How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. From bondage to spiritual faith;
2. From spiritual faith to great courage;
3. From courage to liberty;
4. From liberty to abundance;
5. From abundance to complacency;
6. From complacency to apathy;
7. From apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul,Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

**Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million; **Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000;
**States won by: Gore: 19; Bush: 29
**Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2; Bush:2.1.

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country.Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..." Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
PS: If the Senate grants Amnesty and citizenship to 20 millioncriminal invaders called illegals and they vote, then goodby USA in less than 5 years.

One More Chance To Say NO to Guest -Worker/Amnesty!

Send your Senator in Washington

the RIGHT message!
U.S. Senators are wrapping up their two week recess and heading back to Washington this week. When they return, the Senate Judiciary committee will be holding more hearings on immigration and the full Senate may take up another amnesty/guest worker bill at any time. Be sure to send your Senators back to Washington with a clear message:

NO GUEST-WORKER/AMNESTY!
While both parties are racing to place blame on who is responsible for the failed bills in the Senate, we need to make our voices heard. Compromise bills that allow illegal aliens to obtain what they broke the law to get — residence and citizenship in the United States — are unacceptable! Do we allow a bank robber to keep the money he stole? Absolutely not!
The Senate should secure our border immediately by passing the Sensenbrenner bill (H.R. 4437), which the House passed Dec. 16 by a vote of 239-182. Make sure you Senators know where you stand when they go back to Washington! Call them today!
Take Action
Your Senators need to hear from you today! Please call or visit your Senators' local office and let them know you expect them to reject all guest-worker/amnesty plans!
Call Your Senators Today — Tell them to vote NO on any guest-worker/amnesty proposals!
Capitol Switchboard: (202)-224-3121Ask your Senator's office to connect you to a district office in your area!
Senate E-mail addresses

www.eagleforum.org

Education, Politics, and a Flat World

By State Senator Dave Lewis
A few years ago I was reading a Pat Williams column in the paper and he said one of the most alarming things that I had ever heard. He says many alarming things but this one really stuck with me. He said that this could, be the first generation of the American middle class that could not be certain that their children would do better than their parents had. I kept thinking about this as I watched the changes in the world over the past few years.
A recent study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education just suggested that personal income in the United States will drop over the next fifteen years if we do not increase the educational level of our population. The projected decline in income coincides with the growth of the knowledge based economy and competition with the rest of the world.
It really struck home when I read an article in this month’s Economist Magazine that listed the twenty counties in the United States with the lowest wages and salaries in 2003. Eight out of ten of the lowest wage counties in the nation are in Montana. Three of those counties are in the Senate District that I represent. Those are Meagher, Wheatland and Golden Valley with Meagher, (White Sulphur Springs), being the lowest in the nation. Even accounting for the fact that these are agriculture counties, with many self employed farmers and ranchers, the numbers are alarming
I also just finished reading The World is Flat by Tom Friedman. He examines what is happening as the internet changes business and economies across the world. He also remarked on the danger to our political system if the middle class begins to realize that the future for their children is going to be very challenging as we compete with China and India and other low wage highly educated countries. He portrays it as a crisis and I agree.
What all of this means to me is that we have to do something dramatic to increase the educational level of our work force if we are to be able to compete. We just finished a special legislative session in which we appropriated a 5% increase in spending for public schools and debated how many teachers can stand on the head of a pin. We never addressed the big question of what kind of an educational system will we need to compete in the modern world. It would have been a more productive debate if we had established a goal, such as assuring that we have a well trained and productive work force. That focus would allow us to expand funding for education in the context of being competitive in the future. We could set benchmarks to make sure we were getting our money’s worth. It would be easier for the public to support those increases if they understood the context and the urgency of the challenge.
Properly funding K-12 education is just part of the task. What if Montana established a program to assure that every qualified citizen of the state could have easier access to up to two years of additional education after they have concluded high school or obtained a GED. This could be a technical or first two year of college type of training. It could be obtained on campus or over the inter net as long as it was provided by a Montana institution of higher education. Adequate progress would have to be proven for the person to continue to receive assistance, and that would be verified prior to payment. John Mercer has recently proposed lowering College Tuition by 10%. Why not focus on the first two years and lower tuition by a larger amount to get students in to the system? Maybe there is a better way to do it but I think that we are both on the same track.
Assistance could be provided by direct payment or through a tax credit to the recipient or employer who pays the bills. The amounts could be needs based and vary per student. The use of tax credits is more efficient and could be encouraged by giving larger breaks. Priorities would have to be set in order to accomplish this but we have the ability to do that in the Legislature. Hard choices have to be made to protect our future.
What an economic boon it would be to provide potential employers with well trained employees and the ability to get added training for their work force. A well trained work force will earn more and help to provide the resources needed to help with the support of our aging population as well. We need a unified K-16 education system designed to turn out people educated to earn a living in a competitive world.
We need to do something dramatic to retain our ability to compete with the rest of the world. A well trained work force is our ace in the hole. We cannot afford to miss the opportunity to begin creating that asset.
Senator Dave Lewis of Helena represents Senate District 42. Mr. Lewis served as the state budget director for three Montana governor's: Governor Schwinden (D), Govenor Stephens (R), and Governor Racicot (R).

