Public Funds for Church School: The Ghost of JFK

 

"I believe in an America where separation of church and state is absolute, where no public funds are ever granted to any church, or to any church school. Today the finger of suspicion may be pointed at me, but tomorrow, it may be at you. Until the whole  fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

--John F. Kennedy

Hampton Union Publicity 

Yesterday, the Hampton Union published an article about the fight over a Hampton warrant article, voted in every year, which sets up an account ($55,000 this year) from which bills are paid, after being presented by the Sacred Heart School (parish school of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal) to the SAU treasurer. 

The Hampton Union quotes an attorney parishioner, who claims that despite the clear language of the New Hampshire constitution saying, "But no person shall every be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination," state supreme court decisions say otherwise. No response to that assertion was solicited or elicited by the reporter, Max Sullivan. The fact is, despite what Ms. Nevins (who always identifies herself as "attorney Nevins") says, this is by no means settled law. Mr. Sullivan simply quotes her, but never investigates whether or not this is true.

Beyond that, Ms. Nevins allowed that the 1969 decision public funds may go to religious schools "if sufficient safeguards are provided," and clearly there are no safeguards with respect to this tithe to the school. The treasurer of the SAU, Mariah Curtis, has on several occasions admitted she has no idea what the bills for supplies are used for, although "everything is audited."  As opponents have suggested molding clay may be used to fashion crucifixes for classroom walls, and computers may be used to stream religious services--there is no safeguard at all. Ms. Curtis admits in all the years she's been presented invoices from the church school, she's never once refused to pay for an invoice

The history of this warrant article is reported to date to a time when public schools were crowded and diversion of students to the church school was seen as a way of saving money, but the reporter failed to say that is no longer true in Hampton, and, in fact there are empty seats at Hampton public classrooms, and the SHS award diverts needed funds from public schools. That $55,000 could pay for a desperately needed school custodian.

The principal is quoted as saying this is all about educating Hampton students, whose parents pay taxes in the town, but she does not say that only 25% of the students at the school are from Hampton; the rest are from out of town. 

So what the taxpayers are really paying for is to support families from anywhere who want to educate their kids in the Church.

This phrase, "It's all about the kids," particularly galls opponents because it says really, "it's only about the kids," which of course is not true. It's also about separation of church and state. Not to mention there is something so sanctimonious about saying "I am all about the kids'" as if you are more about the kids than the opponents of the article, who feel they are just as much "about the kids."

The warrant article process is, of course tainted by a state law which requires that the School Board and the Budget Committee vote to either recommend or to not recommend voters vote for the article and those recommendations are printed right below the article and right above the checkboxes "yes" or "no" where the voters marks their ballots.

One might ask why the state wants these boards to put their thumbs on the scale so flagrantly, but one look at the 20 page "ballot" and you know why. Voters are allowed to vote based on what the authorities in town recommend, authorities who have presumably given more thought to the article than the voter who has only thought about it for a minute.

This year, Mr. Sullivan tells us, the School Board voted 2 in favor to 0 against to 3 abstentions to recommend. He tells us two of the 3 who abstained abstained because they were parishioners. He does not mention these two parishioners voted public funds to their own church last year when the warrant article vote came up, but this year they were called out for that at a public School Board meeting, and they abstained rather than being accused of doing what they had done in the past--voting for public funds to their own church. 

The 3rd abstainer, Wendy Rega, had voted against the article last year, but this year she thought it would be defeated only if she abstained, because if she voted no, then a majority of the Board would have voted, (i.e. 3 out of 5) and it would be carried as a 2-1 vote. But with her abstention, it was a 2-0-3 vote and that meant the majority had not voted. It was a tactical move. Mr. Max Sullivan reported none of that.

He also did not mention that Ginny Bridle Russel, the chairperson of the school board voted for the warrant article as a School Board member and again as a Budget Committee member, so she got to cast deciding votes twice.

He did not mention that the Budget Committee voted 4-3 to recommend, and it is not known how many of those 4 voters were parishioners. And he did not report what the three No voters had said to explain their votes. Sullivan explained why the abstainers abstained--but he did not give equal space to those who voted against the article.

So, according to the Hampton Union, the fight over separation of Church and State is over in Hampton.

As Justice Sotomayor has noted, with the current United States Supreme Court it may be that separation of church and state is now unconstitutional. It certainly is in Hampton.

And it's too bad, really.

What was that "finger of suspicion" JFK was talking about? Well, in 1960, I well recall being told by my neighbors, "Oh, you can't vote for a Catholic to be President. You may as well move the Pope into the White House. Your taxes will go right to the Church."

