Posted on 07/02/2007 4:04:58 AM PDT by Andy'smom
HOPKINTON, N.H. -- On a scorching summer afternoon, it is dark and cool inside Blaser's Fireside Tavern , and the regulars are making the most of their last days of bar-side nicotine freedom. In September, a law banning smoking in bars and restaurants will take effect, and customers at this neighborhood haunt will have to adjust.
As Bruce Henriksen sees it, this is just the latest bit of nonsense to emerge from the New Hampshire State House.
"It's like the government stepping in on a church and telling them what they can preach or what they can't preach," said the 59-year-old owner of a small home maintenance business, taking a drag of a cigarette.
Granite Staters have spent the last half-century reveling in their reputation as the keepers of Yankee libertarianism, the rock-ribbed neighbors to the north who loathe taxes, Democrats, big government, and -- well, anything else that reminds them of Massachusetts.
But now, Democrats are running both houses of the state Legislature, the corner office, and the Executive Council for the first time since the 19th century. This spring, New Hampshire became the fourth state to adopt same-sex civil unions. The House passed legislation, later killed in the Senate, that would have enacted a mandatory seat belt law in the last state to lack one. And, the other day, the Legislature adopted a budget that will increase spending by 17 percent over two years, along with a 28-cent cigarette tax increase to help pay for it.
Is New Hampshire on its way to becoming Massachusetts North?
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Looks like the Free State Project isn’t working.
They do what libs always do: they soil their bed and then move somewhere else and proceed to do the same. Anyone that thinks this sudden change in NH’s political landscape is due to natives is deluding themselves.
“New Hampshire became the fourth state to adopt same-sex civil unions.”
GOD watches every move.
LLS
As in Vermont, true “blame” should be placed on New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. Still, I believe former Massachusetts residents find it hard not to depend on Gov’t to solve their every need. It’s how they were raised, after all.
Someone is insisting that it takes a village to build new schools "for the children". And of course this jacks up the property taxes everywhere including the vacation homes owned by Massachusetts residents who have plenty of taxation without representation.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
No, they just want to escape to a lighter version.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
That is why red staters must go on legislative offense. Old timers in the Granite State spent the last few decades shaking their heads and ignoring the chaos to their south. Now that chaos has moved in and they have no weapons against it. They should have constitutionally banned same sex “marriage” when they had the chance. What have they done to protect their cherished tax code, or the right to own (much less carry) a firearm?
Those of us in red states must learn from what happened to Vermont and what is happening to New Hampshire and take preemptive action before our states look like Kennedy land.
Preemptive action? I say, better late than never. Pick your battles wisely or you'll lose the war.
By preemptive action, I mean things such as amending state constitutions to outlaw same-sex “marriage”, or requiring new taxes to be approved by a super majority of voters (which is what Florida did to protect against future attempts to institute a state income tax). Perhaps red states could consider passing amendments protectng the right to work without having to join a union.
Nope. They should have picked Nevada, which is closer to the model, anyway.
The definitive two words on shifty demographics:
PATRICK KENNEDY
The Massachusetts liberals who want all manner of government services paid for on someone else’s dime are doing what all other species of termites do upon eating the heartwood from a tree—they migrate to another tree. Now that Massachusetts’ limousine liberals have eaten the heartwood out of the Commonwealth, they are migrating to New Hampshire to escape the high taxes and social problems the policies they demanded have caused. When the eat the heartwood out of New Hampshire, they will be finished...but so will the people of New Hampshire.
You really think someone used to Wellesley living would pack up everything and move up to the "wilds" of Canterbury, NH? If so, why?
One of the problems in New Hampshire, and many other states, is the presence of a lot of “libertarian” type conservatives. If you had recommended amending the state constitution to limit marriage to one man and one woman, they’d have objected on the grounds that such an amendment was “big government”. It’s the same argument they give us against a federal marriage amendment.
Libertarians are nice people but they just don’t understand leftist behavior on any issue other than taxes and business regulations. When a leftist declares his support for legalizing sodomy, for example, libertarians jump on the bandwagon. They repeat the old canard about how conservatives support economic freedom but oppose social freedom, liberals support social freedom but oppose economic freedom, while they (libertarians) support freedom in both realms.
But what they fail to understand is that “freedoms” such as sodomy, abortion, and other such things, when enshrined as “rights”, lead to more social and economic restrictions on people in the long run. Look how quickly the Lawrence sodomy ruling has led to same-sex “marriage” or “civil unions” (accompanied by state benefits), forced teaching of homo behavior in the public schools, laws forcing landlords to rent to sodomites, laws forcing private businesses to hire homosexuals, laws demanding that private organizations change their moral beliefs to those of the state or else be banned from certain activities. And so on.
Proposals such as the federal marriage amendment seem like “big government” to libertarians but they’re actually safeguards against bigger government. But they just don’t grasp this. I know some libertarians who would applaud if the United Nations ordered a county in Iowa to repeal it’s law against nude dancing in nightclubs. They’d claim to be supporting “freedom”, forgetting that they just unleashed a freedom-destroying monster by agreeing to UN hegemony over us all.
Most of the Mass. liberals that I know think that anything outside of Rte 128 is the backwoods. Not enough “diversity” for them.
I lived in NH for a couple of years in the late ‘80s. I found the old folks to be so embedded in “depression” thinking that nothing was getting done. The roads were a mess. The schools were bad.
The younger “new people” were escaping the MA of Mike Dukakis and they were considered communists by the old folks.
In the end, something had to break.
Personally, I thought the whole “tax free” thing was BS. My property taxes on a 2 bedroom house in NH in 1989 were nearly $5,000. I got not trash service, and the fire department was part time. The schools sucked. I got fee’d to death and the public servants were simply mean and continually disgruntled.
Now, I pay less than that when I combine my state and real estate taxes. MA is not heaven by any stretch of the imagination. For vacations, NH is fine. Its pretty and the mountains are wonderful. To live in, its a mess.
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