Now the libertarians want to limit the amount of money you can spend on public education with a statewide spending cap while they suck the Education Trust Fund dry giving $6,000 to $7,000 subsidies to wealthy families with kids already in private and religious schools through the Education Freedom Account program.
Last year the same group shepherded through a bill that allowed school district petition articles to cap spending at per-pupil rates.
When all but one or two failed miserably at school district meetings the libertarians introduced a statewide cap on school district budgets at the rate of inflation over the last five years or rate of student growth.
That certainly does not look anything like the once sacred local control and a lot more like father knows best, with most of the proponents of this kind of legislation older white men.
But the gravest example of the intrusion into people’s lives is health care and the damage being done to children and their parents.
For the past two or three years, following the national playbook, legislation has been introduced to preserve “parental rights” all of which are in law now except for the provision that turns educators into obligated surveillance agents for parents.
The House and Senate have passed similar parental rights bills this year so it is likely to pass and Gov. Kelly Ayotte will have to decide what to do with it. Former Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed one several years ago.
The phase that follows the Article 2 prohibition of using taxpayer money for religious education, is also telling. It reads “And every person, denomination or sect shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect, denomination or persuasion to another shall ever be established.”
But that is what is happening now, a group of Republican lawmakers want the rest of the state to be subordinate to their faux religious beliefs and ideologies.
That doesn’t feel like freedom or liberty if you do not agree with about 80 to 90 Republican libertarian lawmakers bankrolled by oligarchs and following their culture war playbook.
These freedom-loving free staters don’t love freedom and liberty, they love greed, intolerance and self-indulgence and they want to tell you as a parent, or teacher or local official to toe the line and if you don’t like it move out of state.
That feels more like tyranny and authoritarianism than freedom.
And that is a huge change for New Hampshire in a short period of time.
Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.