Vermont Town Wants to Secede to New Hampshire

AP via FoxNews ^ | January 9, 2004 | Associated Press

[Conservative Me]

KILLINGTON, Vt.

[cajungirl]

I don't think this will fly. The South already tried seceding from the union and they wouldn't let them.

[Support Free Republic]

Rank	Location	Receipts	Donors/Avg		Freepers/Avg		Monthlies
19	Massachusetts	470.00	15	31.33	261	1.80	135.00	9

Thanks for donating to Free Republic!

Move your locale up the leaderboard!

[Conservative Me]

They don't want to secede from the Union. They want to become a part of NH. I would welcome them because I experienced the oppressiveness of living in VT. NH was a welcome change.

BTW, I don't see it happening either, but I thought it was interesting.

[blanknoone]

"I love having a Vermont address. I'm proud of it. It's a cool place to live," said resident Steven Kelly.

Gee, I wonder who the 'journalist' supports in the democrat (they're all democrats) nomination process?

[corlorde]

New Hampshire, just 25 miles east, has no income tax or sales tax.

No, we just have high property taxes.

[Dr Warmoose]

"I love having a Vermont address. I'm proud of it. It's a cool place to live," said resident Steven Kelly.

Is the town going to radically change if they were to be part of New Hampshire? Are any of the surrounding towns going to move away? What environmental change is supposed to occur if this were to take place?

Clearly, the guy is an out of work homo-sexual who wants to brag to his bathhouse friends in San Francisco that he can get married to another guy.

I wonder what the massive increase in property-taxes will do to balance out the property/sales taxes.

[Nubbytwanger]

Another example of Yankee self-reliance. Vermont believes that out-of-staters should bear the burden for the services they vote for themselves. Check the difference between the price of a ski vacation at Killington and one at Sugarloaf. Better skiing at the 'loaf and cost is one third less.

[saluki_in_ohio]

If that town is able to successfully do this, it would set a precedent.

I for one, would like to 'cast off' Chicago and its liberal suburbs from the rest of Illinois so they would stop afflicting the rest of the state....

[blanknoone]

I wonder what the massive increase in property-taxes will do to balance out the property/sales taxes.

Well, for one thing, the money would stay local. I think one of the towns big issues is not the level of taxation, so much that it is not being sent back or spent there.

$10 million state taxes, $1 million sent back. Its a raw deal. If nothing else, the municipality to levy the same sales tax as the state they left, and be $9 million dollars a year better off. And that is about $9,000 per resident (not house) per year. At that rate, I doubt they would have any property tax at all.

[BillyBonebrake]

Remember when you book your next Vermont ski vacation that you'll be paying 9% sales tax while you are there. And last I checked a weekend lift ticket at Stratton is $75. Mt. Sunapee, Sugarloaf, Cannon, Loon, Whiteface...all nice places. Screw Vermont.

[Recovering_Democrat]

Not a surprise. Many citizens are wanting to bail out of the most liberal, socialist areas of the nation and get back to a more true Constitutional America...even if they don't phrase it in those terms, that is what they're wanting.

New Hampshire was a beacon of intelligence in the election of 2000: the only Northeastern state to go Republican. Little wonder those from the Jeffords/Leahy/Dean state of Vermont want to flee.

[Vermont Lt]

Duplicate thread from yesterday...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1054854/posts?page=8#8

[bert]

'cast off'

or "purge"

As in The USA should "purge" Massachuttes

[TexasTransplant]

Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz said Killington has little chance of secession "absent an armed insurrection type of thing. ... A town is a construction of the state and exists at the pleasure of the Legislature."

The Founding Fathers had a way of dealing with Secretary of State Markowitz, it was called the Second Amendment, she has it backwards, she serves at the pleasure of the citizens (if she wants subjects she needs to move back across the pond)

[B4Ranch]

Wendover, Utah wants to become part of Wendover, Nevada. Same reason.....money.

[Wing Chun]

The issue of whether or not a state has a constitutional right to secede has never been peacefully answered.

An argument can be made to say that it is morally wrong to force a people who unanimously prefer to be independent to be part of a Federalism that they believe no longer works for their good.

Hence, the breakup of Yugoslavia, USSR, Czechoslovakia, and perhaps, even Quebec and Canada.

Hence, I sympathize with the desire of the Taiwanese ( from China), East Timorese ( from Indonesia) and Tibetans (again from China) to be free.

The worldwide trend seems to be SMALLER constituencies as people come to realize the unwieldiness of having a vast , centralized bureaucracy telling others what to do ( for me, it makes no sense to send my tax dollars to DC for them to re-distribute back to me for of all things -- educating people in my state ! Why can't we keep the money in our states and let us decide how we educate our kids ?).

Here is a theoretical question to ask -- Had Lincoln not fought the bloody war against the Confederates, would slavery have slowly died out seeing that only 1 in 6 of the Southerners owned slaves and it was slowly becoming unpopular in the south anyway ? It seems so to me.

[RightWhale]

The winters will be milder. Don't know if that will impact the skiing industry.

[TexasTransplant]

Here is a theoretical question to ask -- Had Lincoln not fought the bloody war against the Confederates, would slavery have slowly died out seeing that only 1 in 6 of the Southerners owned slaves and it was slowly becoming unpopular in the south anyway ? It seems so to me.

 

Another question -- Since only 1 in 6 Southerners owned slaves and it was becoming unpopular anyway would this most bloody of U.S. wars have even been fought if the Constitution addressed the right to secede? 

I need to research to see if anyone even tried to amend it (I am sorry,  I am a product of Government Schools but it is an interesting question anyway)