constitutions.  This bill codifies case law to offer those protections and is a welcome addition to the statutes of our state.

I sincerely appreciate the efforts of many others who assisted in the passage of this landmark legislation.

Fl. Rep. Mike Hill

Florida Rep. Mike Hill

House Rep. Mike Hill, Republican from Pensacola, a member of the Subcommittee on Civil Justice, following   House approval on April 30th of HB 903 by 78 Republicans to 40 Democrats, said:

I am honored to join my colleagues and vote ‘yes’ on the bill that passed the Florida House today codifying that American law only will be used in Florida courts.  It is our duty to do so as I took an oath to protect the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Florida.

The Amended version of SB 386 was adopted to overwhelm five Amendments put up by opposition minority Democrats prior to the floor debate that began last Friday, April 25th.The compromise reached was to take up an Amendment formerly offered and waived by Republican Senator David Simmons of Altamonte Springs in previous House and Senate Committee hearings. The Simmons Amendment would codify Florida case law. However, it would assist in addressing Sharia compliant parental abduction in violation of Florida, US and international law.Given Florida legislative procedures, the House passed the Senate version.Now the measure awaits enactment into law upon review by Florida Governor Rick Scott.

Rabbi Jonathan H. Hausman small

Rabbi Jonathan Hausman

Rabbi Jonathan Hausman and I were in the Florida House Public Gallery on Tuesday, April 29th witnessing the floor debate with questions from opposition Democrats to House bill sponsor Rep. Neil Combee.   Misinformed, they persisted in asking why the measure was necessary and alleged conflicts over recognition of Israeli rabbinic divorce decrees and business contracts.Rep. Combee cited both lower court and appellate level cases in which foreign law had been recognized that did not comply with the comity principles under Florida practice as justification for passing the measure.

The alleged problems cited by Democrat members of the Florida House; i.e., non-recognition of Israeli family court decisions had been investigated and found misleading. That effort was based on published research by Professor Daphna Hackner, a Tel Aviv University Family law expert and arguments presented in a video and letter to Florida legislators by Rabbi Hausman, a member of two state bars and expert in both Jewish Halacha and Islamic Sharia.

Prior to the Senate and House deliberations on SB 386/HB 903 we suggested to the bill sponsors that the Amended version be reviewed by Stephen M. Gelé, Esq. of the New Orleans law firm of Smith Fawer LLC.  Today, despite his being on vacation, Gelé sent his assessment on the legislation that we received via Christopher Holton of ACT!  Gelé said:

The Florida Legislature recently passed SB 386, a bill that will help protect Floridians from foreign law that is inconsistent with American values, such as Islamic Sharia law.  When hopefully signed into law by Governor Scott, the bill will: help protect Florida parents who face loss of their children to a foreign custody judgment; help protect spouses who face unfair foreign judgments of divorce, spousal support, or marital property distributions; help protect parents and spouses from marital contracts (including Islamic marital contracts often named mahrs) that would force decisions regarding child custody, spousal support and marital property distributions to be decided in foreign courts or under foreign law in American courts; and, help protect parents and spouses from having disputes regarding child custody, spousal support and marital property distributions from being dismissed by Florida courts in favor being decided in  foreign courts.

Although American and Florida courts have held in the past that foreign law should not be applied when the foreign law offends public policy, this concept has not previously been strengthened by statute. Further, under current Florida child custody statutes a judge can refuse to enforce a foreign custody judgment only “if the child custody law of a foreign country violates fundamental principles of human rights.”  Unfortunately, statements by the U.S. State Department suggest that “fundamental principles of human rights” should be interpreted more narrowly than most Americans would interpret the phrase.  However, SB 386 allows a Florida judge to refuse to enforce a foreign custody judgment under the much broader standard of whether the judgment offends the public policy of Florida.

Therefore, the most important effect of the change in the law would be to protect parents from losing their children to foreign custody decrees, which has happened before.

