+ AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
+ ANNOUNCEMENTS
+ OBAMACARE - WHAT CAN WE DO?
+ GOOD GUYS ARE WATCHING US FOR LEADERSHIP EDUCATION BUDGET WOES, NOT
+ THAT DIFFICULT
+ AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
Our 12 noon luncheon for Wednesday, November 25th will be held at Italiano’s restaurant, 4801
Parade) and celebration in
+ ANNOUNCEMENTS
MONDAY - SHAWNEE AREA - The next in a series of statewide training classes will be held, starting at 6:30 p.m., located in the Shawnee Library. The first class will be Legislative Lobbying Training and the second class will be GOP Activist Training. These 2 classes will last until 8:30 p.m..
The legislative Lobbying class will teach you how to be an effective advocate of Constitutional principles to the Oklahoma State Legislature. The GOP activist training class will teach you how to become an effective advocate of Constitutional principles within the Republican Party. The class will teach you how the Oklahoma Republican Party is structured and how you can be an effective member of that party structure.
TUESDAY - OKC AREA - While it wasn’t unanimous, this past Wednesday OCPAC members voted overwhelmingly to oppose the up-coming MAPS III vote on December 8th.. This Tuesday morning at 11:30 a.m. on the East side of City Hall, in downtown OKC, OCPAC members are encouraged to join other members of the newly formed Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance for a rally and announcement of the various organizations in opposition to MAPS III.
As soon as I can get it formulated, I will send out a special e-mail presenting perspectives in favor of MAPS III and perspectives for opposing MAPS III. I believe folks looking at this through rational eyes will see that the negatives outweigh the positives. This is an important decision that only voters living in the incorporated city limits of OKC will be able to decide on December 8th. It will also affect everyone who dines or purchases retail goods in OKC even though they don’t live there.
FRIDAY - NORMAN AREA - The 2009 Bedlam Bash fundraiser for the Republican party will be held Friday evening from 6:00 until 9:00 p.m.
at the new Embassy Suites Hotel, 2501 Conference Center Drive in
528-3501 or e-mail: jay@okgop.com
+ OBAMACARE - WHAT CAN WE DO?
I first want to say the 3 candidates at the tea party forum last Thursday evening in
The things going on in
Representatives have already voted against the measure and they will vote against any final version. The same goes for our two
Senators, so we have done our job on this issue in
To be honest, contacting congressmen in other states is of little value. However, contributing money to efforts such as those being carried out by Dick Morris has some real value. Morris is running TV commercials in key states such as Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana and a couple more where a Democrat Senator is facing re-election next year and the citizens are somewhat to solidly against this so called health care reform. Those TV commercials pressure and expose those Democrats which will make it very difficult to vote for a final version, that is if they want to be re-elected. This is a worthy cause and has strategic value to the effort. However, there is more we can do.
During
Arrow) will be introducing some very important legislation regarding an amendment to our state constitution. If their measure passes both chambers of the state legislature (it won‘t require the governor‘s
signature) next November, the citizens will be allowed to vote to amend our Constitution to allow businesses and individuals to opt out of federal health care mandates. Hopefully the constitutional amendment will also allow the state to butt heads with any efforts by the federal government to ENFORCE their health care mandates which clearly violate the U.S. Constitution.
Therefore the obvious challenge is for “we the people” to contact our elected officials as soon as the legislation is ready and tell them that we want this measure passed. Tell them we want to be able to vote on this measure. This issue and others is why I have been saying to get the contact information for your personal state representative and senator handy and ready to use.
I will also make another recommendation. Get to know your elected officials. Call them up and ask to meet with them for lunch. Invite them over for dinner. 25 years ago, when home schooling was not as well accepted as it is today, my brother and sister in law invited our newly elected Democrat state rep over for dinner. It was just a pleasant dinner and a time to get to know one another. Following the dinner, at a pre-arranged time 7 or 8 other home school parents came over and talked about their commitment and experiences in home schooling. They asked this Democrat to protect their right to home school. This was very effective.
