April, 2015, Part 1, Will The Center Hold?

On a regular basis we discuss a continuing theme in this post. “Will the center hold?” Never in my life have I seen such a push back against an overreaching Federal government and Washington political class at all levels of government and at the individual citizen level. From Obama Care to gun control to education to Common Core to spying on innocent civilians, across the country people are finally saying enough and have started to rebel against Washington dictates and laws.

Which brings to two very interesting questions:

1. What if Washington passed a law and everyone the country simply ignored it?
2. Would the center hold or would the Republic splinter apart?

Don’t believe that the center is possibly in danger? Insert the phrase “will the center hold” into the search box above or read on today and for the next few days to see where the rebellion has spread to.

1) A major source of irritation and push back against Washington has been with Common Core, the Washington based overhaul of education in the country which attempts to dictate a top down approach to education. We have often discussed how badly this program educates are kids based on actually testing results and how states, schools and parents are rebelling against education dictates from a far away and out of touch Washington.

How deep is the push back? Well, on Long Island in New York, twice as many parents have taken their kids out of the the Common Core testing exams this year vs. the previous year. In one school district, over 80% of the parents decided their kids should not be subjected to the Common Core tests. Other school districts on the island have had opt rates over 50%. Thus, we are not talking about a small minority of rebellious parents, we are talking about the majority of parents in certain school districts.

Which gets us to the question: what happens if everyone takes their kids out of Common Core testing, does the Common Core program die a well deserved death? We shall see. For a look at the opt out rate for Common Core in every Long Island school district go to:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12MKPf7x8-Xym-sLwEH2XJNqR6cN6KMGzjFx25k4-_ug/edit#gid=246053646

2) One movement that we have not talked a lot about in this theme but which is certainly related is the Convention Of States movement. This effort aims to put together a coalition of states that will press for Constitutional changes that include the annual balancing of the Federal budget and term limits for Federal politicians. Two thirds of the state need to pass legislation calling for a Convention of States and that movement is progressing nicely towards that number across the country.

A week ago, the Tennessee Senate formally passed legislation calling for a Convention of States by a vote of 23 to 5. The vote was this strong despite out of state efforts and money to derail it.

3) The Personal Liberty website posted some state by state efforts to rebel against the Feds in a March 24, 2015 article by Michael Boldin:

• In Arizona, legislation was recently passed in the state senate, by a vote of 17 to 12, that would ignore any restrictions that would inhibit the right to keep and bear arms in the state.
• A similar bill to protect Second Amendment rights in Montana was recently passed by both houses of the state legislature and is headed for the governor’s office for approval and enactment.
• Similar efforts are are underway in the Tennessee, Missouri, Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania state legislatures.
• Idaho was the first state in the country in 2014 to pass state level legislation designed to prevent any new Federal gun control efforts.
• In 2014, Arizona voters approved Proposition 303 which allow Arizonans to try experimental medical treatments that have not yet been approved by the Federal government.
• In 2015, Wyoming and Arkansas enacted so-called “right-to-try” laws and similar legislation is pending in Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Utah, and Mississippi, all intended to go around the FDA’s glacier drug approval process: “These laws are a no-brainer,” said Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center. “When someone is on their deathbed, the fact that FDA regulations would let them die rather than try, has got to be one of the most inhumane policies of the federal government. Every state should nullify the FDA like this.”
• The Federal government allow hemp to be grown for medical research purposes only but it is currently being actively farmed in Colorado and Vermont in defiance of that Federal law.
• In addition, Tennessee, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Washington, Connecticut, Missouri, Texas, Florida and North Dakota are in various legislative stages of allowing widespread hemp farming in their states.
• Last year Utah and New Hampshire passed laws that ban each state from participating in any warrantless eavesdropping activity on its citizens by the Federal government.
• Texas, Alaska, Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina and other states have introduced legislation to ban all “material support or resources” to all Federal bulk warrantless spying programs.
• Legislation is under way , Montana, New York, Missouri,Vermont, Massachusetts, and Oregon to block a nationwide car license plate tracking program.
• Legislation in Arizona and Texas is moving ahead to ban enforcement of an Obama Care tenet.

Many states and many issues, much rebellion and push back, will the center hold? 

4) Arizona has been one of the most active states in telling the Feds to pound sand. It is working on two new pieces of legislation in that vein:

• The first piece of legislation, Arizona House Bill 2368, prevents the state of Arizona from funding any executive orders issued by President Obama, or policy directives issued by the Department of Justice. The bill would prohibit “this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with an executive order issued by the President of the U.S. that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.” It also “prohibits this state or any of its political subdivisions from using any personnel or financial resources to enforce, administer or cooperate with a policy directive issued by the U.S. DOJ to law enforcement agencies in this state that has not been affirmed by a vote of Congress and signed into law as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.”
• The second bill, House Bill 2643, stops state and local governments from using state funds to enforce and implement the Obama Care. 

