Week in Review: 'Authoritarian'? Left Smears Concerned Parents

The national movement for parental rights in education is “merely one path to…the imposition of an authoritarian hierarchy,” says New York magazine in the left’s latest attack on concerned moms and dads. Perhaps New Yorkmagazine should actually speak to some concerned parents instead of simply vilifying them in service of the public education apparatus.

Talk to Amber Lavigne, the Maine mom who’s taking school officials to court with Goldwater’s help after they deliberately hid her 13-year-old daughter’s gender transition. “It’s a parental rights issue, and whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, you should want your rights as a parent to be protected,” Amber said this week on the Fox News program Jesse Watters Primetime.

Or talk to Nicole Solas, the Rhode Island mom whom Goldwater is defending after the nation’s largest teachers union sued her for trying to find out what her daughter would learn in kindergarten.

Or talk to Terrie Chumchal, the Texas mom whose school district demanded she pay $7,000 in public records fees to find out just how often children in the district were being bullied.

The real authoritarians are certainly not the parents in search of simple information. They might just be the activist educators and public school bureaucrats who want to cut parents out of their children’s education—but Goldwater will keep fighting right alongside parents to ensure the authoritarians don’t win.

Burdensome Business Mandates Hurt Everyone

Everybody suffers when the government saddles private businesses with burdensome regulations, but that’s exactly what the Phoenix City Council did by restricting qualified businesses from competing for taxpayer-funded public-works projects. The new “prevailing wage” mandate would disproportionately hurt small businesses, minorities, younger workers, and all taxpayers—so this week on behalf of dozens of businesses, Goldwater demanded the council repeal it.

The ordinance, passed with virtually no opportunity for public input or scrutiny, imposes a host of requirements that construction contractors vying for public-works projects must follow—or else risk heavy fines and crippling lawsuits. Among other rules, companies must provide their employees with wages and benefits based on complicated formulas produced by the federal government and keep painstaking records.

The ordinance would cause businesses and their employees to miss out on opportunities, while forcing taxpayers to pay more and wait longer for public-works projects to get done. It’s also illegal: after all, state law prohibits imposing “prevailing wage” requirements on public-works contractors.

Restrictive mandates like these only hurt entrepreneurs, employees, residents, and taxpayers alike. That’s why Goldwater will hold government accountable and continue to defend Americans’ economic freedom from stifling, ill-conceived regulations.

Read more at In Defense of Liberty. 

Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun

The winners? Big government and its chosen special interests.

The losers? The taxpaying American public.

Across the country, politicians and their union enablers skirt the law—and keep the public in the dark—to provide favored treatment to public-sector labor unions, Goldwater Institute Staff Attorney Parker Jackson writes at Townhall.

In Arizona, for instance, Goldwater is suing the city of Phoenix for refusing to release public records related to its negotiations with Phoenix’s largest police union. Phoenicians—and all Americans—have a direct financial stake in how the government spends their money. But unions of all stripes around the nation use the negotiation process to foist wasteful, corrupt, and unconstitutional practices on taxpayers—practices like release time, which “releases” public employees from their government responsibilities and allows them to work for their union on the public dime.

Taxpayers need to hold their government accountable. And Goldwater’s OpenMyGovernment.org tool—a comprehensive, step-by-step, and state-by-state guide for filing effective public records requests—can help them do it. As Jackson concludes, “Whether it’s the city of Phoenix and public records or your local school board and public education, transparency and accountability will go a long way toward dissuading government entities from enabling public-sector unions to ignore the law, enrich themselves, and undermine our constitutional system.”

Read more at Townhall.