Supreme Court abandoned its own religious freedom precedents Re: “Supreme Court makes a winning choice for good schools,” April 7
Cal Thomas is wrong. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in favor of Arizona’s tuition tax-credit program was a devastating attack on the Constitution’s religious freedom clause. As Justice Elena Kagan explained in her eloquent dissent, the court majority overturned more than 40 years of its own precedents and opened the door for sectarian special interests to raid the public treasury almost at will.
The court majority also scorned the will of the American people who, in more than two dozen statewide referenda from coast to coast, have rejected tuition tax credits and all other plans to divert public funds to sectarian private schools by landslide margins.
Dragging the late Madalyn O’Hair into the matter is a red herring. In more than 60 years of the court applying the Constitution’s church-state separation provision to protect religious freedom, her lone lawsuit was inconsequential.
Edd Doerr
President,
Americans for Religious Liberty
Silver Spring
Union influence leads to unbalanced representation
Re: “New ed chief mum on teacher bargaining rights,” April 5
Such trepidation among public officials prevails for sufficient reason: The dire consequences of union collective bargaining in the public sector are a grave concern.
Collective bargaining rights imbue unions with an undue monopoly position that is contrary to the public welfare, Unions’ campaign cash, stockpiled via mandatory dues, habitually helps elect politicians who, in turn, are obligated to represent taxpayers in negotiations with those very same unions.
This allows unions to nefariously “work” both sides of the bargaining table, leaving the taxpayers misrepresented and vulnerable to bloated taxes to finance escalating wages and unsustainable pension largesse.
With public attention increasingly focused on the municipal and state deficits now raging out of control, there is a growing realization that this representational imbalance is its principal cause.
Tony Favero
Half Moon Bay, Calif.
Congress should audit the Fed
Re: “Mosque debate is all about straw men,” Aug. 31
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, proposes an audit of the Federal Reserve. This is long overdue. The Federal Reserve is not a government entity, as many mistakenly believe, but a cartel of big private banks.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.”
Thanks to the Federal Reserve, our dollars have lost 95 percent of their value since it was created in 1913, propelling us toward an imminent, disastrous monetary collapse.
Robert Wassman
Vancouver, Wash.