Both bills passed the Arizona House and will now move to the Senate. 

Wow, a state insisting that the Federal government and current Presidential administration follow the Constitution. Amazing and unfortunately, very rare. 

But maybe the tide is turning. Dozens of instances where states across the country are making a stand for the rule of law, common sense, and the protection of its citizens and their rights. The center is getting shaken on the edges, will it hold? More shaking tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

August, 2014 Will The Center Hold Update, Part 2: Marijuana, Common Core, and Other Push Backs Against Federal Tyranny

On a periodic basis we have been examining a unique phenomena in this country, namely the fact that state and local governments and individual citizens are standing up against the overreach and tyranny of the Federal government and the Washington political class. Under the hypothesis, “Will the Center Hold?”, we have examined the rather radical but growing possibility that very soon Washington and the Federal government will enact a law, an executive order, some type of regulation, etc. and the rest of the country will simply ignore the action.

And what happens if that should come to pass? Will we continue to be a republic with a central Federal government or does the whole shebang start to come apart with states and others doing as they please and treating anything out of Washington as merely a suggestion and not a requirement?

Issues that have been discussed where states and individuals have pushed back against the Feds include gun control, Common Core education standards, Obama Care regulations and requirements, Federal program enrollment such as Medicaid, and other large issues. To review past discussion on this topic, just enter the search term, ‘will the center hold” in the above search box to see how widespread but underreported this push back against federal tyranny and oppression has become.

Today is a continuation of the discussion we started yesterday on the latest push backs against the Federal government that are happening around the country as we continue to give examples on how the center might not hold in the face of an overreaching, ineffective, and inefficient Federal government and bureaucracy.

1) The following updates come from the Personal Liberty Digest website article that we started to talk about yesterday:

• New York state recently became the 23rd state in the country to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. This is just one of a multitude of state efforts to spit in the eye of Federal laws that prohibit the use of marijuana, considering it a crime in the eyes of the Federal government. 
• In the fall elections, this effort to legalize or decriminalize marijuana independent of the Federal government will expand to the states of Alaska and Oregon, Voters there will have the chance to approve full legalization measures similar to what are already legal in Colorado and Washington. 
• Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley have both recently signed new laws that authorize the growing and production of industrial hemp, a marijuana plant relative, within their States, effectively nullifying and ignoring the Federal ban on the hemp plant.

This issue is probably further along our overriding question: What if the Federal government passed a law and no one obeyed it? Many states are already executing this action by ignoring Federal marijuana laws in favor of what their in state voters want.

2) Other back lash efforts at the state level covered in the Personal Liberty Digest article include:

• A proposed Missouri piece of legislation to withdraw from Common Core was signed into law this month. 
• Arizona voters will soon have a chance to approve a Right to Try measure that would effectively nullify some Federal Food and Drug Administration restrictions. 
• Oklahoma became the second state, after Utah, to take the first step toward actually following the tender requirements of the Constitution and nullifying the Federal Reserve’s near-monopoly on money. 
• A new Georgia law recently went into effect that blocks the implementation of some primary aspects of Obama Care.

Yes, things are bad. We are being served by the worst, most ineffective and most divisive set of politicians in Washington that we have ever had to endure. But the article does offer some hope, for change and a return to fiscal and government sanity, by summarizing the movement of nullification as follows:

When enough people say “No!” to the Federal government and when enough States pass laws backing those people up, there’s not much the politicians in Washington, D.C., can do to force their so-called “laws” or mandates down our throats.

Just saying no to an overreaching Federal government essentially makes them powerless to control our lives, our futures and our liberties and citizens and states across the nation are proving this point everyday.

3) In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker has now joined other states and governors in calling for a full repeal of the Federal government’s Common Core education standards.

In a prepared, press release statement: 

“Today, I call on the members of the State Legislature to pass a bill in early January to repeal Common Core and replace it with standards set by people in Wisconsin.”

“..with standards set by people in Wisconsin” rather than some politically motivated bureaucrats sitting half a country away in Washington. This is called democracy when people can control the major aspects of their own lives rather than being dictated to by people that are usually clueless of the needs and desires of those they order about.

Walker went on to state that he’d like Wisconsin to have its own unique standards that were higher than what was already established. “I’d like us to be in the position where we can identify our own unique standards that I think in many ways will be higher and more aggressive than the [Common Core] ones they’re talking about.” 

School districts within his state have already moved against Common Core with the Cedarburg School Board voting to ask the state to delay implementing the Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessments two years and the Germantown School District having voted late last year to dump Common Core and develop its own standards instead.

