It is not Cold Hearted to Want to Keep Your own Money

It is not cold hearted or greedy to want to keep your own money for your own children but it is propaganda to use children to increase taxes on others.  

The opposition forces are trying to use children to melt cold hearts and wallets.   How about not using children for propaganda purposes.  If the increased funds are worthy of  283 people showing up on May 7th you don't need to use children as propaganda to pilfer money from your neighbors.

$10,000 per student is generous.  

$22,000 per student is greedy.  

Protect your assets for future needs, consider staying home May 7th.  

Photo via NPR.org.

                                                    Glory to Stalin, Great Friend of Children!

                                                    USSR, 1952 artwork by N.Vatolina

                                                    Propaganda Poster. 

Food Prices are High and Getting Higher!

I want property taxes to go down do you? 

This is a David and Goliath moment for the people of Croydon, New Hampshire. If you don't want your taxes to increase 113% on May 7th, make the choice to stay home.

Like school choice which is spreading around the country like a wild fire, we can final have true education reform. Education reform where we return to classical education and focus on education and students and not teachers and other school staff. 

Cathy Peschke

Get ready to spend more at the grocery store. Food prices expected to soar, USDA predicts.

Susan Selasky

Detroit Free Press

"If you think paying $10 for a pound of bacon or $6 for a pound of butter is bad, it's about to get more expensive.

Pretty soon, you'll be paying even more for just about everything when it comes to eating in or dining out, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"All food prices are now predicted to increase," the USDA's Food Prices Outlook for 2022 March report said.  

The increases are the highest in decades as grocery prices got more expensive and rose nearly 9% for the year.

The USDA's Economic Research Service updated its March report predicting a 4.5%-5% rise in food prices this year. Eating out will see the highest increase, 5.5%-6.5%, the report said." 

Click here to read the rest of the story at USA Today. 

Facts Matter

The following commentary appeared in the The Daily Sun.  

To The Daily Sun,

In response to the letter from Marsha Hayward "Democracy requires an active participation of the people", there are some things to note.

Democracy is harmed less by small voter participation than by the misrepresentation of facts, whether deliberate or accidental. Increasing voter participation can scarcely lead to better outcomes, if those voters don’t actually understand the issues they’re voting on.

More importantly, freedom can be harmed by democracy, which is why the founders of our country were so careful to avoid setting one up. Instead, they created a constitutional republic whose powers are limited.

Hayward misrepresented the meeting and made an untrue statement that parents must setup homeschool pods or enroll in online classes to be educated. Regarding the HB 1393 budget cap bill, that is a two- or three-year process to install. The cap may be a nice idea but will only works if the voters want it to work. Someone who reads Hayward’s letter and takes its claims at face value is less prepared to participate in democracy because of the fictional representation of the facts.

It is also interesting to hear people complain that one relatively small group (taxpayers) has managed to use the exact same technique that another relatively small group (parents) have been using for decades.

Croydon did not pick a number out of a hat, they researched and found other schools in the area were educating students for under $10,000 while the public schools’ cost is closer to $17,000. Croydon is looking into a private company to operate their public school (I find this interesting and should work).

This has nothing to do with Free Staters. Facts matter and too many times people pass on mis- or disinformation which causes a bad bill to pass or a good person missing out in winning a race. We all need to do better. I contacted the Croydon School Board chair to get the information I am passing on to you in this letter.

John Sellers

Bristol

Small New England Town Cuts School Board Budget—in Half | Patrick Carroll

Small New England Town Cuts School Board Budget—in Half | Patrick Carroll: A small town in New England recently voted to cut its school board budget in half in an attempt to tackle inefficiency and administrative bloat. But not everyone in the town is on board.

One of the main topics of discussion was the proposed $1.7 million budget for the Croydon School Board. This would cover the 24 students in the Croydon Village School, a K-4 one room schoolhouse, and about 53 older students who are tuitioned out to public and private schools in the area. The $1.7 million budget represented an increase of about 30 percent over the last three years, and would have come with an estimated property tax increase of nearly 19 percent.

The chair of the school board, Jody Underwood, gave a presentation during the meeting explaining the budget so that people could understand what they were voting on. But right after her presentation, Ian Underwood, her husband, did something daring. He made a motion from the floor to reduce the budget to $800,000, a 53 percent cut.

Ian’s motion was not unplanned. Earlier in the meeting, he had handed out a pamphlet explaining what he intended to do and his rationale behind the proposal. Jody was aware of his plan, but was not involved.

An excellent article from the Foundation for Economic Education.   I believe the fight against this is so strong because we are Fighting Big Ed and the Teachers' Unions.  This is a David and Goliath situation.   After decades of poor educational results and excessive spending it is time for real reform where the students and families are put first and not school employees and teachers. 

