District 20 Senate race takes shape, Sibson vs Vehle, and the Democrats add Quentin Burg

The Mitchell Daily Republic has a front-page report on the upcoming District 20 Senate race:

Steve Sibson acknowledges his will be an uphill battle for District 20’s Senate seat, but he insists he will best represent the little guy.

Sibson, 56, of Mitchell, said this week he has enough signatures to file a petition for the seat but is gathering more to help spread word of his campaign. Assuming he files enough valid signatures, he will set up an inner-party challenge against incumbent Sen. Mike Vehle, R-Mitchell. The primary election is June 5.

“I want to bring back into vogue the conservative Republican platform,” Sibson said. “The basic theme of my campaign two years ago and my campaign now is ‘Making government bureaucracy smaller and making you the citizen bigger.’ ”

Sibson ran two years ago against Vehle as an independent in the general election. Although he got 21 percent of the vote in 2010, Sibson said conservative Republicans were afraid to vote for him because they thought splitting the Republican vote would help a Democrat win.

This year, he hopes his Republican status will bring more votes from conservatives around District 20, which after redistricting will now include Davison, Aurora and Jerauld counties.

He wants to focus on bringing education back into parental control. He said while there’s been a decrease in student population, the state has increased the amount of faculty and staff in the schools. He added that Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s solution to the education situation is “more bureaucracy.”

“Instead of letting the federal government dictate to us what is a quality education, put that decision in the hands of the parents,” he said. “The problem is not the teachers, it is the system.”

Clearly education will be the burning issue. I will be helping put HB1234 on the ballot as it clearly shows how the SDGOP has abandoned their conservative principles and implemented another Obama agenda item. And sadly there are some who don't get it:

Sen. Vehle has not filed for re-election yet, but has petitions out and plans to file before the March 27 deadline, he said.

Asked about Sibson’s candidacy, Vehle said “it’s a free country” and added that it’s good to have people running for office.

Davison County Republican Party Chairwoman Donna Weiland said Vehle has represented the party well, and she sees no reason for a change.

“We will support what we already have,” Weiland said, referring to Vehle and District 20’s two representatives, Lance Carson and Tona Rozum, who are both Republicans from Mitchell.

Now you understand why I ran as an Independent two years ago. Weiland has been given Vehle's extreme left liberal voting record. And I would like to welcome Quentin Burg to the fray:

Former state representative Quentin Burg, of Wessington Springs, has petitions out and plans to file as a Democrat for District 20’s Senate seat as well, he said Tuesday.

He said he’s been frustrated with this year’s legislative session as many legislators seem to have followed whatever Gov. Daugaard wanted.

“When I looked at this legislative session and what they did with education, I was frustrated. There was no real leadership,” he said.

The question for Burg is, don't you know that the SDGOP is only doing what Obama wants? This is from a George Will column that also ran in today's Mitchell paper:

Meanwhile, the Education Department is pretending that three laws do not mean what they clearly say. This is documented in the Pioneer Institute’s report “The Road to a National Curriculum: The Legal Aspects of the Common Core Standards, Race to the Top, and Conditional Waivers” by Robert S. Eitel, Kent D. Talbert and Williamson M. Evers, all former senior officials in the Education Department.

The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) — No Child Left Behind is its ninth iteration — intruded the federal government into this traditionally state and local responsibility. It said that “nothing in this act” shall authorize any federal official to “mandate, direct, or control” a state’s, local educational agency’s or school’s curriculum. The General Education Provisions Act of 1970, which supposedly controls federal education programs, stipulates that “no provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize” any federal agency or official “to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction” or selection of “instructional materials” by “any educational institution or school system.”

The 1979 law establishing the Education Department forbids it from exercising “any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum” or “program of instruction” of any school or school system. The ESEA as amended goes further: No funds provided to the Education Department “may be used . . . to endorse, approve, or sanction any curriculum designed to be used in” kindergarten through 12th grade.

However . . .

What authors Eitel, Talbert and Evers call the Education Department’s “incremental march down the road to a national curriculum” begins with the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSS). It is an initiative not of any state legislature but of a governors association, state school officials and private foundations. This push advanced when the Race to the Top Fund (RTTT, part of the 2009 stimulus) said that peer reviewers of applications for money should favor those states that join a majority of states in developing and adopting common standards. The 11 states and the District of Columbia that won Race to the Top funding had adopted or indicated an intention to adopt the CCSS, which will require changes in curricula.

An Education Department synopsis of discussions with members of the public about priorities in competition for RTTT money says “the goal of common K-12 standards is to replace the existing patchwork of state standards.” Progressives celebrate diversity in everything but thought.

The Obama administration is granting conditional waivers to states chafing under No Child Left Behind’s unrealistic accountability requirements. The waivers are contingent on each state adopting certain standards “that are common to a significant number of states,” or the state may adopt standards endorsed by its institutions of higher education — if those standards are consistent with the Education Department’s guidelines.

We have been warned. Joseph Califano, secretary of health, education and welfare in the Carter administration, noted that “in its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas.”

Here again laws are cobwebs. As government becomes bigger, it becomes more lawless. As the regulatory state’s micromanagement of society metastasizes, inconvenient laws are construed — by those the laws are supposed to restrain — as porous and permissive, enabling the executive branch to render them nullities.

This is why I oppose Daugaard's education plan that will spend $8.4 million on training Common Core Standards, and then tens of millions more to set up a testing to give bonuses to the those teachers who implement the Common Core Standards. This is how we have increased the cost of education without any results in regard to academic performance over that last several decades. Daugaard is only doing what Obama wants, and that is to continue with the federal education agenda that the Bushs', Clinton, and now Obama have already pushed. It is not a change in status quo, and it is the anti-thesis to local control. Daugaard is blindly taking marching order from the National Governors Association whose agenda comes out of Washington DC.

The education issue clearly shows how the leadership of both parties are in the same bed. Their aim is control...control on how and what we think. Time for conservative Republicans, conservatve Populist Democrats, and libertarians to join forces and stand up to the leaderships of both political parties.

Side note: I bet Vehle is telling all his rich special interests that he is going to need a lot of money.

Comments

[caheidelberger]

My hat's off to you, Steve. Now please, tell me you are going to hammer Vehle in every campaign speech and every debate on his aye vote on HB 1234.

[Steve Sibson]

I will try and work it in with the rest of his pro-Obama policy positions.

[caheidelberger]

Just remember, Steve: you're not running against Obama. You're not even running against Noem. Try to spend less time shouting about Obama and more time focusing on specific South Dakota issues. Can you make the case that Vehle's policies are bad without adding, "They're bad because Obama wants them"?

[Steve Sibson]

Cory, you partisans seem to not understand that both political parties are controlled by the same wealthy international ruling elite. Education is "THE" example of that. Just read Will's column to understand that the last four presidents implemented the same globalist pro-corporate socialist agenda. From H Bush's global New World Order, Clinton's School to Work Goals 2000, GWB's NCLB, and now Obama's Common Core Standards and Race To The Top.