Monday, February 6, 2023, an evening which will live in memory.
The moon was full and the auditorium at the Academy packed.
Congregants of the Sacred Heart School showed up in force, well over 100, a priest in his collar and black suit among them.
The "moderator," whose job it is to keep the proceeding civil, led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, with special emphasis on the "Under God" part, and he said that topics involving schools and children can be emotional and he admonished all to keep the discussion civil.
The first three warrant articles were dispensed with quickly, and then came Article Four, which awards to Sacred Heart School an open bank account with taxpayer money, which Mariah Curtis (treasurer of SAU 90), uses to pay any invoice presented to her from the Sacred Heart School, a wholly owned subsidiary of Our Lady of Miraculous Medal Church.
This year, it's $57,000, written from taxpayer dollars.
The town has been paying the Church's bills like this for decades, without objection, but last year at this same "Deliberative Session" someone finally objected. And this year more citizens were present to object, and the Church, alerted, mobilized its congregants to be sure that money kept flowing.
Arguments for the continuation of the town tithe fell into four main categories:
#1 The School is Benevolent as a Soup Kitchen
The school is a worthy and beloved institution which serves its children well. Several citizens rose to testify about the great good the school bestows on the children, and nobody rose to deny any of that. Of course, nobody among the opponents of the article had ever said the church school did not serve its children well. The only objection to the school had to do with where the money came from.
#2 The Million Dollar Lie
If the 53 children from Hampton (about 1/4 of the school's student body) had to leave Sacred Heart and return to the public schools, then the town would be stuck with the expense of educating them, which everyone knows is exorbitant, because, well you know how government wastes money.
The tacit assumption here is without that $57K the Church would close the school, and all those 53 kids would be forced back to public schools.
And so the Church has been serving the town all these years by educating these kids on the cheap, and if that happened instead of spending the $57,000 the town would have to spend over $1 million dollars to serve and educate these children. At first, Mad Dog was not sure whether that meant $1 million per child or $1 million total, but eventually the speakers seemed to settle on $1 million for 53 students.
This is a widely held belief in town, the Million Dollar Lie. For those who believe in rigged and stolen elections, who need no more evidence than "I heard someone say," this is a convincing argument.
A woman rose to politely inquire if there was any evidence for this and tried ask the Chairman of SAU 90 and the treasurer (Ms. Curtis) if this were true and Ms. Curtis danced around the number, saying it depended entirely on whether all 53 students wanted to enroll in the 7th grade or whether they were spread out among the 8 different grades. If they all went to the 7th grade a new teacher might need to be hired and possibly a school bus, and if all 53 were disabled then the expense would be higher, and she left that hanging in the air, but then Chris Muns, a New Hampshire State Representative got up and said there was no way, even with all that, the cost could possibly be that high, to which someone on the dais said well, maybe not $1 million but more like somewhere between zero and $200,000.
None of this stopped the million dollar lady from announcing in ominous tones the Million Dollar thing. You can see her and hear her utter certainty for yourself, in the link below. She really is a magnificent example of Twitter trash talk. Just say it, and it's all true.
You can click on the link below to see this wonderful woman, and then click back here once you've heard enough, using the arrow in the upper left corner:
https://youtu.be/uCRELvLIwHw?t=4632
#3 "This is Niggling" Argument.
Larry Quinn rose to say he was a member of the town Budget committee and he knew the budget for the public schools--where he did not send his kids, preferring Catholic schools himself-- was around $20 million and he argued that the $57,000 awarded the church was not worth arguing about.
Mad Dog was struck by this. In a town where citizens will argue about spending $5 on stop sign repair, suddenly Mr. Quinn is chastising those who object to spending someone else's money as small minded. These sorts who quibble over chump change who would let Tiny Tim starve in Christmas season.
Mr. Quinn could not see that the objections to the expenditure of taxpayer money to cover Church costs were not about the dollar amount, but about the principle of separation of Church and state.
He's entertaining, though, if you care to click a little more.
https://youtu.be/uCRELvLIwHw?t=5753
#4 It's All Constitutional
A woman who identified herself as an attorney rose to say that the state Supreme Court had ruled the state law allowing the state to hand over taxpayer funds to religious schools (RSA 189:49) as constitutional, being entirely consistent with the state constitution which says "But no person shall ever be compelled to support the schools of any sect or denomination."
