Free Town

Calvin Coolidge, President from 1923 through 1928, was a famous skinflint from Vermont. He didn’t believe in today’s political-class sport of incessant taxing and spending to win elections (Grokster Steve MacDonald has recently highlighted this excellent president HERE). Coolidge was so adept at refusing the pigs at the political trough in his time that he insisted that “government employees were issued one pencil at a time, and the government purchased lighter, less expensive paper. The Weather Bureau stopped sending out postcard forecasts, since citizens now turned to their newspapers for that information; the post office made bags with new, cheaper material, and government-wide red tape was replaced with simple white string.” (This and much more is in a book review online at the City Journal about Amity Shlaes’ new biography entitled, simply, Coolidge.)

What does all this have to do with political piggery and push-back from small-government activists in the small town of Grafton, New Hampshire? I’ll tell you….

Read more