JFK promised that would not happen and he kept that promise. It is his legacy, his sacred legacy, that nobody ever asks if a candidate for high office is Catholic anymore.

I've met plenty of people who do not even know Joe Biden is Catholic. Never comes up. John F. Kennedy did that for us. This abstract notion, separation of church and state, which elicits nothing but dull stares and slack jaws from so  many, has very real, practical consequences.

So, when the voters at the Deliberative Session on February 5th, mustered out to vote for the warrant article, to support their Church and their faith, they will actually be doing just the opposite.

They will be voting to destroy the legacy of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which allowed Catholics to fully participate in the politics of their nation, without that ugly "finger of suspicion" pointed at them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CClNXNeYBIw&t=7s

Sympathy for the Enemy: In Need of Some Restraint

 

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith


Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you
Is the nature of my game


I rode a tank
Held a general's rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank


I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made


So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

--The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"

Sir Max Hastings wrote a history of the American war against Japan called, exquisitely, "Retribution."

That is what that war was about, at its core. Of course, there were many things that fed into that war, but some wars, like our own Civil War, have one clearly definable cause, which ascends above all others--for the Civil War, it was, as Lincoln famously said, slavery--"These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war." 

For Roosevelt, it was Pearl Harbor. "The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation...No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. [We]will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us."

This, of course, is what the Prime Minister of Israel said after the October 7 attack from Palestinian Hamas warriors. Hamas cannot be allowed to ever endanger us again.

The parallels go further: The Japanese attack was launched after America had embargoed oil and other war materials from Japan, which was in the process of over running China, Indochina and much of the South Pacific. We sought to limit Imperial Japan's ambitions. The Japanese islands had little to no oil, limited capacity to produce food enough to feed itself and a burning ambition to replace European powers as the masters of the Far East. The Palestinians, of course, have been confined to something which conjures up images of the Warsaw ghetto, while Palestinians on the West Bank are expelled from their lawfully owned homes by Israelis who claim that land as Lebensraum, "living space."

In the process of pursuing revenge, the American military effectively strangled Japan for resources. A modestly small submarine force sank enough Japanese transport ships to deny the Empire enough fuel to power its industry, its Navy and its air force.  

Unlike Germany, Japan was safe from American airpower, protected by great distances of the Pacific ocean, and so the Americans embarked on an island hopping campaign to obtain island air bases from which to attack Japan. Iwo Jima was one of those islands. But the Marianna islands, Saipan,  proved all that was actually needed. 

As Hastings sees it, and as many American military and State Department officials said at the time, Japan lost the war as soon as the American blockade tightened.

But the Japanese refused to accept this. And Japan was ruled and motivated by a military class governed by the "bushido" (warrior) code which did not allow for surrender, which generated Kamikaze attacks, which caused civilians, mothers with their children on Saipan, to leap from cliffs rather than surrender to the advancing Americans.

Horrific acts of Japanese brutality, beheadings, immolation of prisoners, were well know to the American public which had no sympathy for that devil.

Japanese routinely shot their own wounded soldiers rather than leave them to be captured by Americans. Cruelties, both individually and by policy, were incomprehensible to Americans and it sparked a ruthlessness which had not occurred in any widespread way in the European theater. 

So the bombings began. Curtis LeMay developed the idea of fire bombing which killed untold numbers of Japanese in their wooden and straw homes, at the very least 100,000 in Tokyo, before the bombs were ever dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hastings' meticulous, detailed descriptions of the results of the fire bombing on Japanese in multiple cities makes John Hersey's famous "Hiroshima" look like bedtime fairy tales. The destruction in Gazza pales next to what the American B 29's did to Japanese cities.

While some American State Department officials and generals questioned whether this wholesale and indiscriminate bombing of Japanese civilians was justified or even necessary, no higher civilian authority, neither FDR nor Truman, ever intervened to stop it.

Hastings found a record of one Japanese housewife, Yoshiko Hashimoto, who, having lost her home and her parents said, "Who did I blame for it all? The Americans? The Japanese had done the same thing to people. It was the war. Mine is the generation which allowed the war. We did nothing to stop it."

In all the reporting from Gazza, I have never seen or heard a single Palestinian say anything of the sort. Every single Palestinian voice and face on American TV claims to be an innocent victim of a ruthless, unwarranted Israeli attack.

