Suggestions For Legislators

Suggestions For Legislators

My Thoughts On Legislation

By Bob Shillingstad

The Idaho legislature has no lack of suggestions and ideas for new laws! There are plenty of high paid lobbyists who are armed with already written legislation that will “solve our problems”. But here are mine – and they might include some that are new and unique.

1. Education – where the money follows the child, not the school. This is not much different than a Pell Grant or scholarship except that it is tax money linked to education going to the family for the child. We recently visited our daughter in Arizona and that state is a model of letting the individual decide the education of their children. One of our grandsons will finish at a K-8 classical charter school and go into 9th grade next year. Our daughter has picked a Christian High School and will have access to a $7,000 check from the State of Arizona that will cover most of the cost of the tuition. Idaho needs to look at Arizona as the template of what works.

2. As we enter the third year of the Covid restrictions and lockdowns we need to have a legislative select committee analyze the results of the mandates issued by state and local authorities. The results of this study should include restrictions of future quarantines and restrictions on churches, small businesses and schools. The ability of a select few to apply these mandates and destroy lives and an economy need to be evaluated.

3. Speaking of “following the science” during Covid the legislature should present Dr. Ryan Cole with the “Idaho Medal of Courage” for being willing to sacrifice his career and reputation as he spoke out with a message that the cure being applied was worse than the virus. Dr. Cole became a national and international voice of reason that has proven to be right despite the efforts of the medical community to silence him.

4. Medical care has been broken in our nation, state and communities. Big “pharma” has teamed with big government and deeply damaged the credibility of medicine. We have seen a teaming up of corporate medicine with major insurance carriers to break the bonds and trust between the patient and the physician. The legislature should take steps to remedy this immediately. Give incentives and encouragement so that physicians don’t have to be employed by “corporate hospitals” to practice and be reimbursed for the care they provide and referrals. Let us restore that Doctor/patient sacred relationship. The “pandemic” showed us what happens when government and health care combine to take away our freedom and access to common sense treatment and advice.

5. With the out of control spending by the Federal Government and talk of the rise of “digital currency” instead of paper money and coins the states need to take action. An encouraging victory for sound money has been adopted by some states that remove taxation on precious metals. Louisiana, Utah and Texas have passed legislation recognizing gold and silver as legal tender, a move that allows citizens to make transactions using precious metals in place of cash. Utah and Texas are now taking further steps toward establishing regulatory depositories to hold gold and silver. Now it’s up to the private sector to accept, re-introduce, and encourage the use of gold and silver as forms of payment. Once such transactions become commonplace, the ideal next step would be to enable citizens to use electronic payment systems, such as a debit card, to make transactions with the metals. Given enough time, these actions may eventually pave the way for other states to adopt gold and silver as legal tender, re-injecting sound money into the American economy.

6. We all need to become familiar with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The Tenth Amendment makes explicit two fundamental constitutional principles that are implicit in the document itself. The federal government is only authorized to exercise those powers delegated to it.he people of the several states retain the authority to exercise any power that is not delegated to the federal government as long as the Constitution doesn’t expressly prohibit it. Thomas Jefferson said he considered “the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground.” If you apply these rules to anything and everything federal government does or proposes to do, your foundation will remain strong.

In summary, there are more direction we need to take in our state and local governments to establish that the people decide our direction within the bounds of our governing documents.

Unfortunately, there are those who call themselves Republicans who have little understanding about the history of the republic, namely how the Founding generation conceptualized the “united States” as Jefferson called it in the Declaration of Independence. There are those who have never truly been either for State’s rights or limited government.

It becomes clear, then, that those who push for reasserting State power must know how the Founders defined a republic in both size and scope and what they meant by republicanism. In other words, a republic is only plausible over a small distance. Anything beyond that would destroy the ability of the people to control the government, and that is the foundation of republicanism.

Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that legislative powers were “incapable of Annihilation” because “they return to the People at large for their exercise.” State and local governments were most responsive to the people and thus the most republican in form.

Returning to the founding principles of the United States is an obvious way to end the insanity in Washington D.C., but it won’t happen if State’s rights are consistently viewed as a knee-jerk reactionary response to unconstitutional federal legislation. Add your voice and suggestions to our legislators.