Talking Past Each Other

 

Thinking about what people said at the Deliberative Session last Wednesday, Mad Dog has been marveling at what was said, who said it and why.

This group meeting is meant to replace the old annual Town Hall meetings common in small New England towns. Now, with a population of 20,000 (in off season), meetings of the whole town are not practical and, in any event, most people are working long hours or have kids at home, so going out at 7 PM  on a work day is not top of anyone's list.

You have to be highly motivated to come out to the Academy (the middle school) on a cold New Hampshire night, to talk about school warrant articles, the funding mechanism for the schools in town.

Various speakers in favor of spending taxpayer money on a Church school argued that the amount of money was almost trivial in the context of a town budget for the schools which ran into millions,  which Mad Dog would never dispute.  In fact, nobody arguing against the warrant article seemed to care much about the money, but those who wanted to pass that warrant article would not be deterred from acting as if that's all anyone cared about.

A member of the Budget Committee, who voted for the article to set up a slush fund for the church school, argued that to vote against the article would exacerbate hostilities in town which had boiled up over this practice, without ever considering that if the church simply withdrew the request for taxpayer money, that would have an even more soothing effect: If the church school simply asked the archdiocese of Manchester for that $50,000, instead of asking the taxpayers, all divisiveness over this article would end.  It is the demand for money which has caused the flames to creep up necks.

The head of the town trust funds said there is nothing illegal about giving taxpayer money to a church, as "attorney Nevins" has informed us  in at least three public discussions over the years. This woman, has always identified herself at these meetings as "attorney Nevins," and she always cites a New Hampshire Supreme Court decision, which, she says, decisively ruled that despite the New Hampshire state constitution--which explicitly says no citizen shall ever be compelled to support any church or church school. (Part II, Article 83, and Part 1, Article 6)--it is perfectly constitutional to use taxpayer funds to fund religious schools.  

Mad Dog was surprised to hear  anyone mention attorney Nevins this year,  because at last year's Deliberative Session, a citizen rose to say that he had checked out attorney Nevins' claim; he had Googled this case cited by attorney Nevins and found there is actually no such case, and in fact he had found an advisory from the New Hampshire Supreme Court, when it had been asked whether legislation granting state Lottery funds for religious schools would be struck down as a violation of church/state separation, and the Court said, absolutely it would be struck down-- so don't even think about it. 

 Attorney Nevins never rose to respond to that criticism and by the old legal doctrine, qui tacit, consentit (silence implies consent), she caved, and tacitly agreed what she was saying all those years was pure poppycock. 

That was all very public, and the man arguing that Ms. Nevins had already settled this issue was either not present for that debacle, or had forgotten, or had simply not understood how thoroughly attorney Nevins had been discredited. 

She was not present last night. Mad Dog wondered if she was still  smarting from the smack down she had suffered last year.

Another citizen, another member of the Budget committee, tried to respond to the point made in opposition to the warrant article, namely that with empty seats already paid for at the public schools, paying to send kids to Sacred Heart meant we'd be paying twice for those kids. This point has blown out of the water the idea that sending kids to the cheaper church school somehow saves the town from having to pay to send those kids to public school. (If you've already paid for the cafeteria meal, sending kids out to McDonalds for lunch saves you no money.)  The Budget committeeman said he still believed if those kids came back to the public school it would cost Hamptons "millions" to accommodate them, a position for which he offered no calculations or explanation. 

Mad Dog slapped himself to be sure he was not hallucinating. Had that man actually said, "I just don't believe that?" 

The same man did aver that just because someone says government paying for a religious school violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment does mean that taxes for religion is unconstitutional. Nobody in the Deliberative Session is a constitutional lawyer, this sage declared.

Earlier, an opponent of the warrant article had asserted that the Constitution was written for the common man and that the language of the First Amendment required no special training to understand. He had said when the amendment was written everyone had first hand acquaintance with established religion, as the colonists were intimately familiar with the Church of England, and they knew there are only two ways to establish a church: by declaration or by funding a church with taxpayer funds.

The Budget committeeman never suggested that was wrong. He simply ignored it. He nullified that argument much as Hampton has nullified the First Amendment--by ignoring it.

The Sacred Heart principal, who last year succeeded in getting her $50,000 by arguing this warrant article dispute had nothing to do with the Constitution, but was simply "all about the kids," this year decided to decry a comment at the Budget Committee meeting, which was that the committee should be shown how giving this money would result in a "return on investment."  That put the principal into high dudgeon: Imagine! The principal pouted, we are talking about children as if they were merely an investment?!?

The principal was also indignant over the "mocking tone" of a speaker who had illustrated how difficult supporting church and state can be with the famous story of Anne Richards having to tear down a nativity scene the government had erected on the statehouse grounds, complaining she hated removing any wise men from the statehouse grounds as Texas had so few wise men.  This made the principal feel mocked. 

All of this set Mad Dog's mind whirling back to George Carlin. He just could not get George Carlin out of his mind the whole night. He was afraid he would blurt out the Carlin riff, and only through supreme effort managed to keep that jack in the box.

But here, for your entertainment, a mocking reprisal of George Carlin on God and money:

"He loves you and He needs money. He always needs money. He's all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing and all-wise. But, somehow, he just can't handle money."