Margaret McLain

Prof. Margaret McLain

Gele’s comments are reflective of a new theme adopted based on the recommendation by Kansas House Speaker Pro Tempore, Rep. Peg Mast. Mast successfully secured bi-partisan support for passage of ALAC in the 2012 session in Topeka. She suggested emphasizing protection of “fundamental Constitutional rights” for Florida women and children. That meant putting a human face to the theme of the foreign law war on women and children. This was reflected in New English Review  interviews with two women.

One interview was with retired Arkansas State University Professor Margaret McClain. She spoke in Tallahassee on March 13, 2014 to a group of citizen lobbyists about the abduction and removal of her five  year old daughter Heidi to Saudi Arabia by her Saudi ex-husband in violation of state, federal and international law, but condoned under Sharia. 

Yasmeen A_ Davis NER interview 3-17-14

Yasmeen A. Davis

Then there was the interview with Floridian Yasmeen A. Davis who told about her abduction by her Saudi father at age 11 and her treatment under Sharia in his home in Saudi Arabia until rescued by her family at age 13.  Now 28 she still suffers PTSD from the episode.

One of the premiere groups in providing ground forces to obtain commitments for the legislation is the Christian Family Coalition (CFC) of Florida led by its highly effective executive director, Anthony Verdugo. CFC has more than 5,000 members and supporters working with over 1,000 Churches in the state. CFC demonstrated its prowess by supporting social issue legislation that passed the Florida legislature and a bi-partisan Support for Israel resolution in 2012.  CFC made the legislation a priority for passage in 2014 and held several training sessions with members to equip them with FAQs documents and arguments as to why the bills should be passed countering the misinformation of opponents.  On March 13, 2014  following talks by both Senator Hays and Professor McClain at the CFC’s Annual Leadership Prayer Breakfast in Tallahassee, 75 citizen-lobbyists fanned out buttonholing Senators and Representatives presenting the rationale behind  the CFC legislative priorities.  By the afternoon of March 13th, these CFC citizen lobbyists had successfully obtained 39 commitments in support of bills and other CFC legislative priorities.

Fl Rep Matt Gaetz

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz

Without the dogged determination of the legislation’s sponsors like Sen. Hays and Rep. Combee with the support of advocates in the House Reps. Mike Hill, Larry Metz and Matt Gaetz, what occurred this week might not have happened.

That was abetted by a new and important theme, protecting the Constitutional rights of women and children.  This was assisted by able ground forces from the CFC and other concerned citizen activists securing legislator commitments.

But that is not all that occurred in Tallahassee this week.

Earlier this month, Sen. Hays had also deftly maneuvered a companion measure directed at text book review, SB 864, passed the Senate with a thin vote tally of 21 Republicans  to 19 Democrat. The measure would reverse State Department of Education control over selection of textbooks returning that role to Florida’s 67 school districts, requiring open public hearing on texts used in courses.  SB 864 was largely prompted by a different issue; objections of parental groups in several Florida counties about the treatment of Islam and Muslim culture in world history textbooks that are on the Florida State Department of Education list of approved texts.

Today, the House passed the amended SB864/HB 921 by a resounding bi-partisan 117 yeas with 2 not voting.

Fl Rep_ Larry Metz

Florida Rep. Larry Metz

Like the experience with SB 386, SB 864/HB 921: “on K to 12 instruction materials”, was amended following a conference with both Senate and House sponsors and consultation with the Governor’s office.  While it may require clarification that standards of fact-based accurate depictions in world history texts should be adhered to, the legislation does create a process giving parents relief who object at the school district  level  to specific instructional material triggering  a public hearing.  The legislation  also adds requirements that instructional materials “accurately portray the religious and physical diversity of our society”. Further, it makes the school district boards responsible for the content of all instructional materials used in the classroom.  One important requirement is that the amended legislation would add a new topic in the curriculum specified in 1003.42, F.S. –“the events surrounding the terrorist attacks occurring on 9/11/01 and the impacts of those events on the nation”.

