I'm William, from Memphis, TN. My wife and I are FSP members looking at moving to Keene or somewhere else in Cheshire Co. That largely depends on where I can find employment. I'm not in a huge hurry to move, but I have been browsing the job market for a while.
I'm already friends with some of you, including Ian, Dale and Mike, on Facebook. You can also find me on the FTL BBS as SmokesLikeaPoet. I've worked to stop the public funding of an NBA arena here (and failed), and I also volunteered with the Ron Paul campaign. My activism has taken a back seat to my role as bread winner and father, but I hope to be able to leverage the limited time I have by supporting a network of other activists, which I just simply don't have here. My goal is to leave this world a better, freer place for my children and I'm excited about being able to be a part of an evolution to a voluntary society.
Cool.
Hope to see you around some day soon.
Welcome!
Wait, are you following me
Welcome, LibertyTiger (no "welcome" to you, Keith and Stuff! Oh, OK< welcome to you, too :).
We've finally hit that point were we can't take much more of the status quo in Memphis. My wife and I feel we have a responsibility to our children to not raise them as slaves to the state, but as free people.
I was really impressed by the mass civil disobedience that happened amidst our uniformed overlords yesterday http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/apr/21/cannabis-lovers-hit-overton-02/ But smoking pot once a year isn't really going to do much to advance the cause of liberty.
We can either sit back and wait for things to get better or worse, or we can take action and quit being victims to the advances of power the state takes every day. Sam's incarceration has made it evident to me that we're not living in a free country. The only reason I'm not sitting in jail myself is because I have chosen to play their game, to live my life as the establishment sees fit. We're taxed to death here in Tennessee and most people don't ever see it that way. There is a 9.25% sales tax on just about everything. When I struggle to pay debts, student loans, cloth, feed, and house my family, I'm also being forced to pay for a multitude of programs that don't benefit me or my family. In fact, some of those programs I'm morally opposed to. Why should I continue to submit to these tyrannies at the expense of the family I'm responsible for?
"Sorry, son, I can't take you to the park today because I have to work four months out of the year to pay off our government rulers."
:D, Dale.
That's the same reason why I finally got fed up with WI and decided to get out of this state. I lose A THIRD of my paycheck up here in WI before I see a single cent of it (between federal and state taxes). For the 2007 tax season, I earned most of my state taxes back (~2,500 dollars). For the 2008 tax season? A paltry $500 return from the state of WI.
Our roads suck, they're hiring more men with guns, the parasites in the Capitol voted for ANOTHER pay increase, they're instituting state-wide smoking bans, and they're, in all likelihood, going to allow for random DUI checkpoints.
And what's the new pet project of Governor Doyle? A state-wide train system that'll siphon away dozens and dozens of millions of dollars from the state tax base.
I'm fed up! Get me out of this hellhole!
Congrats on making such a courageous decision, LibertyTiger. Here's to hoping that you're able to make your move sooner rather than later.
Back to work,
Mike
[quote author=LibertyTiger link=topic=832.msg7162#msg7162 date=1240337851]
We're taxed to death here in Tennessee and most people don't ever see it that way.
[/quote]
To be fair, TN has some of the lowest taxes in the nation. NH is likely going to greatly increase taxes this year (cigarette, lottery, prepared meals, food, gas and capital gains). Taxes will still be slightly lower compared to what the average family makes in NH, but not a lot lower. The poor actually pay less in TN than NH because they avoid most of the taxes in TN (the auto tax when you buy a decent car, much of the sales tax on food since they get government handouts, most of the property tax because how much property tax can you pay on a $400 per month apartment or $60,000 house, and likely the interest and dividend tax).
That said, I feel more free in NH than I did in TN. Of course, I did move from perhaps the most oppressive part of TN but I'm currently living in the most oppressive part of NH - Keene.
I realize things won't be much better in NH immediately, but I see hope for NH. Tennesseans are caught in this left-right paradigm and the xenophobia and saber-rattling I saw at the Memphis Tea Party really sickened me. At least in NH we can have friends that view the world the same way we do, logically and rationally.
[quote author=LibertyTiger link=topic=832.msg7170#msg7170 date=1240340849]
At least in NH we can have friends that view the world the same way we do, logically and rationally.
[/quote]
Good point. I know hundreds of people in NH who view the world similar to me (from small government conservatives to anarchists). In all of TN, I knew less than 50 people who thought like that. In all fairness though, I'm more active in both politics and change through other than political means in NH.