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I call them refugees .... or in my previous line of work - "Internally Displaced Persons," IDP.
Down South we know it well - we saw it before anyone else did. Legions of nasally sounding Yankees from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and other dirty and threadbare places. They came for the winter and stayed from Miami to Atlanta, Raleigh, Northern Virginia in numbers not seen since the Great Unpleasantness.
People would joke about Snow Birds and in south Florida a snark or two about Miami-Dade being "the Lord's waiting room" - but that wasn't the story, not even close.
They were coming here to escape high taxes, anti-family policies, crime, unions, and a general hostility to small business up North. Lots of great professionals came down here simply because they saw it as the best place to raise their family and run their business. One thing we noticed though was that not all "got it" for the reason they came here to begin with. They soiled their nest and then came down here and started voting in ways that soiled the new one.
The West is seeing their own version of it as well in the last couple of decades; IDP from the People's Republic of California and its client states to the North. Look at voting patterns from Colorado through some parts of Arizona, Idaho, New Mexico, and islands in Texas. Many get it - but some don't. I think though that on balance at least 51% of the refugees are trying to avoid repeating their home-state's mistakes. The natives sure don't want to become "that place" - and there is where the turn is coming. There is a reason for it, one well covered by Merrill Mathews in Forbes,
If you do not currently live in a red state, there’s a good chance you will be in the near future. Either you will flee to a red state or a red state will come to you—because voters fed up with blue-state fiscal irresponsibility will elect candidates who promise to pass red-state policies.
...
red or red-leaning states dominate the top positions while blue states have the dubious distinction of dragging in last. In the economic outlook section, for example, the top 20 states are bright red or lean red, while eight out of the bottom 10 are very blue: New York, Vermont, California, Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon and Rhode Island.
Most of the “poor states” states, as ALEC calls them, have the highest personal income tax rates and the largest unfunded state pension liabilities. But instead of taking the red-state approach by lowering taxes and/or cutting spending, the blue states tend to want to raise taxes even higher, just like their White House mentor.
The result of their overpromising and overspending, and their knee-jerk response to solving their fiscal problems by raising taxes, is that people are increasingly fleeing the blue states. As commentator Michael Medved points out: “Between 2009 and 2010 the five biggest losers in terms of ‘residents lost to other states’ were all prominent redoubts of progressivism: California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the five biggest winners in the relocation sweepstakes are all commonly identified as red states in which Republicans generally dominate local politics: Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia.”
53 comments:
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To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast.Since I grew up in N.J. I know you'll call me a Yankee, but like E.B. White says, to me a Yankee is someone from New England. In any case, I plan to never live south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, mostly thanks to the weather. After that I can eliminate most other Eastern states because of their taxes or gun laws. Which is why when it comes time to hang up the uniforms, our family will be heading to the PacNorWest or the Mountain Time Zone.So you've got a point.
"<span>To foreigners, a Yankee is an American.To Americans, a Yankee is a Northerner.To Northerners, a Yankee is an Easterner.To Easterners, a Yankee is a New Englander.To New Englanders, a Yankee is a Vermonter.And in Vermont, a Yankee is somebody who eats pie for breakfast." </span>
<span>To New Englanders, a Yankee is a PinStriped player or fan from a roughly 125 mile radius of NYC. They tend to be full of themselves, arrogant, and (whining) winning is an entitlement.Oh, wrong topic.</span>
As someone from Mass (amongst several other places) currently in RI, I already tend to vote red state for what good it does. More or less, this is my home and I hope that a Red State comes to us but by then it may be too late. My other options are coastal Carolinas or maybe Texas...
Maybe we can get an area of Mass Rhody to secede and become part of Texas. We'll call it Really East Texas. Be just like one more county to them...
On the whole, interesting topic but thanks for urinating in my Cheerios. I had planned to have a good & happy day today.
IDPs...lol.
I have a friend in Illinois who likes to remind me over and over that Illinois is a RED state, except for Chi-town, which unfairly and disproportionately screws up the rest of the state for everyone else.
As for the red state I'm in, I'm really really tired of blue state people saying it's near to last in education. Money spent doesnt' equal money well spent or quality. And my children all received top-notch educations here. And I say that as a lifelong product of the Catholic school system myself.