Walker is not alone among the country’s governors who are already killing Common Core within their states or are having serious doubts about its effectiveness and motives:

• Missouri Governor Jay Nixon recently signed legislation that would review and replace the Common Core in his state. 
• North Carolina Governor Pat McCroary has publicly stated that he would sign a repeal and replace bill his state’s legislature passed this week. 
• Utah Governor Gary Hebert announced he wants the Common Core process and content reviewed.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed an executive order to create a commission to review the Common Core.
• Iowa Governor Terry Branstad recently called Common Core “radioactive” when talking to reporters at a recent national governors; conference.

Which raises the same question: what happens if the Federal government issues educational standards that most of the states and its citizens simply ignore? 

4) But on some issues, citizens are not waiting for their local and state governments to take action, they are taking to the street themselves and demanding that Washington listen to them. Despite being ignored by the mainstream, Obama leaning media, last weekend hundreds of rallies involving thousands of private citizens took place across the country in opposition to the large flow of immigrants banging up against our southern border.

According to rally organizers, over 300 protests involving at least 12,000 protesters took place over a two day period in locations ranging from state capitals to highway overpasses. These protests were in response to not immediately retuning these immigrants to their home countries, paying to board and feed them across the country with taxpayer money, and the possibility of granting them amnesty and/or citizenship for simply evading our border patrols.

Their views and actions would seem to support the voice of the majority of people in the U.S. since according to a June 20 Gallup poll, 65% of Americans disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the country’s immigration issues.

As you can see over these past two posts that Americans are raging against the machine of the Federal government and bureaucracy. From ignoring marijuana laws to dumping Common Core requirements to a plethora of other actions against an overreaching Federal government, each day we get closer and closer to the ultimate question: What if the Federal government enacted a law that no one obeyed? 

When that day happens, it should not be dreaded but celebrated as the start of the process where Americans began the journey back to independence and freedom. And the good news, is that more rebellion and push backs will be discussed tomorrow. Of particular importance and interest is the Convention of States movement that is moving this process of rage further along strictly according to the tenets of the Constitution, that wonderful document that has lost its place among the Washington political class.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Will The Center Hold, Part 3: More Calls For A Convention Of The States, Humping The Feds on Hemp, and More

This is our third post this past week on how the middle core of the country might be coming apart as the Washington political class becomes more and more oppressive in its policies and overreach. This is causing state governments and individual citizens to push back agaiinst the oppressive tactics of the Federal government which is hindering the states’ and individuals' rights and freedoms as laid out in the Constitution. This wide ranging pushback raises two critical questions for our nation’s future:

• What if Washington passed a law that no one obeyed?
• If this behavior became widespread, would the center of the country hold or would the Federal government as we know cease to exist?

Never in the history of our country has Washington been held in such low regard and contempt. Issues causing this friction range from gun control to overbearing and ineffective education requirements to Federal land grabs, to Obama Care resistance, etc.

The nation has stayed united through depressions, recessions, world wars, a civil war, the Nixon administration and a range of other problem eras. However, it remains to be seen where the current friction across the country will take us.

The first two parts of this series can be viewed at:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/will-center-hold-april-2014-part-1.html

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2014/04/will-center-hold-april-2014-part-2.html

1) Common Core is the Federal government’s idea to institute a one size fits all educational curriculum across the country. However, early reviews on the effectiveness of such a single focused mentality for all kids in all schools are are not good. That ineffectiveness has caused a multitude of states to opt out of all or some of Common Core’s requirements, a slap in the face to the Federal government which is trying to control the education of our kids, a job that was traditionally handled at the local and state government level.

A concerned mother (by the way, this mother works as a literary consultant to urban schools so she probably knows a little about English tests besides holding a PhD in English) investigated the English class  Common Core material in some detail after her ninth grade daughter had an experience with a Common Core English test. The daughter came home and told her mother that:

• “These are such weird questions.” 
• “This test is crazy.” 
• “This is a stupid, impossible test.”

Given that teenagers can often be a little overly dramatic, the mom decided to try to answer a few of the Common Core tests for herself. She was so shocked by the material that she wrote a letter to the President to describe the many problems the material presented to ninth grade kids. The critical paragraph of her letter goes as follows:

“I have a Ph.D. in English, I’ve been in college and high school classrooms for over 20 years, and for much of that time I’ve trained and coached high school English teachers. I was shocked that the ninth grade test included an excerpt from Bleak House, a Dickens novel that is usually taught in college. I got seven out of 36 multiple choice questions wrong on the eleventh grade test. And I had no idea what to do with this essay prompt on the third grade test.”

If a highly educated, PhD holding woman cannot ace a ninth grade test in her area of specialty, who thinks that a seventh grade kid can? And if that is truly the case, what educational value did those seventh graders receive? I am not saying all tests should be easy. School should be hard and challenging, but not impossible. This is just one reason why many people are telling Washington to kiss off on Common Core, it does not work, much like just about everything else that Washington politicians touch.