Those of us who have been involved with the support of both measures consider them landmarks for possible consideration in other US states.  This might not satisfy all of the concerns in certain quarters; however, they reflect two well turned precepts.  Voltaire wrote: “a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good”.   German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said:  “politics is the art of the possible”.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.

Florida: Education the Defining Issue in the 2014 Governor Race?

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On Tuesday, November 4th Floridians will go to the polls to select their governor. Currently there are thirty-two active candidates running. The gubernatorial race is the only statewide race in Florida. So what will make one of these candidates standout from the crowded field? If a recent election is any indicator, the defining issue will be – education – specifically Common Core State Standards (CCSS). People are rising up in Florida and across the country to stop Common Core. As George Will wrote, “Viewed from Washington, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky.”

Chris Quackenbush in her column Common Core: The Chain of Betrayal notes, “Political battles are now being won and lost on the education issue as in the Florida Congressional District 19, where an ‘outsider’ Curt Clawson, beat sitting State Senate Majority Leader Lizbeth Benaquisto by 12 points largely because of her duplicity on Common Core.  Her conservative base was not fooled by her superficial conversion after sponsoring a bill in 2013 to implement Common Core as she is allied with Jeb Bush.  His tentacles reach far in Florida where he is a major donor and supporter of many State Legislators including Governor Scott.”

Quackenbush states, “Common Core is the final nail in the coffin of American Exceptionalism.” That’s how heated the debate has become in Florida.

Associated Press reporter Thomas Beaumont wrote, “Raising U.S. educational expectations through national goals was a priority for Republican President George W. Bush. But many of his would-be successors in the GOP are calling for just the opposite of government-set rules, and it’s splitting the party as the GOP class of 2016 presidential hopefuls takes shape.” Common Core is splitting the party between those who support Jeb Bush and those who support parents, teachers, administrators, academics and citizens who favor keeping local control of education.

While Florida Democrats want to focus on income equality, the minimum wage, legalizing marijuana and abortion rights, and the Republican Party of Florida focused on the economy, jobs and tax reform, the defining issue remains public education.

Will the Florida race for governor in 2014 be a harbinger for the 2016 race for president? Those interested in a winning formula will, by all indications, be keeping a close eye on Florida on November 4th.

Candidates for Florida Governor

Candidate Status Primary General
Gibson, Kyle Chaderwick (NPA) Active
Adeshina, Yinka Abosede (REP) Active
Allen, Joe  (NPA) Active
Anderson, Rubin Lewis (NPA) Active
Angiolillo, Vincent Dominic (REP) Active
Crist, Charlie  (DEM) Active
Cuevas-Neunder, Elizabeth  (REP) Active
Devine, Timothy Michael (REP) Active
Fraleigh, James Edward (INT) Active
Gazetas, Vassilia  (NPA) Active
Giger, Herman Lee (NPA) Active
Griffis, Mark D. (NPA) Active
Horwath, Jefferson L. (NPA) Active
Khavari, Farid A (NPA) Active
Lee, Monroe  (DEM) Active
Lipner, Ryan Adam (DEM) Active
Martelly, Marcelle  (DEM) Active
McCoy, Roland  (DEM) Active
Murray, Paul  (WRI) Active
Reed, C. C. (NPA) Active
Rich, Nan H. (DEM) Active
Rolle, Leonard  (NPA) Active
Samuel, Berthram B. (REP) Active
Scott, Richard L. (REP)  *Incumbent Active
Smith, Dr. Joe  (REP) Active
Smith, John Wayne (LPF) Active
Stewart, Jessica Lana (DEM) Active
Tolbert, Charles Frederick (NPA) Active
Trujillo, Lesther  (NPA) Active
Wyllie, Adrian  (LPF) Active
Yarrow, Atlee David (SPF) Active
Zapata, Randy  (DEM) Active

Active candidate list courtesy of the Sarasota Supervisor of Elections.

