Couldn't stand another of those Vermont winters!

In the 1930s, when I was a babe, the population of the United States was 130 million and there was a clever joke at the expense of the Vermont farmer who was told that the state line had shifted, so that he now lived in New Hampshire. "Thank goodness," he said. "I couldn't have stood another of those Vermont winters!"

Some things change, some don't. The population of the U.S. is now 300 million, but progressive Vermonters are still fleeing across the line to their low-tax, redneck neighbor. Between 2000 and 2010, New Hampshire grew at more than double the rate of Vermont--indeed, double the rate of the rest of the New England states.

The catch, of course, is that most of the newcomers are precisely the same Good People who drove up the taxes in Vermont, Maine, and especially Massachusetts. And now that they are here, they're voting for the same Wouldn't It Be Nice If... projects that got their home states into trouble. Blue skies! - Dan Ford