Wendy Piper’s decision to become a Republican came as a surprise. As Democrats who supported her past campaigns, we appreciated her commitment to ensure essential services for our county. Now she’s eager to join in the “good work” of the GOP, whose new budget: defunds affordable housing programs, raises health care costs, underfunds public safety, raises in-state tuition and shifts costs down to communities, pushing property taxes higher.
Our property taxes soar because Republicans refuse to fund public education while sending $110 million in taxpayer dollars to private education, primarily for wealthy families. Piper thinks vouchers will “provide opportunities and overcome disparities for all residents,” ignoring the way they undermine resources for public schools. We thought she was an advocate for our school district, the heart of our community; her flip-flop is stunning. With it, she seems happy to overlook the effects of the GOP agenda: no relief to the economic pain Granite Staters are feeling and no investment in our state’s future.
Wendy Piper has chosen to abandon her former values and enter a new reality. By joining the party that raises costs on hardworking people and threatens the health, safety, and well-being of our communities, she’ll no longer be the public servant we knew. We are disappointed in her decision to turn away from the communities that have supported her, where her constituents will now suffer from her new agenda.
Elaina Bergamini
Grafton
This letter was also signed by Mascoma Forward Democrats Thomas Oppel, Carol Andrew, Barbara J. Jones, Paul Lambert, Dawna Pidgeon and Martha Rich.
Republicans and
the economy
I agree with the recent editorial about the Grafton County officials who changed parties (“Change of parties raises questions”; July 19). However, given that the economy was the top issue in the 2024 presidential election and that national polling on the economy in early June 2025 still gave Republicans an 8-12 point advantage over Democrats, this issue deserves further comment.
The American economy worked best for the middle class and country overall in the postwar period until the mid-1970s. During this “golden age of capitalism,” GDP growth averaged about 4% and incomes grew at this rate for those across the income distribution. Had incomes continued to grow at a uniform rate, the average full-time worker in the bottom 90% would have earned an additional $32,000 in 2024 and median household income would have been double that in 2024.
However, according to the nonpartisan RAND Corp., $79 trillion of wealth has been redistributed from the lower 90% to the upper 1% since 1975. The shift started in the 1980s under Reagan, who lowered the top marginal income tax rate from 70% to 28% and the top corporate tax rate from 46% to 34%. These tax cuts increased wealth at the top but also increased the national debt. Additional tax cuts under George W. Bush in 2001 and Trump in 2017 further increased wealth inequality and the national debt.
The other watershed event contributing to wealth inequality occurred after the Roberts (appointed by Bush) Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Citizens United in 2010. This ruling ended restrictions on the amount of money that corporations could spend on elections and created, in the words of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, a “vicious cycle of oligarchy.” Wealth increasingly uses its influence, sometimes illegally, to elect candidates and promote government policies to gain more wealth and so on.
On July 4, our first billionaire president signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. According to the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the bill provides a net average tax cut of $68,000 for the top 1% in 2026 but no tax cut for the lower 40% (after adjustment for tariffs).
Bill Black
Hanover