What I Learned…..
Posted by mattshultz on July 11, 2008
Tonight I had the opportunity to attend the “Meet The Candidates” event at the Bartow County Republican Party headquarters. They had 8 candidates in attendance to make “stump” speeches and to answer questions that had been sent in to the local party. Here are some observations that I made while I was there:
- We have some great people running this year and it is a shame that some of them will not be successful in their respective campaigns.
- Every candidate was in favor of eliminating Federal and State income Tax
- Each one of them wanted us to secure our borders and enforce U.S. law as it relates to immigration
- The Tax Commissioner has to work with to many numbers (Not for Me)
- Christian Coomer impresses me more every time I hear him speak
- Education was again a major focus of the questions
- State House members need to leave education alone and let that be a locally controlled issue
I wanted to take a minute to respond to a couple of the education questions that were asked at the event:
1. Do you support vouchers?
I actually do support vouchers for education because I believe so strongly in public education’s ability to rise to meet new challenges and adding this new element of competition would make our public schools stronger. The Bartow County School System and the City of Cartersville school system do such a good job especially in the early grades that I do not think that vouchers would significantly impact our student enrollment.
2. Do you think the Federal Department of Education should be abolished?
The Department of Education was created under President Carter in 1979 and has probably done more to hurt public education than any single action in our history. It is not by accident that there is no mention of education in the Constitution. The framers never intended for education to be part of the centralized federal government. Education would fall under the 10th amendment which is the Reserved Powers clause. This means it was left to the individual states to create, run, and regulate education in each state. Abolish the DOE and return the money to each of the 50 states in the form of block grants. Let the state legislatures and local school boards determine what is best for each student in the respective states.