I suggest getting to know these elected officials. Because this next year during session, with the growth of citizen activists and the organizing that have been going on in various organizations that are now coming together with the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance (OCA), we the people will have a chance to effect the outcome of the state legislature more than any time in the past. That is if the people reading this e-mail and those who are members of other organizations will truly become activists. You will change the outcome of the state legislative session for the good, or you will change out some lawmakers who need to return to the private sector.
Please pay close attention. With the Republicans strongly in control of the House, anything that happens is on their shoulders. House Democrats are completely irrelevant regarding legislation, other than upholding a governor’s veto if one should occur. The Senate is much closer, but still, if Republicans act like conservatives (more accurately known as classical liberals), there is no reason most of the waste, corruption, bad decisions and socialist-fascist policies can’t be significantly reduced or eliminated in the state of
If the average person will be alert and become a true activist, it will be a much more difficult decision for Republican legislators to line up like little stooges for leadership in the House and Senate. It will much more difficult for the Republican bosses to pass legislation for the powerful special interests that have controlled the state for far too long!
Just one of those special interests is Higher Ed. Let me suggest a possible power play for next year. UCO really wants the State Medical Examiners Office to be re-located to new facilities on campus. They will claim it would be more efficient to be next to the new multi million dollar facilities which train students to be crime scene investigators (CSIs). It may be a good idea and if in the long term it will improve the performance of the office and lower costs, then I say do it, that is if the money is available.
However, it will probably cost many millions of dollars to make the move and there will be no money available for such a project in this year’s budget. Therefore, they will be under great pressure to BORROW the money through newly created bonded indebtedness and therefore put the state under an ever greater debt load. Let me say this loud and clear. This state should not borrow one more penny. Any lawmaker voting to obligate this state for more debt should be replaced by a better lawmaker next July or November!
+ GOOD GUYS ARE WATCHING US FOR LEADERSHIP
This past Monday, pastors Paul Blair, Steve Kern and Dan Fisher went to
This past Friday night in
pastors) and other Christians gathered to hear Chari Van Wyk, a South African evangelist talk about the Marxist turmoil and revolutions fomented on the continent of
Folks, there really is no other place to go.
+ EDUCATION BUDGET WOES - NOT THAT DIFFICULT
With revenues coming in short of budget predictions, we are beginning to hear “squeals” similar to those of piglets being pulled away from suckling the teat of their big momma sow. Of course the sow in my word picture is state government and the little piglets are various state agencies and special interest groups who live on the product of the teat (tax dollars). Without a doubt the largest piglet in the state is primary and secondary education. That piglets jowls are strong and powerful and its squeals are loud, when it comes to any effort to separate it from the teat. In fact, if allowed, it would suckle several teats at the same time.
In reality, the easiest place to reduce the budget and do no harm to students, is in primary and secondary education. Passage of HB 1017 in 1990 did several things. If forced the reduction in class size and opened the door for all day 5 year old kindergarten. Since that time we have foolishly introduced 4 year old pre-school (nanny state child
care) and are even playing with the even more foolish concept of 3 year old pre-school.
Not only did HB 1017 require huge pay increases for teachers spread over a 5 year period of time, it forced the hiring of 4,000 or so additional teachers to comply with smaller classroom size limits. Now please put you thinking caps on. Other than making
In April of 2002 THE EDUCATION REPORTER, published by Eagle Forum, had an extensive article on pre-school programs titled: Drumbeat Grows for Universal Preschool - Government daycare renamed “early childhood education.” While the article was about a nation wide movement, it was laced with references to
The vast majority of studies show children initially benefit from early childhood education but by the 2nd or 3rd grades, children who were NOT involved in these programs catch up with the children who were in them. A more recent study, and the largest of the all, suggests the same outcome but its findings are disturbing in another area. It suggest children with excessive exposure to other children may be more likely to develop harmful behavior problems.
Bottom line, if there is no long term benefit to early childhood programs and if they may even cause behavior problems in children, then why do we spend tens of millions of dollars on these programs? We do so because the state legislature which is overly influenced by the education industry passes laws which require us to do so. I call it an industry rather than a viable profession because it is more about power, wealth and jobs for the industry than about educating our children!