Horsing Around The Capitol!

Horsing Around The Capitol
(No offense to the horse!)

Special Session Was Just About Money for Education Cartel

By Senator Joe Balyeat, Belgrade
Article X, Sec. 3; Montana Constitution states, “The legislature shall provide a basic system of free quality public schools.” The relevant questions:1) Are Montana's children getting a quality education?2) Is state education funding sufficient?Only 13 states have higher ACT scores than Montana. But even that statistic understates Montana's education quality. In most of those 13 states only a very small percentage of students (“the cream of the crop”) take the ACTs; while in Montana almost 60 percent of our students take ACTs, yet Montana still scores high...In the annual “Smartest State” competition, Montana has ranked in the top 10 nationally four years running. Only a handful of states can make that claim. Obviously, the claim that Montana isn't providing quality education is pure smoke from the education industry to hide their financial self-interest.
But once we quit using children as a smokescreen, is Montana education really underfunded?Recent U.S. Census data shows only six states spend a higher percentage of their income on K through 12 schools than does Montana. Teachers' union data itself reveals that Montana again ranks second-highest nationally for the premium it places on teacher pay -- with average teacher pay exceeding 140 percent of the average Montana worker's pay. Including fringe benefits, average Montana elementary teachers earn $44,271, for a nine-month job. Per the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Division, average Montana high school teachers earn $51,411 including benefits. These salaries are equivalent to $59,186 and $68,731 for regular 12-month jobs. Hardly chump change, by any measure.Montana education spending exceeds $8,000 per student -- which means the average Montanan's entire annual paycheck is consumed educating just three children for nine months. The last Legislature increased this spending by another $80 million, yet that's still not enough to satisfy Montana's education cartel. More than 100 national scientific studies have proven that level of funding has no connection with school performance or student achievement, so the QSIC committee should be renamed the “Quantity Spending Interim Committee.”...Democrat officials are just throwing hundreds of millions more down the black hole with no education reforms whatsoever. Meanwhile, Montana remains one of only three states in the entire country with no competitive education reforms -- no charter schools, no magnet schools, no private school choice program, not even real public school choice. So with no competition, Montana's education monopoly has no need or incentive to become more efficient or more effective.So make no mistake about it -- this special session was not about the children -- they're already getting a great education in Montana... My vote against this bill was not a vote against educating kids; it was a vote against the education cartel using children as political pawns, the education monopoly using kids as a fig leaf to hide naked financial self interest. It's a vote against the travesty of using taxpayer money to sue the taxpayers for more taxpayer money. A vote against judicial tyranny usurping the will of the people's legislature, and a vote for real education reform that would further improve the quality education which Montana's children are already getting.Liberals seldom wish to debate facts and hard numbers. They usually just misquote conservative opinions out-of-context and then engage in name-calling based on the misquotes. Let's grow up and honestly debate the numbers.
Click here to read this full opinion in the Bozeman Chronicle

The Big Helena Sky

"We the people of Montana grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains and desiring to improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations, do ordain and establish this constitution."
The Preamble of the Montana Constitution

Parents and Taxpayers Wake Up.....The Tail Is Wagging the Dog!

While you are sleeping, Montanans, YOUR school funding money (100% collected from YOU in taxes) is being discussed and spent by the Education Community. Perhaps some definitions need to be addressed.
Education Community: Any public employee paid with tax dollars in the education system, or lobbyist paid for by education professionals.
Montana Quality Education Coalition and its proposal named, "Montana's Promise," sound great but it is really a lobby group supporting the increased empowerment of the school system over the parents and taxpayers.
Public education is paid for by YOU and YOU were sued by a handful of powerful education professionals so they can tell YOU how much they will be paid and what their budget will be.
The Education Community spends MILLIONS every year for lobbyists to bombard legislators to pass laws that will empower the Education Community to dictate to you what you will provide them. WAKE UP PUBLIC! The tail is wagging the dog!
They tell you it isn't going to raise your taxes but in order for them to have more money to spend you have to provide it through the taxation process. The only way they can possibly say they can have more money and not raise taxes is to take it from another tax using entity like....health and human services or... highways...or ANY other public service agency. The Education Community already is using over 60% of all the tax dollars in Montana. The idea that the Education Community believes it deserves an even greater piece of the pie leaves one chilled as to their compassion for others' needs.
The Supreme Court agreed with the lawsuit that there was not a clear cut formula to figure the schools' share of the pie, but it did say...we, the Supreme Court, cannot determine the share you get, that share has to be determined by the PEOPLE or the legislative branch of our state government which represents the PEOPLE.
YOU and only YOU are best at determining what you want for your children in public education. Stand up and be heard or you will lose your voice. Write or call your legislator TODAY and tell them LOCAL CONTROL is what Montana Public Education is all about.


Elaine Sollie Herman