She cited no particular case. She simply said it. And so it was true.
This all reminded Mad Dog of that hallowed remark by Donald Trump's lawyer/mentor, Roy Cohn, who famously said, "Don't tell me about the law: Tell me about the judge."
Truer words were never spoke.
Our national Constitution once said slaves were not human beings, and thus had no right to sue in court, because that's the way justice Taney saw things in Dred Scott; Black folks could legally be refused passage on white railroad cars (Plessey); there is a right to privacy which insures the right to abortion according to Justice Blackman (Roe) , until privacy no longer matters, because a new Justice, Alito, doesn't want to see it that way any more (Dobbs).
Same Constitution, different judges.
Every lawyer Mad Dog know says government paying for religious schools is constitutional because they are thinking of all the cases this current Supreme Court has ruled saying just that. Justice Sotomayor has recently written in exasperation, "Separation of church and state is now unconstitutional."
But Mad Dog thinks there is a reality in the Constitution which no judge can obfuscate. It's the reality of what the words clearly say, as read by Mad Dog or any literate citizen. If the words are "No person shall ever be compelled to pay for schools of any sect or denomination," then taxpayer money cannot be used for religious schools, end of discussion. No judge or opinion can change that truth. We can see the naked emperor with our own eyes.
If the Constitution says that the right to bear arms is conditioned by membership in a militia, then Justice Scalia can write a thesis on the meaning of the word "people" in 1789, but it doesn't change a thing. He has written an obfuscation to make the ruling come out the way he wants it to. But that doesn't change what you can read for yourself.
"Obfuscation" means to make something unclear or unintelligible, which is precisely what Justice Scalia was all about in Heller.
"No person shall ever be compelled to pay for the schools of any sect or religion" sounds pretty clear, even it was written in 1784.
DEFUNDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS, GIVING IT TO SHS
After these arguments burned themselves in embers, the true conflagration erupted, almost out of nowhere, much like one of those fires you think has burned itself out then suddenly explodes: an amendment was brought forth that the entire budget of the SAU 90, which funds Centre School, Marston Elementary and the Academy, shall be diverted, in its entirety, to the Sacred Heart School instead.
Say what?
It passed overwhelmingly. The entire mid section of the auditorium, the bastion of the Miraculous Medal congregants, held up their orange voting cards amid tumult.
One of the opponents of the original warrant article staggered to his feet and asked the moderator if he had heard right: The entire school budget now goes to Sacred Heart School and nothing to the public schools, defunding the public schools.
The moderator said yes.
You can see this mayhem on the following link.
https://youtu.be/9RWvScJWaJM?t=6063
The Sacred Heart mob had shown its muscle. It could do whatever it pleased. It had a massive majority and it ruled the Deliberative Session completely. So it just voted its school everything.
Of course, it did not take long for some advocates for the tithe to Sacred Heart to realize that a warrant article which shifted the entire $20 million dollar school budget from public schools to the Sacred Heart school might actually get the attention of the voting public in town, even in Hampton.
Ginny Bridle, a school board member on the dais, spoke up.
The fact she was speaking at all captured the attention of the room, because until then the members of the school board had remained as silent as the grave, refusing to answer direct questions posed to them and depending on the moderator to deflect direct questions away from them, which he did relentlessly.
When asked directly if the school board approved of taxpayer dollars for religious pageants in SHS, the entire school board stared stonily ahead, as if they hadn't heard and the Moderator asked the treasurer to answer the question instead. Ms. Curtis said she didn't know what the supplies she paid for were used for.
Qui tacit consentit.
But Ms. Bridle now spoke for the board: even the most obtuse John Q. Public will notice this amendment, and he just might think this is an effort to kill public schools, and enrich the church school, and even among the sleepy, indifferent citizens of Hampton, they might just notice they don't have public schools anymore, and so the amendment was quickly amended to say that not ALL the money has to go to Sacred Heart.
And that passed, too.
And so the night was a great success for benevolence toward a beloved town institution.
As Andrea Shepard, who is running for school board, said, "It's all about the kids."
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