This is the deadliest tax in New Hampshire, because it is extracted with no possible "due process" of a jury hearing, as a price of living peacefully in one's home. As such, it absolutely terminates the ideal of property ownership; it is a far worse example of extortion than the Mafia ever practised.
About 75% of it is used to pay for the government's school monopoly, in whose classes is taught, among other things, that a "property owning democracy" is not an oxymoron; that is, that the system we have is fine, dandy and just.
Towns do not prosecute non-payers of this tax; they simply grab your house if you don't pay. That gives them a deadly two-fanged grip over your money:
(a) they file a lien with the County records office, so inhibiting sale; and
(b) if you still don't pay, after an interval they "deed" the property to themselves, the Town; or in plain language, they steal it. Then they arrange a "sale" of your property (which they allege is "theirs") and finally send round their thugs to evict you on to the street.
In passing, we can now see that nobody in New Hampshire owns any real estate.
How can one lone Governor end this tyranny, by turning off this government- school money-spigot? You have to help me help you.
Let me show how YOU can do it. And that's not inconsistent with this campaign, whose slogan is "Take Back Your Life". And your children, and your money - including the money stolen from you with this property tax.
Here's How
Today, only about 30% of all NH households include children under 18. So, about 70% do NOT include anyone being "educated" (I use the term loosely) or about to be educated, in government schools.
Therefore, if everyone just voted their own self-interest today, Town Meetings could easily terminate the prop-tax right now, by a margin of more than 2 to 1. Once all the kids in a family are through school, to continue to pay property taxes (or at least the 75% of them that fund the schools) is money down the drain; such families gain no benefit whatever! And that assumes that everyone using the government schools think they're getting a benefit.
So why don't those people vote their self-interest?
There's only one reason: that people generally believe that they have some sort of civic or moral duty, to pay to "educate" other peoples' children, just as in the past, other people paid to "educate" theirs. I stole from Jane in the past, so now Jill should be able to steal from me. What a total perversion of logic, morality and common sense!
But the 70% majority allow themselves to be plundered by the 30% (who DO turn out to Town Meetings, and rather vociferously argue their special interest) by staying home and watching Bart Simpson or Dan Rather.
Those TV shows are costing those people an awful lot of money. On average each NH household pays some $3,300 a year in prop-tax, of which $2,500 goes down the School Sewer; so after the kids have flown the coop, there are (say) 30 more years to pay that with no benefit whatever, for a total of $75,000 each. Now we may begin to see why it might not be so bad an idea to "Kill Your TV"!
All that's needed to kill the school-prop-tax, then, is for enough people to wise up and vote their self-interest at Town Meetings. $75,000 is motive enough, surely? To turn up, form a caucus, or whatever, to float a motion to reduce the tax mill rate by at least three quarters, and vote on it?
Assuming I'm elected Governor, there will be 300,000 previous non-voters around to help form a nucleus for such a movement. It could well happen; and of course, I'd do everything I could from the Corner Office to help it on its way. Often, such action is called a "Bully Pulpit", but I'd not be bullying anyone, so I'll call mine a "Jimmy Pulpit."
The Chainbreaker
Suppose then that a Town had the school tax voted down. Its Manager might tell the Secretary of State that, regretfully, it was no longer possible to comply with the State's alleged requirement to furnish "free" "education" to all who ask for it, and what would he like him to do, please.
The State Government would be unable to fund it, because at that very moment (say, early in 1999) its revenue stream would be collapsing thanks to my work on State Taxes (see here under "MONEY".) So about all they could do would be to huff and to puff.
As far as I've been able to find, there isn't even any State Law under which anyone from the Town (Manager? Voters?!) could be prosecuted; RSA 189-1 lays a duty to provide tax-funded schooling only on the School Boards, not the Towns. So it seems the worst the State bureau-rats could do would be to with-hold some funding from the Towns for non-cooperation. Big deal! - and since the State would then be rapidly running short anyway, such a Town might not be alone.
And if I'm wrong and they do find a way to prosecute someone, and if they also got a jury to convict, a Governor's Pardon would await him.
Instead, maybe, they'd try to switch control of the prop-tax to Concord, like the Democrats have long dreamed of doing: a "State-wide tax". Ah, but now they would have their work cut out, for every one of those 400-plus Reps and Dems in the General Court will be shaking in their boots at the thought of how to face you 300,000 angry new voters, come their next election time. Any motion like that one will be Dead On Arrival.
Rather, the long tyranny of the property tax, or at least the 75% of it that funds the government's Youth Indoctrination Camps, will be history at last. Just because you took back your life, and your children, and your money.
To get started at once in your town, check these practical suggestions on how to form a battle plan.
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