UL: Will NH become like her neighbors?

[KBCraig]

That's what we're trying to stop! (All emphasis added is mine.)

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Mike+Murray%3a+Will+New+Hampshire+finally+become+just+like+its+neighbors%3f&articleId=07ceeaa9-0882-4422-80ea-03ea377b1c73

Mike Murray: Will New Hampshire finally become just like its neighbors?
By MIKE MURRAY

A MOMENT of truth approaches New Hampshire. Already isolated by our neighbors who have all gone the way of high taxes, decreasing freedom and domination by the money-obsessed left, New Hampshire must decide over the next months whether to remain free and independent or morph happily into just another New England post-industrial relic.

The Legislature and executive branch, by ceding the intellectual argument to the Supreme Court and accepting its premise that money is the keystone to equality of opportunity in education, have put New Hampshire in jeopardy of losing its economic and cultural exceptionalism. For years the Legislature has played this word game with the court, which is folly and very poor representation.

Our legislators are there to be our voice in Concord. Not for a second do I think that citizens would accept the court threatening to appoint its own "special master," yet the Legislature has accepted this and waits for the court to fix a problem of its own making by taking control of the largest state expenditure without any constitutional basis or expertise for doing so. Who would play a semantics game with the court and risk the economy of an entire state?

When examining the economics of education, not for a second do I believe that citizens would think that throwing money at an already well-financed educational system would fix the educational challenges we face. I know zero parents who think money is the key to curriculum, discipline, passionate teachers, accountability and appropriate diligence on the part of parents. Yet the legislators have accepted this rule.

The data are abundantly clear that spending does not relate to outcomes in education, so why has the Legislature accepted this notion so readily? Don't they know that higher spending does not, in any example I can find anywhere, promote better education? Is this such a foreign and hard-to-grasp concept? Why does the District of Columbia, which spends more than $20,000 per student, have such terrible schools? Does anyone think spending $40,000 is the answer? Evidently the Legislature thinks the court knows something about education that no one else does.

The court has clearly gone into the arena of policy-making when it takes the following language and turns it into the present crisis: "it shall be the duty of the legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of this government, to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries and public schools. . ."

My question is will this Legislature and governor be responsible for kowtowing to the court and be responsible, out of negligence to their constituents and duty, for letting the court throw New Hampshire out of its exceptional status into the morass and economic malaise of other high-tax states?

Will this Legislature be responsible for losing all of the economic advantages that come along with no income or sales tax? Will this Legislature be responsible for causing the chaos and economic hardship they consider now through their inaction and impotence, all in the name of accepting the gamble that five judges are wise enough to know the unknowable and that the relationship between spending dollars and good education actually exists even though no evidence can be found anywhere to support this radical theory?

[aries]

Fear not

[eques]

It's because there are a million and one excuses about how the money is spent and how whatever you're currently spending is never enough.

How do you combat the view that education is a "right" (granted, people who use this construction don't really understand "rights")?  Do you go to the root regarding the wrongfulness of the initiation of force in the name of taxes?  Do you attempt to unhinge the idea of "the common good"?

[cathleeninnh]

Use any approach that you are comfortable with. It doesn't matter. Reason doesn't drive too many decisions, especially voting decisions. Emotions do.

Cathleen

[CNHT]

It's because there are a million and one excuses about how the money is spent and how whatever you're currently spending is never enough.

How do you combat the view that education is a "right" (granted, people who use this construction don't really understand "rights")?  Do you go to the root regarding the wrongfulness of the initiation of force in the name of taxes?  Do you attempt to unhinge the idea of "the common good"?

Lynch the governor thinks it's a right and a duty that the state pay for it....

[FrankChodorov]

How do you combat the view that education is a "right" (granted, people who use this construction don't really understand "rights")?  Do you go to the root regarding the wrongfulness of the initiation of force in the name of taxes?  Do you attempt to unhinge the idea of "the common good"?

we have an individual common right to equal access to the social commons (knowledge)...the teaching of via public education is a public good inorder for people to be able to actively participate in self-governance - this is civic republicanism.

this is similar to our roads and sidewalks - the individual, equal access common right lies within the roads and sidewalks which are collectively owned (where you also can excercise your individual free speech and assembly rights).

[error]

Just because a sidewalk exists, does not mean that I should be forced to use it. Perhaps it doesn't lead where I'm going.

The same principle applies to public school.

[FrankChodorov]

Just because a sidewalk exists, does not mean that I should be forced to use it. Perhaps it doesn't lead where I'm going.

The same principle applies to public school.

all individual rights held in common are voluntary...

but if you choose to excercise them, they are held equally meaning in the excercise of said common right you are only restricted by the free excercise of any other individual to the same.

you may not infringe on their equal right...

[AlanM]

How do you combat the view that education is a "right" (granted, people who use this construction don't really understand "rights")?  Do you go to the root regarding the wrongfulness of the initiation of force in the name of taxes?  Do you attempt to unhinge the idea of "the common good"?

we have an individual common right to equal access to the social commons (knowledge)...the teaching of via public education is a public good inorder for people to be able to actively participate in self-governance - this is civic republicanism.

this is similar to our roads and sidewalks - the individual, equal access common right lies within the roads and sidewalks which are collectively owned (where you also can excercise your individual free speech and assembly rights).

You are really throwing the old BS now, Frank. Equal access to knowledge has absolutely NOTHING to do with public schools. BS, plain and simple. Your socialist side is showing again, Frank. Public schools are socialism. We all pay for a perceived common good, Frank. That is plain old socialism.

[aries]

Just because a sidewalk exists, does not mean that I should be forced to use it. Perhaps it doesn't lead where I'm going.

The same principle applies to public school.

If you applied that to taxes we wouldnt have public schools

[Tyler Stearns]

we have an individual common right to equal access to the social commons (knowledge)...the teaching of via public education is a public good inorder for people to be able to actively participate in self-governance - this is civic republicanism.

this is similar to our roads and sidewalks - the individual, equal access common right lies within the roads and sidewalks which are collectively owned (where you also can excercise your individual free speech and assembly rights).

There is a great difference between equal access and totally equality.  The public school system is a tool for bureaucrats and socialists to create this so-called total equality.  Equal access simply means that no one is prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs, so long as it doesn't infringe on other's rights.  We must keep that in mind.