One Small Step for Democracy in a 'Live Free or Die' Town (Really worth the read)

[Nevilledog]

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EJ Dionne
@EJDionne
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Great lessons from a small New Hampshire town about democracy, citizenship’s obligations, and defending the interests of kids. Fine piece by @DanBarryNYT on how a “democracy mired in indifference” became democracy in action.
https://nytimes.com/2022/07/10/us/croydon-free-state-politics.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share… https://nytimes.com/2022/07/10/us/croydon-free-state-politics.html?referringSource=articleShare…
A Croydon town meeting in March that began as fairly routine. It didn’t end that way.
nytimes.com
One Small Step for Democracy in a ‘Live Free or Die’ Town
A cautionary tale from Croydon, N.H., where one man tried to foist a change so drastic it jolted a community out of political indifference.
7:22 PM · Jul 10, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/us/croydon-free-state-politics.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

No paywall
https://archive.ph/XRuHX


On a snowy Saturday this past March, the 2022 meeting began in the two-century-old town hall, where the walls are adorned with an 1876 American flag made by the “women of Croydon” and instructions to reset the furnace to 53 degrees before leaving.

Residents approved the town budget in the morning. Then they turned in the afternoon to the proposed $1.7 million school budget, which covers the colonial-era schoolhouse (kindergarten to fourth grade) and the cost of sending older students to nearby schools of their choice, public or private.

This is when Mr. Underwood, 60, stood up and threw a sucker punch to the body politic.

Calling the proposed budget a “ransom,” he moved to cut it by more than half — to $800,000. He argued that taxes for education had climbed while student achievement had not, and that based in part on the much lower tuition for some local private schools, about $10,000 for each of the town’s 80 or so students was sufficient — though well short of, say, the nearly $18,000 that public schools in nearby Newport charged for pupils from Croydon.

In pamphlets he brought to the meeting, Mr. Underwood asserted that sports, music instruction and other typical school activities were not necessary to participate intelligently in a free government, and that using taxes to pay for them “crosses the boundary between public benefit and private charity.”

*snip*

[Tomconroy]

1. Just read it tonight. Great story.

Never had heard of that libertarian effort to take over New Hampshire.

[cachukis]

2. North of Concord, for centuries.

[Bluethroughu]

3. I blame it on the Kochs and all their astroturf organizations funded by tax cuts for the rich..

We have been fighting an economic war against greedy billionaires that have put our national security at risk. If you think I'm talking hyperbolic, Jan 6th tells me I'm not.

It's plantation owners standing back while they have their slaves fight their battle. This is why REAL TRUTH in history needs to be taught to every citizens of the US, and if you don't want to learn the truth, then you don't want to be a citizen of the US.

[Samrob]

4. Moral of the story. Now that you "woke up" show up!! nt