Click the hyperlink above to read the rest of the story. 

Cathy Peschke 

Citizens for Reasonable and Fair Taxes. 

I Stand For My Children, Not Greed

I stand with my children, I am against the vote to increase property taxes 113% on May 7th. Other parents with children in Croydon are against the 113% tax increase as well.  

It is not greedy to want to keep your own money. It is greedy to ask for far too much from others. $10,000 per student is generous, $22,000 per student is greedy. 

Let's talk about the conflict of interests of the public school teachers in town. If Croydon succeeds at capping education at $10,000, and I have confidence we will succeed, this could happen in other school districts. Let's talk about the tens of millions of dollars from teacher unions to democrats that vote for policies that work against individuals and our freedoms.

It is greedy to recklessly spend taxpayer monies with little results.

Cathy Peschke

What Was She Supposed To Do?

 Skip Murphy from Granite Grok has another excellent piece on Croydon. 

“…You’ve admitted to knowing, before the meeting, of your husband’s proposal yet you deliberately kept it from the public”

What was she supposed to do – ride like Lady Godiva or Paul Revere screaming at the top of her lungs going through town: “The budget cut is coming, the budget cut is coming!”? Get real.

As I told that single mother at the end of the last school board meeting, the school board manages the district – YOU are supposed to defend that budget.”

No, not at all. This lady, like all of the others that heatedly and angrily spoke at the first School Board meeting, is still projecting. THEY think that she was supposed to “inform” them of a proposal? Utter nonsense.

They are taking it out on Jody Underwood, Chair of the Croydon School Board, when they should have been taking it out on themselves.  THEY didn’t bother to go to the Town Meeting.  Almost no one did as it took only 20 votes in the affirmative to cut the school budget down to $10,000/child average cost instead of the original $21,250.  Why does it take that much for a government school when charter schools, private schools, and religious schools do a better job for far less?

That’s the question that ALL government-run school systems want to avoid being asked – and even more so in giving an answer.

And the answers from some of those folks that I videoed were just as bad:

1. Oh, there was a blizzard
2. I had to work (that’s reasonable if you’re a single parent)
3. I didn’t think I had to
4. This kind of thing has never happened before.

Well, you let yourselves both get snookered and snockered yourself. You all willingly brushed off your responsibilities and became, as the Union Leader put it, “no shows”. We are a representative Republic using democratic processes to get things done – and you all allowed something to happen by not being there and NOW you’re majorly ticked off STILL?

 

Full Disclosure: I’ve known both Jody and Ian Underwood for years and I have found both to be always forthright and honest, friendly and humorous. And Ian writes for GraniteGrok BECAUSE he makes my head hurt with his ideas – he makes you think (and if it isn’t hurting when you read his articles here, you’re not asking yourself the right questions).  If Croydon residents voted for him for Selectman, they should have known what they were getting when they did – but did they bother to ask what his “selectman philosophy” like the Republican Senators asked of Biden’s SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson?  She avoided all those questions but I can assure you he would have been completely honest and open and TOLD you how he sees things.

So I maintain, not caring what Croydon residents would say, that this is ALL THEIR FAULT.  Snooze, you lose. Make stupid decisions (like “I’m not going”), get stupid [sur]prises. So stop taking it out of the Underwoods.  I’m not talking as a friend here – but as an outside observer that watched their reactions to their own inaction.

Our style of governance DEMANDS an informed and active citizenry – they were not informed and instead of being active, were slothful.

But, like in a lot of things nowadays, they refuse to stand up and take the lumps they so richly deserve for not just operating on autopilot but for turning off the computer that resides between their ears.

H/T Granite Grok.  To view the video in the story click here.

Cathy Peschke

"It is for the Children!" Or is it?

Children have been used for propaganda and have been recipients of propaganda for centuries.   Propaganda is already a big part of the push to revert the budget back to 1.7 million dollars on May 7, 2022.  Don't fall for it.

They'll say things like, "It is for the children,"  as they have already done, to tug at your emotional side. Children don't need a $20,000 education to learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic.   Our one room school house is not what many in our town remember, those who went there decades ago think our town is spending too much money and we are not getting good results for our money.

10,000 dollars is generous.
22,000 dollars is greedy.

Wikipedia describes this appeal to emotion as a logical fallacy and should not be used in the debate over the budget on April 8.

"Think of the children" (also "What about the children?") is a cliché that evolved into                          a rhetorical tactic.^[1][2][3] In the literal sense, it refers to children's rights (as in discussions of child labor).^[4][5][6] In debate, however, it is a plea for pity that is used as an appeal to emotion, and therefore it becomes a logical fallacy.^[1][2][3]"

If you choose, please stay home May 7th, let us not overturn our legal town meeting results from March 12.

Cathy Peschke