Op-Ed
Distant Dome: Willfully and Knowingly Making a Mess of Public Education
If you watched the House session Thursday, you had to realize the message the Republican majority is sending on public education.
InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/series/distant-dome/)
If you watched the House session Thursday, you had to realize the message the Republican majority is sending on public education.
After Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election with a seven-point victory over US. Sen. John McCain, the Republican lawmakers in New Hampshire and elsewhere began a campaign to keep many people home on voting day.
In our little piece of the world here in New Hampshire, our mountains have inspired countless paintings, as have our lakes, our seacoast and our factories lining the Merrimack River in Manchester.
The push to decide zoning and land use at the state level and tell towns too bad for all that work you did, has snared more than the Free Staters and libertarians in the New Hampshire legislature, it has also been touted by the majority of Democrats in the legislature in the guise of affordable housing.
First they came for the vaccine and the masks, and then they came for the Trans kids and their healthcare. Then it was public schools, libraries, the interest and dividends tax, and now zoning and land use regulations.
Although the figures change year to year, what doesn’t change is that New Hampshire state government is at the bottom of the list of states when it comes to support for public education K through 12, the same place it is for its support for higher education.
In less than a week, you will either hear shouts of joy or moans from Senate budget writers.
“Elections have consequences,” is an old adage and the last general election may be one of the most consequential in many years, both in New Hampshire and nationally.
In broad terms, the very people who had to make the decisions for the draconian cuts in the proposed budget are the ones who helped put the committee in its awkward position.
Before the turn of the Century and even a little into this one New Hampshire’s motto was the same as it is today, Live Free or Die, but a slight tweak would better describe Granite Staters’ prevailing attitude as Live and Let Live.