After the war, especially after Vietnam, when Americans once again burned babies in villages where the only offense was being Vietnamese in a zone thought to be controlled by the enemy, the next generation of Americans recoiled from the idea of group punishment, of indiscriminate slaughter of innocent civilians.

Now, we look at what the Israelis are doing in response to a day of infamy and we take the moral high ground. 

But our parents' generation, when faced with that bushido, "warrior" implacable enemy, reacted much as Israel is today. 

The problem of an enemy in tunnels was solved by filling the tunnels with a mixture of salt water and gasoline, then set afire. One wonders if Hamas took hostages to prevent just this tactic.

In fact, after the 9/11 attacks on New York City, Americans were not too fussy about identifying actual culprits but simply invaded an Arab country looking for retribution.

The problem, as Ms. Hashimoto said, is with the whole idea of "war," unrelenting, total war.

Sir Max Hastings

When I emailed Sir Max Hastings asking whether the Israeli response to October 7, the indiscriminate bombings sounded like the American response to Japan he responded: "The same utter ruthlessness in play."

The Fall of Claudine Gay

 

Whatever you may think of Henry Kissinger, and I try to not think of the man too often, he likely had an insight when he said, "The reason academic politics are so vicious is there is so little at stake."

The truth is, presidents of universities can, if they choose, do nothing more than address commencement ceremonies and then disappear for a year. Two college presidents passed the baton while I was in college and if neither of them had ever set foot on campus, it would have made not one iota of difference to my college education. 

Nor would it have mattered much to the college itself, even in the long run, as far as I can see.

Some of the deans made a difference to me, but only because I was a student in their classes.

Ira Magaziner, a classmate, made a difference to the college, because he seized the opportunity presented by the closure of college campuses in 1968 to get a radical "new curriculum" passed in 1969, just before we graduated. This curriculum virtually eliminated grades and requirements for students to major in different departments.

Twenty years later, the owner of the Washingtonian Magazine who also owned a wide newspaper empire, told me he would not hire graduates of my college because he didn't know what their grades meant--it was all fun and games at that college he said. He was on the Board of Trustees of Cornell University.

I replied, accurately I believe, the loss was his, not those alumni he turned away from his enterprises; from the notes in my alumni magazine, I could see graduates were finding plenty of openings at the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. The fact is, ever since the new curriculum went into effect at the college, the competition to get in soared, and the applications soared, the quality of the students flocking to campus improved by any measure,  placing it just behind the big three-Harvard/Yale/Princeton--as a status symbol. 

In fact, for the first time, some students chose the college over acceptances at the big three.

So, when Claudine Gay finally resigned as President of Harvard, I had to shrug. 

So what?

Who cares, apart from Ms. Gay herself, and some members of the Harvard Board of Governors really cares? 

One has to ask, why should anyone on the Harvard Board, or any Harvard alumni actually have any say about who is "running" Harvard?

As an alumnus of a college, I realize I do not really know what is happening on campus in any substantive way, and even if I did know, why should my opinion matter?

Thomas Jefferson wrote about the idea that succeeding generations should not be captive to ideas of his own generation; as times and the needs and issues of the future changed, so too  would the rules and beliefs of new generations have to change. Lincoln picked up that thread, saying that as the issues of his own time were new, his own generation had to be willing to think anew.

The gigantic egotism of the members of the Harvard Board flickers through so many of the articles about their role in President Gay's removal. These are heirs to the Tootsie Roll fortune, investment bankers, hotel fortune heirs, people who, for the most part, started life rich and got richer. More money than brains types, one suspects.

And as for Ms. Gay--well, it's not her fault she was picked for all the wrong reasons, and she could be no better than she could be. Far as I can see, she is not a nasty person, and she values kindness, tolerance and open minded discussion. Nothing wrong with that. 

But she had to navigate an environment where, as Brett Stephens observed, values of "social justice" ousted those of excellence and the words "Equity, diversity and inclusion" appear on banners around campus, where Jewish students were said to no longer "feel safe" on campus.  Where nobody could actually say what "free speech" means or what "hate speech" is. 

Now, I like the idea of "diversity" if it means people from different parts of the country, from different sorts of families, the sons and daughters of coal miners mixing with those of hotel chain heirs, and maybe even some who look different, say Black or Asian are as prevalent as whites. But the Benneton advertisement aspect of different colors all mixing is not a goal, but an outcome, I would hope, of "diversity."  And what does "equity" mean? Does that mean there will be as many kids with low test scores as those who score high? And "inclusion"? Well, I like the idea that any kid on campus can be included in any club, sport, class or dining hall and nobody excluded because of social status or race. But when you have a dormitory for African Americans or a Greek fraternity which is all white, is that "inclusion"?