We should immediately begin to dismantle the early childhood education programs which will free up a huge sum of money. In addition, it will take pressure off local school districts to pass ever more school bonds to build more classrooms for these nanny state programs.
On another note, we should suspend all teacher-student ration requirements established under HB 1017. What I am about to say doesn’t seem logical, but there is not evidence that smaller classroom sizes improves the academic performance for our children. When I was growing up, my grade school classes always ranged between 30 and 36. Some of the lecture classes in Jr. high and high school were huge and held in an auditorium. The product turned out today is worse academically and morally than the product of my day, 45 years ago or so. Also, we were worse than the product 30 years before our day.
These changes will solve one more problem. We are hearing that there is soon to be a wave of teacher retirements which will create teacher shortages. All of these teachers displaced as a result of eliminating early childhood programs and returning control to local school boards for student teacher classroom sizes, will make teachers available to fill the slots of the retiring teachers. The savings will be enormous and I haven’t even started saving money with a “no strings attached”
voucher program to empower parents to direct the educational choice for their children. Saving money from the most expensive part of government isn’t hard to direct, it is just really difficult to accomplish politically.
I look forward to seeing everyone this Wednesday.
Charlie Meadows
Charliemeadows7@gmail.com
1 comment:
The current debate about “national health care” is exclusively centered on the merits of various provisions in the multiple versions offered by different factions in Congress, all of whom presume that America is destined to have such a program, in one form or another. Completely removed from the debate over this matter is any mention of the absence of constitutional authority for the feds to establish such a scheme in the jurisdiction of the several States. It is reputed that when an astute critic of this legislative tragedy noted this constitutional defect to a Congressman, he received a smug reply: “show me where we cannot enact this program.” Apparently, there are lots of constitutionally challenged federal legislators besides Pelosi.
There is one very profound constitutional objection to this federal gamble to subject Americans and their health care to the control of politicians and bureaucrats. Congress lacks the constitutional authority to regulate and control the practice of medicine in the jurisdictions of the States. See Linder v. United States, 268 U.S. 5, 18, 45 S.Ct. 446 (1925)("Obviously, direct control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the federal government"); Lambert v. Yellowly, 272 U.S. 581, 598, 47 S.Ct. 210 (1926)(“It is important also to bear in mind that ‘direct control of medical practice in the States is beyond the power of the Federal Government.’ Linder v. United States, 268 U.S. 5, 18. Congress, therefore, cannot directly restrict the professional judgment of the physician or interfere with its free exercise in the treatment of disease. Whatever power exists in that respect belongs to the states exclusively.”); and Oregon v. Ashcroft, 368 F.3d 1118, 1124 (9th Cir. 2004)(“The principle that state governments bear the primary responsibility for evaluating physician assisted suicide follows from our concept of federalism, which requires that state lawmakers, not the federal government, are ‘the primary regulators of professional [medical] conduct.’ Conant v. Walters, 309 F.3d 629, 639 (9th Cir. 2002); see also Glucksberg, 521 U.S. at 737, 117 S.Ct. 2258 (O'Connor, J., concurring). The Supreme Court has made the constitutional principle clear: ‘Obviously, direct control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the federal government.’ Linder v. United States, 268 U.S. 5, 18, 45 S.Ct. 446, 69 L.Ed. 819 (1925); see also Barsky v. Bd. of Regents, 347 U.S. 442, 449, 74 S.Ct. 650, 98 L.Ed. 829 (1954) (‘It is elemental that a state has broad power to establish and enforce standards of conduct within its borders relative to the health of everyone there. It is a vital part of a state's police power.’). The Attorney General ‘may not . . . regulate [the doctor-patient] relationship to advance federal policy.’ Conant, 309 F.3d at 647 (Kozinski, J., concurring).”).
And certain features of this proposed law will certainly be unconstitutional; see United States v. Constantine, 296 U.S. 287, 56 S.Ct. 223 (1935).
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