A Nation Like No Other (30 page)

At the time of America's founding, Americans distinguished themselves from other nations with their belief that individuals are personally sovereign and that power flows from the citizen up; it is not bestowed upon the people by any state, judge, or bureaucracy.

This principle was severely tarnished in the 2005 Supreme Court case
Kelo v. New London
, in which the court ruled 5–4 that the government could invoke eminent domain to seize the house of a private citizen,
Susette Kelo, and turn it over to a private developer who claimed he would generate more jobs and tax revenue.

In her subsequent testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Kelo explained that she was fighting for something even more important than her home: “The battle against eminent domain abuse may have started as a way for me to save my little pink cottage. But it has rightfully grown into something much larger—the fight to restore the American Dream and the sacredness and security of each one of our homes.”
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Susette Kelo was right, and her struggle inspired action throughout the country. Five years after the
Kelo
decision, the Institute for Justice issued a report on the backlash to
Kelo
, including the following points:

Although Susette was defeated in court, her case sparked a wave of citizen activism to defend private property and curb the abuse of eminent domain laws. She also earned the support of millions of Americans who understood her little home could just as easily have been theirs.

When the president signed ObamaCare into law in March 2009, citizens in Missouri were not content to sit back and allow this government power-grab—they decided to act.

Advocacy organizations, tea party groups, and Missouri legislators worked together to craft Proposition C, a ballot initiative to block the federal rule forcing all Americans to buy health insurance. To garner support for the measure, the St. Louis Tea Party instituted a “Block Captain” program that trained citizens in grassroots organizing and recruiting. A leader of the effort, Missouri lawyer Benjamin Evans, recalled how volunteers, with little financial backing, helped to cultivate a popular movement against the mandates of ObamaCare: “The Facebook page became a clearinghouse for low-cost solutions to the problem. Bumper stickers, homemade signs, and many other ideas were created at home by individuals, vetted by larger groups, and then distributed through personal social networks and e-mail chains.”
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Appearing on the August 2010 primary ballot, Proposition C was approved by an overwhelming 71 percent of Missouri voters—even though the measure's supporters had been outspent 4-to-1 by its opponents. The day after the vote, Dwight Janson, who had first joined the effort after attending a tea party event, told the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
, “It's the vote heard 'round the world.” Explaining why he became involved in the issue, Janson said simply, “I was tired of sitting on the sidelines bouncing my gums.”
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The term “public service” has historically been associated with sacrifice and selflessness for the public good. Residents of Bell, California,
however, discovered one day that many of their own public servants had become extremely adept at serving themselves.

In July 2010, the
L.A. Times
revealed that Bell's local officials were helping themselves to exorbitant salaries, topped by the city manager's $787,637 annual income. Caught red-handed and shamelessly hoping to cling to power, the officials proffered ridiculous justifications for their self-generosity. But outraged taxpayers would have none of it. They staged rallies and stormed the city council chamber, demanding the thieves' immediate resignations.

Cristina Garcia, a resident of the mostly Hispanic city, helped to lead many of these protests on behalf of her new organization, the Bell Association to Stop the Abuse, or BASTA, which in Spanish means “enough.” Unable to withstand the withering public censure, the town's top administrators resigned. Later, the city manager and several other officials were arrested and charged with misappropriating over $5.5 million of taxpayer money—in a town where one in six residents lives in poverty.
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A few tainted officials managed to retain their positions—but not for long. On March 8, 2011, Bell residents held a recall election and overwhelmingly voted to oust the mayor and three council members indicted in the scandal. And after that, BASTA made it clear that its work was not yet done. As it noted on its website soon after the recall election, the group now aims to fundamentally reform Bell's local government in order to prevent such abuses from recurring in the future:

Our Founders' emphasis on individual liberty and free enterprise helped to create the most innovative society in human history. But innovation suffers when competition is stifled and mediocrity is protected—and that's what is happening in our public education system today. Restrictive work rules and powerful teachers unions are preventing many public schools from experimenting with new approaches to education, leading to student failure. For example, in California's Los Angeles Unified School District, 50 percent of students are not graduating from high school, and a full 90 percent don't make it to college.
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But thanks to the hard work of concerned parents, things are beginning to change. A great example is the renewal of the DC Scholarship Opportunity Program. Begun in 1994, SOP was the first federally funded school-voucher program in the country. It provided nearly 2,000 children from low-income families in Washington, D.C. with scholarships of $7,500 a year to cover tuition and fees at participating private schools.