Young Harvard grads have for decades, spoken about "dropping the H bomb" into conversations, on first dates, or job interviews or simple chats in the country club locker rooms. They meant that as soon as they revealed they had gone to Harvard, the perception of who and what they are changed and simple folk looked on them as some kind of mystical royalty, someone who had drawn the sword from the stone. 

Or, at least, that's what these Harvard grads thought was going on. 

For my part, I knew kids who went to Harvard from my own high school class, and I was not overwhelmed by this nascent royalty. The only thing different about them was they had straight A's, but they were by no means the brightest members of the class. In fact, I felt sorry for them. There were 3 in my class and 4 in the class ahead of me and I knew them all and they all seemed socially stunted, sadly repressed and spiritually dull.

The Harvard grads I met in medical school and as a house officer in my training program in medicine, were uniformly bright and confident, but mediocre performers, uninspired, people who knew how to put number 1 first and who were not the folks I'd want on duty if my sister were admitted, late at night, to their wards.

So, the fact is, Harvard--and in fact--throw in Yale, Princeton and Stanford, are places where a lot of smart people flock and bless them. 

But there are, in absolute numbers, way more equally bright and talented people living, working and contributing to the forward push of progress outside those hallowed halls than in them.

Recommended Votes in Hampton, NH: Live Sly or Die

The old tradition of town meetings in New Hampshire has been replaced by a curious practice called "warrant articles." 

With a population of 20,000, the town of Hampton can no longer simply gather its citizens together to consider questions important to the running of the town, like what the school budget, now close to $21 million, should be, or whether or not Mrs. Johnson should be allowed to plant her petunias on the far side of the sidewalk, on land belonging to the town, but in front of her yard. 

All these things get placed on "warrant articles" which fill well over 20 pages and which the average citizen has little insight about. Most people go to the high school cafeteria in early March are handed a thick packet and they mark off "yes" or "no" in the boxes at the bottom of the article guided by a rectangle which says, "Recommended by the School Board" or "Recommended by the Budget Committee." 

Just imagine if the New York Times reported that ballots for the Russian or for the Nigerian presidency contained a little rectangle just above the voting box which said, under Vladimir Putin's name, "Recommended by the Presidium" or simply, "Recommended."

What a cynical howl would arise from American throats if ballots contained such endorsements. 

"Sham elections!"

But in Hampton, New Hampshire, voters are told an article granting public funds to a church school has been recommended by both the School Board and the Budget Committee and then, once the votes are counted, everyone says, "Well, that's democracy. The voters voted for it!" 

Back and Forth and the Hampton Froth

Hampton, New Hampshire is a very civilized town. Citizens are not allowed to confront each other except according to very strict rules: During School Board meetings, members of the School Board may ask questions of members of the public, but members of the public are not allowed to ask questions of the School Board; same is true for Budget Committee meetings. 

No "Back and Forth!"

But back and forth is allowed at the "Deliberative Sessions" where warrant articles are discussed. The old town meetings are simply not practical in a town of 20,000, we are told, although fewer than 500 ever attend a deliberative session.

During, these exchanges, citizens are expected to keep their comments to below 3 minutes, so everyone can have a chance and nobody hogs the microphone.

The upcoming session to discuss the warrant article granting public funds to the Sacred Heart School promises to evoke a "to and fro among citizens." There is a moderator to be sure things don't get too testy, although in the past the moderator has also made sure one side doesn't prevail if it's the side he does not favor.

Here is an preview of what may happen this time:

Ms. Proforma:  Giving this small amount of money to the Sacred Heart School is all about the kids. This is a wonderful school, which teaches real values and we are sniping about the money when it's all about the kids! I have been in education for 20 years, and I'm there because it's all about the kids. That phrases has profound meaning for me, because, that's why I'm here!

Mr. Contrarian:  You know, I sort of feel insulted by that phrase--as if you are more about the kids than I am. My objection to this article has to do with its violation of the separation of church and state.

Ms. Proforma: Well, but it's all about the kids in the end. Do we fund this wonderful school for the kids, or not? It's all about the kids!

Mr. Contrarian: This reminds me of the man who lives next door to the woman who grows a fabulous flower garden. I mean, it's gorgeous: reds, purples, yellows. But, the problem is she uses a really pungent fertilizer to grow those flowers, and so the man walks over and says, "Love the flowers, but you know, the aroma just knocks me off my feet!"

And the woman responds: "But it's all about the flowers!"

