What’s Your Constitutional IQ?

By M. Richard Maxson


    As our country lurches to the left and Civics, Government, and the American Constitution are no longer a part of many school systems cirriculum. As truths of our founding fathers gave us becomes a speck in our rear view mirror we needed a way to re-educate our youth. Here is an arictcle by Becket Adams about a new board game that is starting to catch on among true Americans. Constitutionals want it, the rest need it.

 by Becket Adams

    Pam and Dave Barret have long been concerned with what they call “constitutional literacy.”
And with their extensive backgrounds in education, it was only a matter of time before they came up with Constitution Quest, an innovative twist on teaching people the fundamentals of the supreme law of the United States.
    “For years, we had been talking about what we would do in our retirement years, and we knew we would continue to implement our very successful experiences as educators, So our creative efforts went into high gear to produce a product with real value…and with the help of our very creative and brilliant children, we made a family project of it,” it adds.
    But they saw more than a want for their product. They saw a real need for it.
   “The average American’s lack of familiarity with the U.S. Constitution coincides with an existential threat to the continuance of government of, by and for the people. Literacy empowers self-government, but the challenge, as well as the opportunity, is that in many ways our society has been moving toward a post-literate culture,” the Barrets say, “where there’s an abundance of rhyme but less reason, and  sophisms, and sound bites rule.”
    “We believed we could offer something of substance that would capture and sustain the interest of a distracted generation by making it fun,” it adds.
    Armed with a stack of constitution-related questions dating back to 2010, the Barrets set out to design a game that would teach players the basics of the critical document. “What we came up with was a beautiful, functional, interactive piece of art: an educational board game that people actually think is fun,” they said.

Cognitive Square, INC.

  
     It wasn’t long that they launched Constitution Quest that Cognitive Square, INC. In May 21, 2012, roughly 1,022 games have been sold. “The Constitution Quest Game is selling successfully at the James Madison’s Montpelier Museum Store, the Nixon Library Museum Store, the Reagan Library Museum Store, and DAR Constitution Hall in Washington D.C. (in addition to small ‘mom and pop’ shops around the country),” they said. “These stores have ordered and reordered multiple times!”

Cognitive Square, INC.

    They aren’t the only ones who are excited about the game. Sales have exceeding all expectations.
“Since it went into the shrink-wrap, we have sold nearly 5000 units across America — covering ALL 50 states, and are already halfway through the second production run!” they said.

    With an enthusiastic and growing customer base, the Barrets’ creation has become a small business success story. “We took an idea and ran with it — we were passionate about it and we made something happen. That’s what being an American entrepreneur is all about,” they said. “We wanted the game to be beautiful, and Constitution Quest had to be made in America.

The De-industrialization of America

Guest Column  
            By G. Sontag 
    
    The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe. All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.
    
    It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution. It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes. It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.
 

    Now we are witnessing the de-industrialization of America . Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone. Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period. The United States has lost approximately 42,400 factories since 2001. About 75 percent of those factories employed over 500 people when they were still in operation. In 1959, manufacturing represented 28 percent of U.S. economic output. In 2008, it represented 11.5 percent.


    The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.  In 2008, 1.2 billion cell phones were sold worldwide. So how many of
them were manufactured inside the United States ? Zero. Do you know what our biggest export is today? Waste paper. Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  In the United States today, consumption accounts for 70 percent of GDP. Of this 70 percent, over half is spent on services.

    The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now just a shadow of what it once was. Once upon a time America could literally out produce the rest of the world combined. Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.

    If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children? Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things. So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation? 

    The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country. But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them

    We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to
sustainable. Every single month America goes into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.
    So how many tens of thousands more factories do we need to lose before we do something about it? How many millions more Americans are going to become unemployed before we all admit that we have a very, very serious problem on our hands?
 
    How many more trillions of dollars are going to leave the country before we realize that we are losing wealth at a pace that is killing our economy? How many once great manufacturing cities are going to become rotting war zones like Detroit before we understand that we are committing national economic suicide?

The deindustrialization of America is a national crisis. It needs to be treated like one.

Socialism Destroys

 Guest Column
          
           by Zeno Potas
  
    During the mid-20th century, Detroit was a vibrant city with a population of almost 2 million. Today, it

stands near ruin. The number of residents has now been estimated at just over 700,000. According to the Chicago Tribune, "The city has a crushing debt of $14 billion, and a budget deficit of as much as $327 million. The pay and benefit structure of public employees can't be sustained. ... The city could run out of cash in a matter of weeks." And yet the city's main courthouse reports having $280 million worth of uncollected fines and fees.
   
    The initial response to all of this sad news was denial. Some tried to change the subject by playing the race card. The majority of those who live in Detroit are African American. Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder, is white, as are a majority of the state's residents. But crime, corruption, malfeasance and misfeasance are not exclusive to a single race. Ask New Jersey. The problem for Detroit is something no one wants to address: one-party rule. And that would be the Democratic Party.
   
   While the road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, the road to corruption and municipal failure seems to have been paved by Detroit's Democratic monopoly. Political monopolies invite bribes, kickbacks, misuse of funds, cronyism and a sense of entitlement.

    Many businesses have fled Detroit for the usual reasons, including crime. In 2009, Time Magazine reported the city's functional literacy rate was near 50 percent and its unsolved murder rate was nearly 70 percent.

    Michigan law provides for an emergency manager with the authority to prevent local elected officials from making financial decisions. That person also would be granted the power to alter labor contracts, shut or privatize departments and, reports The New York Times, "
 
    Altering labor contracts caused quite the controversy in neighboring Wisconsin, but it had to be done. Democrats there (and in Detroit) had given away too much of the store in exchange for votes.
Shrinking government and encouraging personal responsibility can be a win-win and not only for Detroit.
   

    "We can't go on like this," is starting, however slowly, to become clear to more and more people.

     Some years back, Detroit leaders announced a "Renaissance" for the city. There's a hotel there by that name, but that's about it. Detroit needs more than a Renaissance. It needs a revival, but that is not likely to happen as long as Democrats maintain their political stranglehold.