After a few years, the program showed tremendous results and had earned broad local support. Here are some of its accomplishments:

Despite these stellar results, in spring 2009 congressional Democrats passed—and President Obama signed—a spending bill that failed to reauthorize the program. This decision, a clear gift to the teachers unions, provoked the anger of poor D.C.-area parents whose kids were deprived of a lifeline that had helped some students escape the city's disastrous public schools. These parents, led by Virginia Walden Ford of D.C. Parents for School Choice, then began a two-year campaign to renew the scholarship program.

The parents' activism kept the issue alive despite Congress' refusal to reconsider its decision. The tide turned after the 2010 midterm elections, when Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives and vowed to revive SOP. As a vote on the issue approached, Ford wrote, “Parents across the country are watching Congress right now to see if their members will do the right thing and stand courageously with children who only want a better future—or if they'll side with richlyfunded special interest groups that place adults and the status quo above the needs of low-income families.”
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On March 30, 2011, with the outspoken support of Speaker John Boehner, the House of Representatives passed the SOAR Act, which would reopen SOP and provide $20 million annually for five years for new scholarships, along with another $20 million apiece for D.C.-area charter schools and traditional public schools. At the Republicans' insistence, the bill was included in the budget deal of April 2011 and signed into law by President Obama.

Upon SOP's revival,
National Review
's Kathryn Lopez remarked that “John Boehner just walked Barack Obama into being a civil-rights
leader.”
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There's some truth to that, but the real architects of this victory were the people of Washington, D.C.—people like Virginia Walden Ford.

On May 29, 2009, Arizona governor Jan Brewer approved a bill known as “Lexie's Law,” which saved private school scholarships for special needs and foster children from being eliminated by opponents of school choice. The law was named for Lexie Weck, a then-seven-year-old girl with autism, cerebral palsy, and mild mental retardation. Lexie's mother Andrea used an Arizona voucher program to transfer Lexie from a failing public school to Chrysalis Academy, a small, private school in Tempe for autistic children.

Lexie made great progress at Chrysalis, but her continuation there was jeopardized when the Arizona Supreme Court sided with teachers' unions, the ACLU, and various other organizations that had sued to shut down the voucher program. Nevertheless, the fight for school choice continued, as Arizona parents like Andrea Weck pressured lawmakers to find a substitute for the program. Ultimately, the legislature passed “Lexie's Law,” which created a $5 million tax credit for businesses that help fund schooling for children with disabilities.
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Said Weck at the signing, “I am incredibly grateful that the legislature and governor moved so quickly to save the scholarships my daughter and hundreds of other children rely on.… Attending a school that meets her needs has changed Lexie's life, and I am honored that the legislature named this program after my beautiful little girl.”
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Bill Main and Tonia Edwards own a company in Washington, D.C. that provides tours of the city on Segways, two-wheeled electric vehicles. They thought they had created an innovative, successful little business for themselves—until they ran up against the D.C.-area bureaucracy.

Following the grand government tradition of issuing useless, stifling regulation, D.C. authorities adopted a rule requiring tour guides to pass a test and secure a government permit if they plan to describe people and
places in the city. If they don't get the permit, they could face up to ninety days in jail. So Bill and Tonia sued the government to withdraw the regulations on free speech grounds. In February 2011, a federal judge upheld the permitting requirement.

Bill and Tonia lost their case, but they drew public attention to the growing problem of occupational licensing requirements, which are making it increasingly difficult and expensive for everyday people to start up and operate a small business. According to the Institute for Justice, which represented Bill and Tonia in their lawsuit, the percentage of the workforce required to obtain a government license has jumped from less than 5 percent in the 1950s to more than 30 percent today.

These kinds of onerous bureaucratic requirements not only suppress economic activity, they impinge on our freedom, as the Institute of Justice explained: “Particularly as the nation tries to recover from a massive recession—and as individuals who have lost their jobs try to start over, often by starting their own businesses—it is imperative that people be allowed to pursue their dreams without the government standing in their way imposing unnecessary barriers in the form of occupational-licensing requirements. Only by setting people free—to describe, to create, to
work
—can we truly create sustained economic growth.”
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