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FOR ESA SHAME, THE NAME TO BLAME IS SANDOVAL
By Chuck Muth
September 8, 2015
In his Sunday column
published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal,
Steve Sebelius makes a valid point
regarding the constitutionality of Nevada’s new Education Savings Accounts
(ESAs). He wrote…
Sectarian, of course, means religious.
And this clause in the Nevada Constitution is commonly
referred to as the “Blaine Amendment.” A
number of states have Blaine Amendments.
Their original purpose was to block public aid to Catholic orphanages,
but are used to today to block support for all religious schools of any
denomination.
The liberal, anti-religion ACLU has sued to kill the new ESA
program, claiming it’s a violation of the Nevada Constitution. And a layman’s reading of the provision would
seem to back that up. But there are all
manner of legal arguments yet to be made, including an argument that this
constitutional prohibition in the Nevada Constitution is itself unconstitutional
as it relates to the U.S. Constitution.
You see, the First Amendment reads, in part, “Congress shall
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof…”
Liberals only think of that first part; the part about not
establishing an official religion. But
the second part about not prohibiting citizens from the free exercise of their
chosen religion is every bit as operative.
As such, there have been court decisions in which it was
determined that as long as school vouchers were given to the parents, and then
the parents used them to pay for tuition at a private school, that was the PARENTS
freely exercising their religion, not the government establishing a religion.
One can only hope that such a common sense ruling emerges
from the ACLU lawsuit against the ESA’s.
Which brings me to America’s Worst Governor, Brian Sandoval.
First, it is becoming clearer every day that Sandoval is the
person responsible for the evil requirement that students in private schools
and home schooled students be yanked out of their current education program and
forced into a public school for 100 days before they can qualify for the ESA
money.
The 100-day penalty was designed to retard the number of
homeschoolers and private schoolers who would take advantage of the new ESA
program so that Sandoval could spend his giga-normous tax hike on pet programs
such as teaching English to the children of illegal immigrants and his wife’s anti-bullying
campaign.
Secondly, Sandoval is trying to have it both ways regarding
the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ESA’s.
Last week, he issued a statement calling on Nevada Attorney
General Adam Laxalt to request an
expedited hearing on Duncan v. State of
Nevada, the ACLU lawsuit.
“The uncertainty and legal gridlock created by this lawsuit
will significantly impact student success,” Sandoval’s ghost-writer wrote in a
press release. “I believe it is in the
best interest of the state and our education system to avoid these costly legal
battles…”
Yet Sandoval himself is arguably responsible for the ACLU
lawsuit and the coming costly legal battles!
Let me explain…
Despite running for governor in 2010 on a platform that
included mouthing support for school vouchers, instead of putting forward a comprehensive
school voucher plan along the lines of the one introduced in 2009 by
conservative then-Assemblyman Ed
Goedhart – the Excellence in Education and Increased Opportunities (EIEIO)
Act – Sandoval opted
to do nothing more than target the Blaine Amendment itself.
At the start of the 2011 legislative session, he got the ten
Republican state senators in office at the time to introduce on his behalf Senate
Joint Resolution 10, a proposed constitutional amendment. Here’s the text of SJR 10…
Had this amendment passed out of the Senate and been
approved by the people of Nevada during the 2012 and 2014 elections, there
would no longer be a voucher-killing Blaine Amendment poison pill in our
Constitution and the costly legal battle with the ACLU over ESAs would have
been avoided.
What? You never heard
about this?
Of course not.
Because SJR 10 never got a hearing, let alone a vote. And Sandoval never said squat about it. He didn’t lobby for it, he didn’t fight for,
he didn’t even issue a press release for it.
So SJR died in the Senate without even a whimper, let alone a roar.
And I’ll never forget my last conversation with Sandoval.
It was at the end of that 2011 legislative session. He called to let me know he was flip-flopping
on his opposition to extending the “sunsets” in order to plug a small hole in
the budget caused by the state losing a court case a couple weeks earlier.
The last thing I said before hanging up was that if he was
going to go back on his word on the tax hikes, he should at least insist on
getting a school voucher bill in return as part of the deal. He told me he would.
He lied.
He also failed to re-submit the resolution in the 2013
session.
And didn’t bother introducing it again in the 2015 session,
even though his fellow Republicans had complete control of the Legislature.
And now, because this man’s word is as good as one of those
Nigerian bank email scams, Nevada taxpayers have no choice but to fight a
costly legal battle with the ACLU over the constitutionality of the Blaine
Amendment which could possibly have already been removed if not for the empty efforts
and empty promises of our empty suit governor.
But heck, at least he has a nice smile and pretty hair,
right?
You can read this column online, as well as access archives
of past Muth's Truths columns by clicking here... www.MuthsTruths.com
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