You see, they are talking past one another.

Obadiah Youngblood

Ms. Profundo: People who talk about "separation of church and state" always say this article is about being constitutional, but those words "separation of church and state" are nowhere in the constitution. It's just not a thing!

Mr. Contrarian: This is true: those 5 words together do not appear in the Constitution. But this Constitution was written in the 18th century, when they used different words. And the very first words of the Bill of Rights, the First amendment, are, "Congress (i.e. government) shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion." 

Now what could that mean? How can government establish religion? Well, the only 2 ways I know is to either simply declare an official religion--like the Church of England--or to give money to support religion, the way Germany does: if you register with your local Lutheran church, then 3% of your income tax goes to that church. This warrant article is like that--government funds, public funds, to a church.

Obadiah Youngblood

Ms. Proforma: Separation of church and state discriminates against religious schools.

Mr. Contrarian: Justice Alito would agree with you. He wrote that in his opinion about that case in Maine about the kids who lived in a part of the state so remote the only school within reach was a religious school, but the state refused to fund it because it was a religious school and taught evangelical Christianity--a violation of church and state. But Justice Alito said that is discriminating against religion. 

I agree with Justice Alito, it does discriminate. But I think that's a very good idea. We discriminate every day, as we make choices. Discrimination is not necessarily a bad thing.  Discrimination on the basis of race can be bad, but discriminating about which institutions we support with public funds is essential. We can choose not to support a specific religion because we know that will protect all religions to thrive, not favor one.

If we did not do this, then religions looking for an audience could simply seek out under-served areas and grow there with government support, no matter how extreme their views might be.

Ms. Profundo: Well, but these public funds are not used for religious purposes by the school. And this school has more non Catholics than Catholics. And the religious teaching is pretty minimal.

Mr. Contrarian: The fact is we have no information about how much religious instruction occurs at the school or how the money is used. But we do know that you cannot separate the school from the church. The church would give up nearly everything else it does rather than lose its school because the school is necessary to continue the work of the church, to bring the next generation of Catholics into being. That is essential for the church, but we should not grant taxpayer funds to accomplish this.

Ms. Profundo:  But this is hardly a church school. It's more a private school.

Mr. Contrarian: A private school with crucifixes on the wall and most of its budget from the archdiocese of Manchester. You cannot say it's just "Catholic lite." 

In the state of Utah, a state heavily dominated by one church, the kids in the public schools, which receive public funds, leave the school building at noon, walk next door to have lunch and religious teaching at the Mormon church school, and  they return about 90 minutes later to have their public school classes. That is a way of guaranteeing separation of church and state. Hampton could learn from Utah. 

Amna Nawaz Turns PBS News Hour into Al Jazzera

Before I begin, let me say that I am appalled by the Israeli hard right government seizing land owned by Palestinians outside Gaza and around the country. Israel is clearly no longer the refuge for Europeans from the Holocaust, but has morphed into something else.

Having said that, as someone who has watched the PBS News Hour since the McNeil/Lehrer days, it is hard to watch since October 7. Since then the horrid pictures of dead and wounded children are the lead of every broadcast.

Tonight, Amna Nawaz did a 10 minute interview with a very appealing Palestinian poet who was arrested and harassed before he escaped to Egypt. 

Bias does not have to be bald and stated, as it is on FOX News, it can be simply the selection of what story you choose to report. Before this segment, were stories on Gaza residents with the bodies of their families.

My own personal estimate is there are 10 minutes of stories of Palestinians injured vs stories of Israelis injured.

One would like to think if PBS existed during the Holocaust, they would have been reporting every night from Auschwitz, and aroused public opinion in the United States, which had Nazi sympathizers right up to the moment Hitler declared war against America, and some even after that. 

But one wonders about where PBS News would have been when Americans fire bombed Dresden, Tokyo, Berlin, Hamburg, and dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Presumably, Americans would have had little sympathy for those innocent civilians we bombed on the way to defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The rational would be: 

1. They started it. We're ending it.

2. Those civilians voted for Hitler and in Japan, without a vote the people supported the Emperor; they are not really "innocent."

3. This is what war is: In modern war, there are always innocent victims.

What PBS could do would be to have people who are good at analyzing the ethics of what we are willing to allow to achieve military ends discuss all this at length on air--they have a full hour on their broadcast. During this, some would argue about what the "rules of engagement" mean, how they were developed, and how to analyze the horrific events going on in Gaza and Israel, what the background of this conflict is now (with Israel settlers pushing Palestinian off their land) and the suffering of Israelis under rocket attacks and terrorist attacks from Gaza.

