Perri Nelson's Website 

No voter left behind

The state of education in the United States today is abysmal. Recent statistics I have heard on the radio point this out. Apparently the illiteracy rate in Washington D.C. is around 30%, and in big cities in the United States as a whole around 25%. I wasn't sure about those statistics, so I tried to find supporting numbers. What I found was alarming.

A study by the State Education Agency, which was created by the U.S. Department of Education, has found that approximately one-third of people in Washington, D.C. are functionally illiterate, the Associated Press reported. The national average for illiteracy rates is about one-fifth, or 21 percent, the study found.

In Seattle, only two thirds of high school students graduate on time — and Seattle has the seventh highest graduation rate among big U.S. Cities according to the nonprofit group America's Promise Alliance as reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"Our analysis finds that graduating from high school in America's largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss.

"Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma," the report said.

That's pathetic. A third of people in our nation's capitol, the seat of our federal government, are functionally illiterate. Roughly one in five nationwide is functionally illiterate! Half of students in our largest cities don't even graduate from high school! With statistics like that, is it any wonder that the state of civics education in the United States today is so poor? And yet we let these simpletons loose with the most powerful weapon we have in the arsenal of freedom today… a ballot.

I noted in a recent article that according to the national archives, The Constitution of the United States of America is a four page document consisting of 4,543 words, including the signatures and takes roughly a half an hour to read. David at third world country commented that…

You realize that that sentence argues for an average reading rate of 75 words per minute? Heck, I haven't had a reading rate that slow since first grade. But the sad things is that more and more American adults simply caNOT read--and comprehend, rather than just laboriously puzzling out the words at 75wpm

If people really understood the Constitution, I doubt that we'd place as much emphasis on the Presidential election as we do. Instead we'd be much more interested and involved in our Congressional and Senatorial elections. If people really understood the constitutional role of our federal government, many of the issues that seem to matter so much to so many likely voters would be off of the table. There would either be a call for a new Constitutional Convention to authorize the excesses that our government now takes upon itself, or a massive grassroots effort to remove just about every current federal officeholder from office by defeating them in their next election cycle, depending on what the people really want…

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control

— Pink Floyd, The Wall (Nov, 1979)

Earlier I cited a report on a study by an agency created by the U.S. Department of Education. Do you realize that there is no Constitutional Authorization for a U.S. Department of Education? According to the national archives questions and answer page on the Constitution…

Q. Where, in the Constitution, is there mention of education?
A. There is none; education is a matter reserved for the States.

Why then, I ask, why is the federal government meddling in the education of our children? The federal government has no authority and no right to be involved in our children's education! Do you recall the controversy over No Child Left Behind? For some on the left the standards and requirements imposed by the law were too stringent. For others on the left the law didn't go far enough, not providing sufficient federal money for education.

Myself, I can see the need for higher standards for our students. The functional illiteracy rates are appalling. The crap shoot we call graduation rates in our bigger cities is heartbreaking. The interesting thing about the illiteracy rates and the pathetic graduation rates though is…

…this is what we get when we let the government run our schools. For decades we've been pouring federal money into inner city public schools. And it hasn't been working.

Let's look at a few of the things that we've seen our federal government get involved in for a moment shall we?

Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

Have you heard of "eminent domain"? Does anybody remember the landmark "Kelo" decision? How about "rent control" in inner cities?

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

Why is it that whenever we hear about the "Bush Tax Cuts" the mantra is that they were "tax cuts for the rich"? Why is it that our income tax is graduated the way it is? Why is it that the people with the top 10% of income in the U.S. pay more than 50% of all of the taxes? While some people in the bottom 40% of income actually get paid more in refunds and rebates than they paid in in the first place?

Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

You've heard about the estate tax right? You know the one I'm talking about… conservatives call it the "death tax". When the cut in the estate tax expires it goes up to 50%. And some people actually want the federal government to take even more!

Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

Does anyone recall the recent debate over the "fairness doctrine"? Is there a reason we have a federal communications commission with the power to levy fines based upon the content of communications over the airwaves?

How about the move to get us out of our cars? There's a reason oil prices are as high as they are. When you take a course in economics (something at least half of students in inner cities will never do, since they won't even graduate from high school) you learn about the law of supply and demand. When a commodity is made scarce, either through consumption or by artificial means, then if the demand doesn't decrease, the costs go up. Our government suppresses the supply of oil in the United States by refusing to allow the exploration for it on U.S. soil, by refusing to allow the extraction of it from U.S. soil or our territorial waters, even while allowing other nations to do so, and by mandating that each region have a custom blend of fuel that cannot be used in another region. Naturally fuel prices will go up.

Some people think that this is a good thing, because it will get us out of our cars, and into government provided mass transit instead. In fact, in the state of Washington, we can't get our roads fixed because every funding package for roads includes billions upon billions of dollars for government owned mass transit systems that won't do a thing to improve congestion on our roads. What they will do is force us to keep to government schedules to get from place to place and centralize the means of transport in the hands of the State.

Recently, there has been news of four states, including South Carolina, rejecting the federal Real ID program. The consequences of this can be severe, including having the federal government refuse to allow citizens of those states board airplanes without additional identification above and beyond the drivers licenses issued by their state. It's yet another example of the centralization of the means of transport, this time in the hands of the federal government.

All of this is meant to be for our own good. Those heavy taxes pay for government services. They pay for entitlement programs like medicare and our education system. Real ID is meant to make us more secure. Those government services are there for our own good…

Free education for all children in public schools. …

Where do these ideas come from? We've seen that our government has implemented them all. Our federal government has gotten into them all…

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

…

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character.

When this plan is fully implemented of course, as envisioned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels we'll all finally be slaves to the Communist state. Our federal government has already implemented half of this grand plan to bring about the Communist revolution in our own country. It's the last item on the list that's the most nefarious. Who can speak out against free public education? It's for the children after all!

Public education, funded by the federal government has been a disaster. Thanks to public education our children are failing to graduate from school. Thanks to public education, one in five of them is functionally illiterate. Thanks to public education we have a shortage in this country of skilled workers in the fields we need to compete in our global economy. Why else are technology companies lobbying congress to allow more H-1B visas?

Thanks to public education in this country our children know more about Islam than Christianity (why it's even taught in California public schools). Thanks to public education in this country our children know how to put a condom on a banana when they're in elementary school, but they don't have a clue what our Constitution says by the time they reach voting age.

I think it's time we abolished the No Child Left Behind program. We need a new program. How about No Voter Left Behind. Our electorate is in dire need of an education. Otherwise, we're in danger of losing our Republic, the land that I love, and replacing it with a Marxist nightmare.