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.
The White House

The Co-Presidents Amendment

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

empty chairs classroom

How School Funding Works (Part 4)

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

How school funding works (Part 2, EFAs)

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

classroom empty desks original Image by WOKANDAPIX from Pixabay

How School Funding Works (Part 1)

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

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

Biden agrees:  Government must be disarmed

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

gun rifle firearm

America has a gun problem

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 …

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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Reading education sunset Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

When Johnny Can’t Read

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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Money cash donaiton pexels-lukas-928184

Make Welfare … Welfare again

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

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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Medical Prostitution

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?

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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Scales of justice gavel law court

Night Cap: What Squatters Can Teach Us about Juries

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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Subsidies for Me, But Not for Thee

A recent post argued that NH taxpayers shouldn’t be ‘forced to fund irreversible surgeries for gender-confused kids.’

While I agree with that, I would note that Article 3 of the state constitution says that NH taxpayers can’t be forced to fund anything that doesn’t directly protect the rights of the people paying the taxes.

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road sign arrows right or left original Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash

Rights, or Permissions?

People who think that cannabis should not be legal in New Hampshire are fond of quoting the governor of Virginia’s statement justifying his veto of a legalization bill in his state.

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