How 'bout ZERO federal control of schools?

The fact that we celebrate the Every Student Succeeds Act for shifting education policy back to the states is an alarming indicator of federal dysfunction. Instead of rejoicing about a reduced extent of unauthorized federal meddling in state affairs, we should work to remove the heavy hand of centralized government entirely from every sphere in which it has no legitimate authority.

A quick visit to the U.S. Department of Education’s website reveals just how thoroughly the feds have burst the seams of their constitutional pants. There we find the agency reminding states about deadlines for submitting “State plans” for education – creating the distinct impression that it possesses some broad power to oversee education policy nationwide.

Its means of exercising this assumed power is the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as amended by ESSA. This legal tome instructs our state governments in the crafting of these “State plans” to be delivered to the Supreme Education Rulers according to the aforementioned deadlines. It is an intricate, 449-page web of detailed instructions for the states, which are relegated to a serf-like role: find ways to achieve the priorities of the Almighty Department (never mind the priorities of parents) and then invest resources into demonstrating that you have done so.

It’s no wonder President Ronald Reagan referred to the U.S. Department of Education as a “bureaucratic boondoggle.”

From a practical perspective, one has to wonder why anyone thinks the states need guidance from a federal agency. Does someone think that federal officials are smarter, better-trained, or care more about education than their state counterparts?

From a constitutional perspective, one has to wonder why anyone thinks that the national government has any power over public schooling. Read through Article I, Section 8, which enumerates Congress’ powers. It mentions nothing about education. Yet Congress purposes in Title I of the Act to “provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps.” It’s a laudable goal, but one that Congress is utterly without power to pursue.

"Read through Article I, Section 8, which enumerates Congress’ powers. It mentions nothing about education."

Exactly !

Consider that if public schools were teaching students about the fed’s constitutionally limited powers as they should be, then school children would probably be able to argue the following points against unconstitutional federal interference in public schools.

First, note that President Thomas Jefferson had indicated that the states would first need to amend the Constitution with an education amendment in order for the feds to have the constitutional authority to regulate, tax and spend for INTRAstate schooling purposes.

"On a few articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due season will doubtless be right, but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers [emphases added]"—Thomas Jefferson : Sixth Annual Message to Congress

Next, consider that state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices later complimented Jefferson’s words as evidenced by the following excerpts from case opinions. (Non-legal opinions also included.)

“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich in tax appropriations bills, the rich not understanding that the states have probably never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to make many of those bills." —me

School administrators who unthinkingly help to unconstitutionally expand the federal government’s powers by not only voting for career lawmakers, but also jumping through unconstitutional compliance hoops as a requirement to claim federal funding for their schools, need to understand the following.

Such funding is arguably local tax revenues which the corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress has stolen from their communities by means of unconstitutional federal taxes as clarified by the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above.

Finally, although Trump is accomplishing a LOT as president, it remains that since career federal lawmakers who buy reelection votes with the promise of unconstitutional federal funding for intrastate schools wants to get rid of him that his first two years in office are arguably just practice. That being said ...

Drain the ~~swamp~~ sewer! Drain the sewer!

Remember in November 2018 !

Since corrupt Congress is the biggest part of the sewer (imo) that Trump wants to drain, it is actually up to patriots to drain the sewer in the 2018 elections, patriots supporting Trump by electing as many new members of Congress as they can who will support Trump.

In the meanwhile, patriots need to make sure that there are plenty of Trump-supporting candidates on the primary ballots.

Patriots need to qualify candidates by asking them why the Founding States made the Constitution’s Section 8 of Article I; to limit (cripple) the federal government’s powers.

Patriots also need to make sure that candidates are knowledgeable of the Supreme Court's clarifications of the federal government’s limited powers listed above.

Also, unlike incumbent members of Congress who wrongly remained silent while misguided state officials abridged the constitutionally enumerated rights of citizens during the lawless Obama Administration, patriots need to make sure that candidates on the 2018 primary ballots commit to the following.

Candidates need to commit to making and enforcing 14th Amendment-related laws to prosecute misguided state officials who use state powers to abridge constitutionally enumerated protections, 1st Amendment-protected religious expression and free speech for example, such actions prohibited by Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.

”14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Again, drain the sewer! Drain the sewer!

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