RELATED STORIES:

The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry – by Esolen, Highfill, Stotsky
AP: Common Core a Defining Issue for GOP 2016 Hopefuls
Revolt: Common Core gets gored

Common Core: The Chain of Betrayal

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Who have we always trusted as the voice of the parents and teachers?  The PTA of course.  Most parents have attended meetings and supported PTA, but times are changing.  Many of our other pillars of education have been destroyed as well.  No longer can we send little Johnny off to school trusting he will come home smarter and stronger from the experience.

The PTA has betrayed the children and its own mission statement by accepting large sums of money from the Gates Foundation and GE to name a few, to promote their takeover of education through Common Core for their financial gain.  Just examine the Gates Foundation web site on contributions to advocate common core.

Make no mistake, this is a massive sellout.  Instead of advocating for our children, PTA and others were paid to advocate for Common Core, a national education program providing billions of dollars to GE, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, Pearson PLC (3rd largest shareholder is the Government of Libya) and other high tech companies.  In partnership with our Federal Government, these groups have wrested control of education from parents and teachers and put it into the hands of nameless and unaccountable bureaucrats.  They have copyrighted the standards and will control all aspects of education, hardware and software for schools, testing and training teachers, delivering inflexible curriculum and testing of children.  Parental control is ended and teachers have become class monitors with scripted lessons, monitored and controlled so they don’t deviate from the Government Planned indoctrination.

I was recently on the textbook adoption committee for Lee County Schools, the 34th largest district in the country.  We could choose any textbooks we’d like as long as they were all Common Core aligned.  Most textbook companies and testing companies are now owned by Pearson PLC, and all contain gross errors in history and massive UN propaganda.

These same companies and groups have compromised others who were supposed to advocate for the children, the parents and the voters as well.  In fact, the Gates Foundation report above shows at least 196 grants for the purpose of advocating for Common Core.  The State Boards of Education received money.  Foundation for Education in Excellence (Jeb Bush) took large sums and now is the platform for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign.  It’s no wonder he sold the children down the river with the promise of support of the richest companies and the wealthiest people in the World in his pocket.  He used the same tactics before when he founded the Foundation for Florida’s Future to build a war chest for Florida’s gubernatorial race using ties to his father and his brother to get money from out of state donors under the radar.

Let’s look at the strange bedfellows involved:  George Soros (Center for American Progress), President Obama, Eli Broad, Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, The US Chamber of Commerce, PTA, Business Round Table, many governors including Rick Scott, all are advocating Common Core.  What do they have in common?  All share either a financial or political benefit or both.

Where do our children’s interests enter?  The children are called “human capital” by the creators of Common Core for good reason.  Business groups have bought the (untrue) line that Common Core will create better and more manageable employees to produce profit.  They cite the lamentable decline in performance of our public schools but wrongly adopt common core, more of the same, as the solution.  You see, the decline parallels the level of national/ international interference in the education process.  The US Department of Education now has over 230 programs costing over $200 Billion per year and yet graduation rates have fallen by about 10% since its inception and test results have significantly declined.  It’s not possible to know exactly how much damage has been caused by Federal interference because tests have been dumbed down and results are measured differently to disguise the failure.  The Cato Institute report on the USDOE is clear. 

Common Core is the final nail in the coffin of American Exceptionalism.  Here’s the startling history of education from noted historian, David Barton:  He shows that what used to be an 8th grade education in America is now equivalent to more than a high school diploma.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/6bNl3qhBDcM[/youtube]

Every test and study has shown that parental involvement is the primary determinant of success in learning.   Meanwhile, Common Core removes parents, teachers, local districts, and states from any control of education whatsoever, by the linking of federal money (Title One, Race to the Top, No Child Left Behind Waivers) to adoption of Common Core’s uniform curriculum and National Testing.  Data collection on each little child is required and will follow the child from pre-K to work.  It will contain medical files, discipline records, family status, family religion, family political party, test scores, psychological profiles and more.  The advocates of Common Core are drooling over the marketing potential of this vast store of information as President Obama, through executive order, has reduced protection of data so that parental consent is no longer required.

