Ian Underwood

Ian Underwood is the author of the Bare Minimum Books series (BareMinimumBooks.com).  He has been a planetary scientist and artificial intelligence researcher for NASA, the director of the renowned Ask Dr. Math service, co-founder of Bardo Farm and Shaolin Rifleworks, and a popular speaker at liberty-related events. He lives in Croydon, New Hampshire.
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Dem Leaders Are The Main Obstacles To Their Own Stated Goals

by Ian Underwood

As we slouch towards the end of the world as we know it, it’s worth remembering that Democrats could have pretty much everything they want if they would only handle it themselves and leave everyone else out of it. There are more Democrats in America than there are people in many European countries.  If every … Read more

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Buying Votes?

by Ian Underwood

So, Governor Shapiro of Pennsylvania is concerned that Elon Musk may be violating federal law by offering people a chance at $1 million if they sign a petition supporting the 1st and 2nd Amendments, and limiting the offer to registered voters in certain states. This kind of thing — Shapiro’s concern about legality, not Musk’s … Read more

The Co-Presidents Amendment

by Ian Underwood

Originally, the Constitution specified that the candidate for President who got the most electoral votes would be President, and the runner up would be Vice President. This was changed by the 12th Amendment, after which the states voted for the two offices together.  Like the 17th Amendment, this removed one of the crucial checks and … Read more

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How School Funding Works (Part 4)

by Ian Underwood

As mentioned in [Part 1], the most straightforward (and least Marxist) way to fund schools would be to use a uniform (per capita) tax.  You take the budget, divide it by the number of taxpayers, and that’s the tax each one pays. But even that ends up implementing a sort of reverse Marxism, taking money … Read more

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How School Funding Works (Part 3, EFAs, Tuitioning, Special Needs)

by Ian Underwood

After looking at [Part 1] and [Part 2], we can consider a third case, where the kid who takes the EFA comes from a district that would be tuitioning him to a school outside the district, because the district doesn’t offer the grade that he’s in. For example, suppose each district pays $15,000 to tuition … Read more

How school funding works (Part 2, EFAs)

by Ian Underwood

Okay, so given what we saw in Part 1, let’s consider what happens when a student leaves each of the two districts to open an Education Freedom Account (EFA). In District 1, what changes?  Things that change are highlighted below:   Before After Taxpayers 1000 1000 Students 100 99 Budget $2M $2M Adequacy $400,000 $396,000 … Read more

How School Funding Works (Part 1)

by Ian Underwood

One of the things that allows so much nonsense to be bandied about when discussing school funding is that almost no one — including legislators, judges, and DoE officials — seems to understand how SWEPT (Statewide education property taxes) and adequacy grants are related. In what follows, I’ll use nice round numbers that approximate but … Read more

Olympic Women’s Boxing:  Never let a good crisis go to waste

by Ian Underwood

There is a perfect opportunity presenting itself at the Paris Olympics right now.  Men are beating up women in the boxing events.  At least some of the women are bowing out of their fights, correctly fearing for their lives. Why don’t the women organize an alternate boxing tournament (Herlympic Boxing?), featuring the women who qualified … Read more

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Biden agrees:  Government must be disarmed

by Ian Underwood

In his address from the Oval Office regarding the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Joe Biden agreed with the points I made in my previous post about America’s gun problem. He probably didn’t realize that.  Or more precisely, the people who wrote the address for him to read didn’t realize that.  But let’s look … Read more

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America has a gun problem

by Ian Underwood

The recent attempt on the life of Donald Trump shows that America has a gun problem, and we can’t avoid dealing with it any longer. The problem is that the government has guns, which it is willing to use to allow whatever temporary majority holds power to exert nearly total control over everyone else. Why … Read more

Police car lights

Laws We Need: Increasing Officer Safety …

by Ian Underwood

Years ago, someone working for Ron Paul’s campaign was searched by TSA before getting on a plane,.  Because he had a box containing close to $5000 in cash campaign contributions that he was transporting to campaign headquarters, TSA agents detained him, questioned him, and ultimately arrested him.

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When Johnny Can’t Read

by Ian Underwood

I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but still, I am surprised at all the hyperbolic reactions that are being published in response to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity for official acts.

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US Supreme Court

Has SCOTUS finally Gone Too Far?

by Ian Underwood

Apparently, Louisiana has a new law that requires a copy of the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in each public school classroom in the state.

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Make Welfare … Welfare again

by Ian Underwood

There is a story going around about how Kay, a single mom in Manchester, isn’t eligible for an Education Freebie Account (EFA) because she’s $90 over the income cutoff.

The conclusion reached by the author of the story is that we should have universal eligibility for EFAs.  But that’s backward.

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Hunter Biden: Someone Has to Say It

by Ian Underwood

As much fun as it is for Republicans to watch Hunter Biden being dragged through the mud in order to ‘prove’ that he lied on a federal form — as if that’s something that should take five days rather than five minutes — the simple fact is that as part of ‘the people’, his right to own a gun is protected by the 2nd and 14th Amendments to the federal constitution.  Period.

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Fossil Fuel Companies, the Ball Is in Your Court

by Ian Underwood

Apparently, Vermont is the first state to start forcing companies that sell fossil fuels to contribute to a climate clean-up fund.

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Medical Prostitution

by Ian Underwood

With some issues, you can’t just jump right into the pool.  You have to ease in a little at a time. For example, we couldn’t go straight to constitutional carry.  We had to ease into it, by first having shall-issue licensing. We couldn’t go straight to legal weed.  We had to ease into it first, … Read more

Night Cap: Should Eve Fight Adam?

by Ian Underwood

I just got done watching a video of one of our state senators (it seemed impolite to find out which one) using some dubious statements about the genders of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis to rationalize letting transgender girls participate in girls’ sports.

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Night Cap: What Squatters Can Teach Us about Juries

by Ian Underwood

I recently spent an evening watching videos and reading news articles about a problem I hadn’t known existed:  Squatters are moving into houses that are temporarily empty and then using the courts to delay their removal, using laws designed to protect renters from unfair treatment by landlords.

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What We Learn at EVERY Week’s House Session

by Ian Underwood

Looking at a recent installment in Judy Aron’s series of posts about ‘What we learned from this week’s House session’, it occurs to me that it would be nice if instead of trying to make sure the gun is pointed in ‘the right direction,’ Republicans would focus on unloading it, and even disassembling it.

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