Posted on 01/09/2004 12:49:58 PM PST by Gunslingr3
Killington, Vermont-AP -- Next time you visit the popular ski resort of Killington, Vermont, it could be in New Hampshire. Officials in Killington want the town to secede from Vermont and join the neighboring state because of a dispute over taxes. They say the town's restaurants, inns and other businesses rake in ten million dollars a year for the state -- but gets just a million dollars of state aid in return. Then there's the property tax imposed in 1997 to fund schools. The town says the state's method of assessing local properties is "arbitrary and capricious." The state Supreme Court agrees. Local leaders want to put the secession idea before voters in March. Killington has a population of just over a thousand people. It lies just 25 miles west of New Hampshire, which has no income tax or sales tax.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 34 | Kentucky | 200.00 |
5 |
40.00 |
178 |
1.12 |
10.00 |
1 |
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Consult your copy of the Declaration of Independence.
States formed the cities and towns and hold the only powers of disenfranchisement...
....but that said....Killington ought to make some kind of tax-withholding protest to get this dumb bunch of lawyers in the Vermont House/Senate to wake up.
They're ass-kissing the teachers union with this education funding crap!
We could take up a collection and send them Confederate bumper stickers for all their snowmobiles.
I missed the part about asking someone else's permission to have self government. Can you point it out?
"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
You either believe in the right of self government, or you don't. Which side do you fall on?
Jim, that's what secession is.
Perhaps you ought to try rereading the US Constitution sometime. Specifically you should read Article IV Section 3.
Imagine the mayhem that would occur if the president of they US could change the boundaries of states (for the his party's politial benefit). Tony Blair did excactly that when Scottish parliment was established, to allow Scotland more local autonomy but England was not granted a similar parliment. The boundaries were manipulated to benefit the Labour Party. Scottish voters get to dictate policy in England while English voters don't have a say in Scotland.
Only two states have been admitted to the US by carving up existing states. Maine was split off from Massachussets at the same time as Missouri was added as a state as part of the Missouri Compromise. That way the number of slave states and free states would be equal in number and have equal voting in the Senate. The other time was when West Virginia was split off from Virginia during the Civil War. The 55 western counties of Virginia refused to secede from the union when the rest of the state seceded and joined the Confederate States of America.
Article IV.Section 3
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
Who is trying to make a new State? Who is trying to make a State by joining two States? There will still be a Vermont, there will still be a New Hampshire, there won't be any new States, or fewer States. The people of Killington simply seek to "dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another" and "institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." What's wrong with that?
State government are unitary governments. All subunits like counties and towns are created by the legislature not the other way around.
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