Emphasis on collaborative learning reduces individual initiative and individual thought.  Forcing 70% of reading to be “informational” rather than classical works, dulls creativity and imagination.  The book, “Story-Killers” documents these effects in actual classrooms.  The author, Dr. Terrence Moore, speaks on this subject:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCDEFGH[/youtube]

Common Core math standards have been likened to “new math” an experiment ended decades ago as a major debacle.  Instead of pilot testing programs, Common Core was rolled out nationwide with no back-up plan.  This one size fits all math education does not even offer learning math facts as we have for hundreds of years as an alternative.  Convoluted schemes which are age inappropriate, confuse and destroy the confidence of young learners.  It may never be regained.

This massive attack and infusion of propaganda on our children must be stopped now because it is an existential threat.  As Abe Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the Government in the next.”  We have powerful and wealthy people and organizations with resources beyond our imagination with the goal of taking control of education, our children and our future.  We have the truth, our voices and our votes.  This is NOT just an ISSUE for us.  This is our children and we will never let this happen on our watch.

People are rising up all over the country to stop Common Core as George Will writes, “Viewed from Washington, opposition to the Common Core State Standards Initiative still seems as small as the biblical cloud that ariseth out of the sea, no larger than a man’s hand. Soon, however, this education policy will fill a significant portion of the political sky.”

Political battles are now being won and lost on this issue as in the Florida Congressional District 19, where an “outsider” Curt Clawson, beat sitting State Senate Majority Leader, Lizbeth Benaquisto by 12 points largely because of her duplicity on Common Core.  Her conservative base was not fooled by her superficial conversion after sponsoring a bill in 2013 to implement Common Core as she is allied with Jeb Bush.  His tentacles reach far in Florida where he is a major donor and supporter of many State Legislators including Governor Scott.

Florida Governor, Rick Scott, should take this seriously as he has the identical problem.  He betrayed his base by pretending to listen while completely adopting Common Core under a new name.  He is already trailing his besmirched opponent, Charley Crist, and every vote is critical.  His advisors may believe that Republican votes will come home rather than vote for Crist but he forgets that there is a third option.  Voters will stay home, boiling mad and turned off to his betrayal of their children for the support of establishment presidential candidate, Jeb Bush.

RELATED STORIES:

The Dying of the Light: How Common Core Damages Poetry – by Esolen, Highfill, Stotsky
AP: Common Core a Defining Issue for GOP 2016 Hopefuls

President Obama: Request you prepare the USA for Dangerous Cold Climate

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The Orlando, FL based Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) delivered a letter to the White House this morning for President Obama, in which it warned of the dangers expected from the ongoing climate change to decades of record cold weather.

This predicted historic event is caused by a rare, yet repeating 206-year cycle of the Sun which the SSRC calls a “solar hibernation.” During these hibernations, the Sun dramatically reduces the energy by which it keeps the Earth warm.  In past occurrences of these solar hibernations, the Earth was struck by two of the worst cold climate periods ever recorded, each of which witnessed global crop devastation, civil and political strife, and warfare.

One historian classified the last hibernation from 1793 to 1830, as the world’s “last great subsistence crisis.” That period was also called the Dalton Minimum, because of the scientist who kept track of temperatures then and the reduced energy output of the Sun as measured by a low number of sunspots during that period. The previous hibernation from 1615 to 1745 was called the Maunder Minimum and was far worse than the last hibernation both in terms of the depth, and extent of the cold epoch but also in the global crop devastation. Russian scientists are saying we are heading into another Maunder class solar hibernation starting this year.

John Casey

John Casey, President, Space and Science Research Corporation.

The letter to President Obama coincides with the seventh anniversary of discovery of the 206-year cycle that led to the formulation of the ‘Theory of Relational Cycles of Solar Activity,’ or the ‘RC Theory.’ The RC Theory creator and SSRC President Mr. John Casey, has since been leading the effort in the United States to alert the US government, the media, and US citizens about the dangers associated with this regular, albeit ominous cycle of the Sun. The SSRC record of major climate predictions using the RC Theory has been recognized as one of, if not the best public record of climate prediction in the US. That includes a successful record of predictions better than NASA, and NOAA, and by far exceeds that of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC).