Her entire letter can be viewed at:

http://www.ijreview.com/2014/04/132870-mom-writes-president-obama-letter/

2) Many states are moving forward and calling for the so-called “convention of the states,” allowed under Article V of the Constitution. This Article allows for a convention to be held to install changes to the Constitution once two thirds of the states, 34 states, pass resolutions or bills calling for a convention. Never before in my memory do I recall anything close to the states taking the initiative to push back an over reaching Federal government.

A recent article on the Capitalism Institute website reported how Alaska became the next state to call for such a convention. Highlights of the article include:

• Alaska’s Senate passed a resolution calling for a Convention of States, matching the Alaska House to make their application official. 
• Alaska joins Georgia as the only official applicants thus far, but states including Alabama, Arizona and Florida are close to making their applications official as well.
• A signature by the state’s governor is not necessary for the application to be valid, only passage through both houses of the legislature is required. 
• The Alaska resolution resolves “to call a convention of the states for the sole purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States that impose fiscal restraints on the Federal government, limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government, and limit the terms of office of Federal government officials.” 
• If 34 states officially apply for a convention, Congress will be compelled to call it to order. 

The article explains that the likely agenda items at an Article V convention would be strictly limited to a balanced budget amendment, a Congressional term limit amendment, and possibly an amendment prohibiting Congress from exempting themselves or other government employees from the laws they pass.

This may be the only way to attack what has become a $17 TRILLION national debt burden, return us to a much smaller but hopefully much more effective Federal government as required by the Constitution, and the implementing of term limits so that we get rid of the entrenched and useless politicians that got the country into the mess it is in now in the first place. 

Heaven knows the current Washington political set has shown no ability or desire to do what has to be done, forcing states and individuals to ban together to use the only tool left to them, Article V.

3) Another recent article from the Capitalism Institute also announced that the state of Florida had also passed a binding resolution calling for a Convention of The States to reign in the Federal government. What is interesting about the convention of the states drive is:

• The effort is only about a year old.
• However, there are organized Article V teams already up and running in all 50 states.
• Seven states who are well ahead of the rest of the states and include Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New Mexico, and South Carolina.
• These states include a broad cross section of geographic areas from Florida in the most southeastern part of the U.S. to Alaska in the most northwestern part of the U.S. to Missouri in the Midwest to Arizona to New Mexico on the southwest, i.e. Americans across the entire country are fed up with Washington.

4) We recently came across another state government push back against the Federal government that we have not previously discussed. It is against Federal law for any American to grow industrial hemp in the country. Industrial hemp, it is my understanding, while a relative of marijuana, does not contain any of the mind altering properties of marijuana. 

I am assuming that the Feds have long banned it since it looks like real marijuana. Another theory I have heard in the past is that Dupont, who makes a lot of man-made fabrics, did not want to compete with the fabrics that could be developed from hemp and thus, successfully lobbied the Federal government to ban this competitive product. That crony capitalism story can wait for another day.

Industrial hemp has a lot of different uses across the world, it would provide a nice boost to American farmers by giving them another crop option to use or to rotate through their lands. To that end, on April 16, 2014, the state government Assembly of Tennessee took the final necessary steps to send legislation to the Tennessee governor, which if signed, would nullify the Federal ban on hemp in the state.

The Tennessee Assembly Bill 2445 was sponsored by State Representative. Jeremy Faison and it would mandate that the state authorize the growing and production of industrial hemp within Tennessee, Senator Frank Niceley was the chief Senate sponsor of the legislation.

Some media reports say that since hemp production is still banned on the Federal level, the Tennessee legislation will only take effect begin cultivation once the feds change the law. However, the legislation makes no such stipulation with regards to waiting on the Federal government since the bill reads:

“The department shall issue licenses to persons who apply to the department for a license to grow industrial hemp.”

According to Mike Maharrey, communications director for the Tenth Amendment Center, one word strengthened the bill considerably: “By including the word ‘shall’ in this legislation, it has a great deal of impact. This means that rather than keeping it open-ended like other states have done, hemp farming will be able to move forward in Tennessee whether the [Federal] regulatory bureaucrats there want it to or not.”

Wow, another state telling the Federal government to back off on another Federal law. Tennessee joins three other states that are also working to ignore or nulllify Federal hemp banning laws: Colorado, Oregon and Vermont have already passed bills to authorize hemp farming, but only in Colorado has the process begun. 

That will do it for now. Push backs against the Federal government meddling in a whole range of our lives including harmless hemp growing, a doomed-to-failure national education program, term limits, out of control federal spending, and more. Again, 1) what if Washington passed a law that no one obeyed and 2) will the center hold if the previous point becomes common place? Interesting times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w