Boost public ed in NH

As a single mom and a homeowner, I feel the weight of New Hampshire’s broken school funding system every day. The state continues to underfund public education, leaving local taxpayers like me — and many of my neighbors, including elderly residents on fixed incomes — to shoulder the burden.

Public schools are the backbone of our communities. They serve all children, not just those who can afford alternatives. When we divert public dollars to private vouchers, we send the message that public education doesn’t matter. That’s not just wrong — it’s dangerous. It closes doors on our collective future and leaves the most vulnerable behind.

I urge lawmakers to increase funding for our public schools and to ease the pressure on property taxpayers. Our kids, our communities and our future deserve better.

Carol Williams

North Sutton, N.H.

Democracy in danger

We have been forewarned about the threat to democracy for a number of years. In 2016, my worry was that Trump’s “might-makes-right” perspective together with his impulsivity and narcissism made for lethal leadership. I urged that we, as citizens, heed the warning that “absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” In 2018, David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, observed that we have become dangerously accustomed to many of Trump’s authoritarian habits. By 2019, critics of the Trump administration and Congress decried Trump’s demagoguery and Congress’ passivity. They claimed that Trump was wreaking havoc on the democratic process by enhancing tribal politics, increasing the trend toward plutocracy, intensifying the racial divide, undercutting political norm, and denigrating the press. In a 2019 letter, I referred to books and articles which underscored the threat to democracy: books like How Democracies Die (2019), The Fifth Risk (2018); articles like: “Plutocracy Now,” (2018); “The Suffocation of Democracy,” (2018); “The Threat of Tribalism.” (2018).

In 2023, reports indicated that America was on the brink of tyranny. Trump’s plan, if elected in 2024, was to frighten us all. Larry Diamond, at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution states, “One thing we’ve learned about Trump and authoritarian populists like him is not to dismiss what they’re saying as just idle language and toothless roar.” We need to take them very seriously.

Now we confront a president who vilifies people, sabotages the press, demeans foreign leaders, blocks university grants and foreign student enrollments. His cabinet comprises sycophants whose wealth places them as one-percenters. I’m mindful of economist, Milton Friedman’s view that “the combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.”

Bob Scobie

West Lebanon