According to Mr. Casey, “There is overwhelming evidence that global warming no longer exists and that the use of CO2 and the greenhouse gas theory by the UN and our own government represents what I and other scientists believe is the greatest scientific fraud in history. Sadly, even though the Earth is now cooling rapidly, we still see the current US administration and other countries trying to force-feed this bad science on their citizens. The record winter of 2013-2014 along with others in the past six years is but one example of how this recently started solar hibernation will continue to make the Earth much colder. The SSRC’s Global Climate Status Report, now shows that of twenty-four global climate parameters that we monitor, eighteen are showing a cooling trend is in place.

“I am also particularly concerned how the President’s climate policies will hit African Americans, other minorities and the poor the hardest, in terms of higher energy bills they will be paying and that they will be totally unprepared for the cold climate ahead. That matter is also addressed in the letter the White House received today.”

Read the full letter to President Obama by going here.

ABOUT THE SPACE AND SCIENCE RESEARCH CORPORATION

Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, the Space and Science Research Corporation (SSRC) is a leading independent US climate research company. It is the foremost institution in the United States dedicated to the analysis and planning for the next climate change – forecast to be one of decades of record cold weather.

The SSRC maintains active communication channels with some of the world’s best experts in the field of solar physics and climate research pertaining to the matter of the next climate change. In addition it has a dedicated list of “Supporting Researchers” who have committed their name and assistance to the mission of the SSRC. The SSRC also updates key US government leaders of the status of climate change activity centered on its area of expertise.

The SSRC possesses the capability to conduct planning and research on how best to prepare individuals, businesses, and governments at all levels for the next climate change to a period of long lasting and potentially dangerous colder weather.

Florida: Public school 7th grade Civics worksheet portrays Republicans negatively, Democrats positively

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Below is a worksheet from a 7th grade civics class currently being taught in Martin County Public Schools. It describes the Democratic and Republican parties to public school students. The handout appears, on the surface, to portray Democrats in a positive light and Republicans negatively. There are several factual errors and omissions in the worksheet, noted by a relative of the student. The highlighted text was done by the student’s relative.

The worksheet portrays the Democrat party supporting “the ideas of equal rights” when in fact the Republican party voted in higher numbers for the Civil Rights Act and is the party of Lincoln, who freed the slaves. It explains that “Many support Democrats legislation to protect gays and lesbians against discrimination.” It does not explain what the consequences are to traditional marriage, or a persons health (HIV/AIDS), well-being and the community.

The worksheet states “Democrats believe that the environment needs protecting… with the help of government laws that prevent pollution, even if it means penalizing businesses that cause pollution”. It does not mention that the Environmental Protection Agency was created under Republican President Richard M. Nixon based upon the findings of the Ash Council in April of 1970. It also states Democrats believe in “a strong military”. Currently, President Obama, a Democrat, has reduced the US military strength to pre-WW II levels. The military was reduced after WW II by President Harry Truman, and again after the end of the Cold War by President Bill Clinton, both Democrats.

Republicans are portrayed as supporting “the rights of business owners large and small”, “that the government should have a limited role in daily life”, “oppose the right to abortion”, “oppose same-sex marriage”, and in general “support gun ownership rights.” All are true but not for every Republican and conversely not for every Democrat. The handout states Republicans “favor a strong military”, “support school choice” “charter schools”. It states that Republicans “do not support a universal heath care system like those found in Europe and Canada.” No context is provided to explain how Europeans and Canadians fair under a universal health care system, nor does it explain the current issues with the Affordable Healthcare Act.

A request for comment has been sent to Martin County Superintendent Laurie Gaylord. Any reply will be published as an update to this column.

Martin County 7th grade civics class political parties

For a larger view click on the image.

RELATED STORY: AP: Common Core a Defining Issue for GOP 2016 Hopefuls