Author: Kevin Tyson
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Home For The Holidays
One privilege bestowed on me as an accident of birth that I share with few others is that I am the child of genuine, unrepentant Stalinists. And you thought being raised by wolves was tough. I started consuming the Marxist canon at the age of thirteen, and I was, and remain, a quick study. As a result, whenever I’m presented with the thoughts of Andru Volinsky or Hope Damon, I am reminded of my parents and their lifelong struggle against capitalism and individual liberty.
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Ian Underwood speaking at the monthly SCGOP meeting 11 November 2025
Rethinking Education: Fairness, Funding, Fun
Here’s the gist of Ian Underwood’s talk and slide deck, boiled down for a quick read.
Scroll down for a copy of the presentation deck and a link to video.
The argument in one breath
New Hampshire keeps spending more and getting the same results. That’s not a money problem; it’s a design problem. Fix three things: make fairness about learning, not dollars; stop paying schools up-front for promises and start paying after results; narrow schools to what’s mandatory and move everything else out.
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Insufficient and Unfair, or Just Misdiagnosed?
The Democratic case in brief
The argument starts with a moral contrast. New Hampshire is a wealthy state, yet its budgets allegedly underfund core needs such as housing, clean energy, public safety, and education. Four points drive the claim.
- Leaders say “no funds available,” which is presented as a choice rather than a constraint.
- High local property taxes are displacing homeowners and renters.
- The tax code is regressive, with lower-income households paying a higher share of income in state and local taxes than top earners.
- Public education funding is described as constitutionally inadequate, which forces property-poor towns to raise unsustainable local taxes.
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Locke, Lenin, and Local Power: Claremont’s Test of Consent
When citizen consent is limited to elections, institutions that look democratic can operate like disciplined clubs, which is why elite circulation and oligarchic drift need counterweights.
Two classic blueprints for political organization still shape local government. John Locke’s account of democracy treats office as a revocable trust grounded in majority consent and limited powers. Vladimir Lenin’s democratic centralism permits internal debate before a decision, then enforces unity afterward. Claremont’s School Board and City Council are not Bolshevik cells, yet when consent is expressed only at the ballot box, both bodies can tilt toward centralism in practice. The remedy is not theatrical outrage; it is better channels for consent and friction against agenda monopolies.
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Break the Cycle or Change the System
This blog post is adapted from this Substack essay.
Break the Cycle or Change the System
TLDR: The people who could be punished have been. Chasing more scalps won’t bring the money back and will burn cash we don’t have. The real failure is structural: the board slid into oligarchy. Everyone who played along shares responsibility, and recovery starts when we admit that, take a moral inventory, and rebuild the machinery so it actually reflects the community’s will. If we can’t do that quickly, the only honest move is to fund families directly rather than continue feeding a broken apparatus.
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