There are no good guys in this conflict and plenty of bad guys, but it's disappointing to see the News Hour giving way to a personal bias from one of its newscasters.

Just think what would be said if every broadcast began with a story about Israelis dealing with the death and kidnapping of their relatives by a news anchor named Judith Cohen.

 

Sacred Heart School: Is it All About the Kids or All About the Cash?

 

Last night, the Budget Committee of the town of Hampton voted 4-3 to recommend the warrant article granting public funds to a religious school, Sacred Heart School.

The "recommendation" appears in bold letters at the bottom of the warrant article on the ballot. 

For those who are unfamiliar with town voting on warrant articles, in New Hampshire townspeople no longer go to town hall meetings--Hampton has 20,000 people--so they go to the high school one day in March and they are given a thick packet of warrant articles and a black pen and they work through the 20 pages of material and vote on the two articles they are actually interested in and then on all the others, just to feel like engaged citizens. 

But they know very little about the other articles and generally vote "yes" if the various town committees have recommended "yes."

In the case of the warrant article granting $50,000 to Sacred Heart School two separate bodies recommend for or against: The School Board and the Budget Committee.

The usual understanding is an article is "recommended" if a majority of the Board votes to recommend, but this year of 5 School Board members only 2 voted to recommend, and the rest abstained. Someone in power decided that was good enough and the warrant article will get its coveted "recommended by the School Board."

One of the favorite arguments for those in favor of the SHS article is, "It's all about the kids." That one particularly rankles the opposition, because it suggests that it's not about anything but the kids, that is is ONLY about the kids, and the opposition keeps saying, sure, it's about the kids--but it's not ONLY about the kids; the real issue is separation of church and state.

To hear the advocates for the SHS article keep repeating this insults the opposition because it implies if you're not for the article then you do not care about the kids.  

This insistence on the  "All About the Kids" clearly means the SHS crowd is simply not hearing, not listening to the objections. 

"Just show me the money"  seems to be the response.

No member of the School Board, other than Wendy Rega has actually ever said the words, "separation of church and state." It is as if the Chairperson, the Shepards, Frank DeLuca have never heard the opposition say those words. DeLuca actually asked why the member of the public opposed the article, as if the member had not just spent 3 minutes talking about separation of church and state. Willful deafness.

August Maake

Other deflated arguments have been that it saves the town money to send kids to SHS, which is cheaper than paying to educate them in the public schools, but with public schools having open seats and enrollment declining, with all that excess capacity, it saves no money to not keep those seats filled--the teachers, the facilities are already paid for; paying for SHS is now an add on.

Another favorite, which one of the Committee members used to explain his vote is, "We've always done it this way."

But, of course, that was the same argument used to argue for segregated schools in the South. The Constitution tells you what you cannot vote on and you cannot simply vote locally to ignore the basic law of the land.

"Local nullification" has been pretty well defunded since the Civil War.

Of course, with the current Supreme Court of the United States, it looks as if separation of church and state is now unconstitutional, but as far as New Hampshire goes, the state constitution is as explicit as it can be that funding religious schools with taxpayer money is not allowed. Chris Muns read the parts o the NH constitution and that much was clear. A lady who identifies herself as "Attorney" keeps raising the NH law 189.49 which seems to allow public funds for religious schools-- but it doesn't take 3 years of law school to know that the state constitution trumps any state law which violates it.

The problem with the constitutionality argument, of course, is what is deemed to be constitutional, no matter what the words of the constitution say, is nowadays only a matter of what any Supreme Court, state or federal says is constitutional. But that, of course, can change as the courts change in composition.

Then there is the argument that this warrant article simply reflects the will of the voters, an effort to show good will toward Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal church. This argument is put forth by people as if the Board and Committee recommendations never happen.

Of course, this "well, the voters like this" argument  has been said repeatedly at both the School Board meeting and the Budget Committee meeting; But if you really wanted to let the voters decide you would not recommend for or against but simply say nothing. But in saying you recommend it, obviously--Well, duh!--you are putting your thumb (or as one speaker said, an elephant) on the scale.

Obadiah Youngblood

And as Matthew Saunders, a member of the Committee said last night, "We, as the Budget Committee are not in the business of using taxpayer funds to express good will."

Below is an unedited video--the speakers are at the beginning and then you have to scroll to the end to hear the vote of the Committee.

https://reflect-hamptonnh.cablecast.tv/CablecastPublicSite/show/1617?site=1