What happens if Governor John Lynch succeeds in getting his constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2008?  Lynch gets the credit for “finally” “solving” the “education funding crisis.”  And his coattails once again sweep the Democrats to large majorities in the House and Senate.  Indeed, they may even sweep U.S. Senator Sununu back into the private sector.

What happens if Lynch doesn’t get his amendment on the 2008 ballot?  Then things get interesting. 

By then, we should know how much an “adequate education” costs, because more than a year will have passed since the Lynch definition was passed, which is plenty of time for some consulting firm to say what the definition costs.  The methodologies that these consulting firms use to determine the cost of an adequate education are thoroughly capricious, which means one can make a case that the cost is practically anything one wants the cost to be.  The likelihood is that, at a minimum, the cost will be at least $1.6 billion because that appears to be the minimum that the Democrats will accept.

If Lynch’s amendment isn’t on the 2008 ballot, then candidate for reelection Lynch is going to have to explain how the entire $1.6 billion (or more) will be funded with state taxes.  My guess is that he won’t run for reelection, if his amendment doesn’t make it out of the Legislature, because he would find himself forced to choose between supporting an income or sales tax and repudiating his own “definition” of an “adequate education.”

Why then are House Republicans so conflicted about opposing the Lynch amendment?

Read more

Yesterday, the Concord Monitor ran an editorial pushing the Lynch amendment titled, “Long knives out too soon on Lynch plan.”  The night of the long knives commonly refers to Adolf Hitler’s bloody purge of potential rivals in 1934.  This allusion is over the top, even for the Monitor.  Take a deep breath, Monitor.  Opposing the Lynch amendment is not the moral equivalent of National Socialism. 

Read more

The Democrat spin coming out of Concord is that either you’re in favor of the Lynch amendment or you’re in favor of an income tax.  In the words of State Senator Martha Fuller Clark, “If the Legislature and the citizens defeat this amendment, they are saying the state should fund the full cost of education.” She went on to say, “That’s a lot of money. No other state except Hawaii pays for all of it. If the Republicans block this, they’re voting for a broad-based tax. That’s what they accuse the Democrats of supporting.” 

What poppycock!

It was not an act of God that set the cost of an adequate education so high that, as Clark brags, it can only be paid for with an income tax.  It was the Legislature’s choice.  They didn’t have to define an adequate education in a way that requires an income tax.  In fact, they didn’t have to define an adequate education at all.  Any legislator who voted for the Lynch definition of an adequate education voted to hold an income tax over the voters’ heads to force them to support the Lynch amendment.  And that’s called blackmail.    

As for the Lynch amendment, one would think that it was handed down to our Governor on Mount Sinai.  State Senator Peter Burling gushed that it would be a “constitutional affirmation” of Claremont.  And that it most certainly would be.  Among other things, this stinker of an amendment would put the Supreme Court in ultimate control of education policy for perpetuity, require the Legislature to regularly go through the sham exercise of defining an adequate education and determining its cost, and require that 50 percent of that cost be paid for with state taxes.  At best, it only delays an income tax.  No wonder then that Burling’s reaction to the amendment’s unveiling brought to mind Charlton Heston’s performance as Moses receiving the Ten Commandments.

Read more