This time we're all about Christian persecution, charter schools, and Father Knows Best. Ew.
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Religion Freedom Restoration Act. Passed out of the State House faster than you can say “Daddy DeVos.” We break down the bill as it’s written, strip away the hyperbole, and find that it’s just as scary as you’ve been told. If the government can’t prove that it has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination, then this is indeed a license to discriminate. Not sure how the Michigan government can prove that it has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination against the LGBT community, since the Michigan government has never included the LGBT community in the Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act, even though they could have done so at the same time they were moving MiRFRA out the door. We’ll be seeing a lot of this play out in courts. I suggest that this law has three purposes:
1. Paying off Daddy DeVos.
2. Elected Democrats, support our agenda or we’ll punish you with “awesome duck” crap like this.
3. Tie up liberal money in court, keep us playing defense.
Here are some links:
*House-approved Michigan Religious Freedom Restoration Act: A license to discriminate?
*Religious freedom bill passes out of Michigan House
*MI RFRA on the Michigan Legislative website
*Get the facts: Understanding Michigan RFRA: The Michigan House GOP website that assures you that MiRFRA is ok, even though it doesn’t tell you what it says, what it will do, or where you can find more information on it.
Oh and Amy persecutes Christians by mentioning that she is an atheist.
Walt weighs in on RFRA v Sharia law.
Amy’s segment focuses on HB5112 and charter schools. 5112 was put forth in October of 2013, written by DeVos’ GLEP and sponsored by Lisa Posthumus Lyons. Amy runs through five problems with this.
*Mandates more testing, and will encourage more teaching to the test
*Lake Wobegon syndrome that you see in NCLB: annual learning gains
*Guaranteed failure: bottom 5% always get penalized
*Blind to poverty: 95% of students have to be suffering in poverty for schools to get any poverty related exceptions
*Elitist: Top performing schools can opt-out
Here’s Stephen Henderson’s editorial on this subject.
Amy also tells the story of K12 Inc., founded by junk-bonds hero Michael Milkin. This is an amazing story of education for-profit startups, venture capital, short sales, and wall street predators. You can see her work on this here. If you want all the details on this story, definitely check that out.
Walt runs through the Community Benefits Bill, Emergency Manager law, and several other examples of the GOP government telling the citizens of Michigan that they know what’s best. Whenever the public steps up and demands something, the Republicans find a way to squash it, circumvent it, or ignore it. They show a complete disdain for the public and the local government, and an excellent example of leadership on this disdain is Rick Snyder. He knows better than anyone else, what is good for you. And he doesn’t care what you have to say about it. A round-table type of discussion on this weird philosophy that the GOP knows best.
That’s it for this week. Remember to comment, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or send us an email. We love hearing from you!
