California once had an education  system that was the envy of the world.  However, slowly over the past several decades we have gone from being ranked number one all the way down to 48th in the nation.  This is unacceptable.  We must regain our number one ranking.  To do this we must oppose the forces that are trying to use the education system to indoctrinate our children into socialist political policies.  We must keep our schools focused on preparing our youth for productive jobs in our free market economy.  There are several ways to approach this.

 

First, we must decentralize the decision making process of our education system away from Washington and push it back down to the local level.  When my youngest son was in the 6th grade and the schools began teaching the false science of Al Gore's global warming fraud as fact rather than theory, I contacted the teachers and volunteered to present the class with the scientific facts that prove our planet is not heating up in the fashion described in "The Inconvenient Truth".  My son's classmates welcomed me.  Both the teachers and the students were grateful that I had come in to share with them the convenient truth about our planet and its climate systems that keep our temperature stable.  

 

At the time, January 2007, Nancy Pelosi had just taken over as Speaker of the House and oil was $50 per barrel.  I described to them how alternative energy does not reduce our dependence on foreign oil and that if we adopted the policies of the Pelosi Congress, the result would be massive increases in the price of gasoline and fossil fuels.  They took the time to write me a very nice thank you letter shown here.  The following year oil prices rose to $147 per barrel and gasoline reached $5 per gallon and they did not drop until President Bush lifted the ban on offshore drilling.

            

It is imperative that we do not allow our school systems to teach false science to our children.  They must learn why free market capitalism works and big government controls produce economic disasters.  Many of you probably remember that candidate Obama falsely claimed that lifting the ban on offshore drilling would not affect prices for 20 to 30 years.  Unfortunately the news media did everything possible to conceal the truth from the American people.  Oil prices dropped 50% within a few short months after lifting the ban on offshore drilling. 

 

We must make sure our children are taught about our history and how America is the shining light for the rest of the world.  The demonizing of our free market system and blaming America for the worlds problems is completely unacceptable.  Our education system must teach our children the truth about our heritage and not the falsehoods of Marxist ideologues.

 

Second, I support school vouchers as a means for parents to choose private schools.

This will increase competition in our education system and competition creates efficiencies as the schools strive to be the best educational institutions in the state.

Also, I will make sure that government does not try to change our homschooling system by forcing parents to indoctrinate our children into socialist political ideologies or anti-religious teachings. I also support the work of parentalrights.org and would encourage others to do so.

 

All of my children have attended public schools here in San Diego County, but I attended Catholic and private schools in Massachusetts for my elementary and high school education.  My eldest son is enrolled in the State University system so I do not want to see tuition rates rise or teachers skip class for furlough days.  Furloughs cheat our students out of the education they are paying for. 

 

Third, I will stop the use of taxpayer funds to subsidize expensive and inefficient energy systems that drain resources away from education for windmills and solar panels.  It is appalling to me that hundreds of millions of dollars are being wasted on these inefficient energy systems for our public schools and universities at a time when teacher salaries are being cut by 20% and tuitions are increasing at the fastest rate in our history. Subsidized alternative energy systems are a complete waste of taxpayer funds and the ones who suffer are our children and grandchildren. It is time we stopped using our school systems for expensive experiments in social engineering.  When teachers unions come to me and complain about pay cuts and furloughs I will show them the solar panels on the roofs of our schools that have siphoned off monetary resources which could have been better used on books, salaries, and tuition.

 

Together we can make our education system number one again.  If you want California's schools to be the best in the world, please visit the contributions page to support my candidacy and vote for me on June 8, 2010 in the Republican Primary.