To those of us from parts of PA a "Yankee" is from Connecticut. We fought a war against them.
From a real-estate agent in North Carolina: "CARY(,N.C.) isn't named after a person. It stands for Containment Area for Relocating Yankees" :)
"Don't Californicate [insert your state here]!"
DB,
That is the same way here in Washington State. Everyone outside of King County (whom seem to run elections in similar manners to Chi-town) and specifically Seattle is red when it comes to thier politics and leanings. Yet, Seattle is the largest voting block and they are the tie breakers when it comes to important things like tax plans, governors, and other things like that. If you look at a number of other places that are colored blue on the map provided with this post, I would bet you would find the same thing. Get out into the counties and the farm folk, for the most part they are Conservative or at least classical liberal democrat (ie Scoop Jackson, Carl Vinson types) not progressive Democrat. While the biggest cities in the state are die hard progressive Democrat or "thinking of the children..." types who vote in these short sighted measures not understanding the long term goals.
Likex100.... :)
I'd never heard that definition of Yankee before, and after careful analysis, here is my conclusion: Vermont is mighty cold and awfully full of Democrats, but if they really get to eat pie for breakfast, I might have to consider relocating.
That map makes my heart go pitterpat. I think I'll just sit here with my coffee cup in my hand for a while and gaze at it dreamily.
Kristen, did you ask them what kind of pie it is that they eat for breakfast? 8-)
GOH, latest thing in Los Angeles is that because approximately 100% of tax revenues go to fund current and former public employee union members, the City Council is thinking of having people maintain the public sidewalks in front of their houses. Cause the city is never going to get around to doing it. And they're tripling the already high rates and fees within the city, because the alternative would be telling the unions that the gravy train is over, and they can't consider doing that. Thank God we don't live in the city limits.
Wow. You Southern/Western-er's really are bitter folk.
Whilst serving our Navy for 24 years I had the distinct displeasure of living in the Red State utopias: Texas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida - you can keep them. Vermont, where I live now, is full of hard working, unpretentious, neighborly people. We have our share of layabouts and twits, yes. But a much lower percentage than in the aforementioned Red states I've lived in.
And, lay off the Confederate-wonderfullness talk. The stars and bars are right up there with the rising sun and the swastika - symbols of enemies of our nation, IMnHO.
I'll duck and cover now...
I like most kinds. My maternal grandmother grew up on a farm in upstate New York and she makes the best pie in the world. Wish I could make my pie crust as delicious as hers.
<span>Vermont, where I live now, is full of hard working, unpretentious, neighborly people.</span>
Interesting...
You neglect to mention you live IN THE LEAST RACIALLY DIVERSE STATE IN THE US.
So Norsk. You forgot to add "xenophobic" and "inehrently racist" to describe your Utopia.
And...In your case... Probably a bit inbred.
that was me
CDR Norsk,
Sorry to disagree with you. I also live in Vermont. While there are unquestionably many hard-working, unpretentious, and neighborly people here, I find there are others who are not so.
There are a large number who are quite pretentious, arrogant, self-righteous intellectual dilletantes who feel very free to decide what all of my choices should be, and how I should live just about every aspect of my life. They have been on board with the wholesale destruction of Vermont's economy, leaving us with a tax base almost solely on the shoulders of residents and not businesses, and state budget issues that are proportionally at least as bad as those of California.
My time in State House meetings on hospital budget issues reinforces all the worst of the above, as many of our elected legislators are socialist-communists who espouse openly the belief that businesses should not aim to make money, but simply to employ people and improve our world. The bumper stickers decrying US service men and women as no better than terrorists, and championing those causes that would destroy our freedoms, provide some insight into these "unpretentious" people of which you speak.
You compare the Stars and Bars to the Swastika. Your prerogative. I disagree, but whatever. Just where do you put Che Guevara, and Castro, and the Hammer and Sickle that adorn so many t-shirts of the young and old hippies on Church Street and in other little hamlets left over from the Summer of Love?
Oh, and Sid, we are among the most racially diverse if you consider the "one drop rule" as it pertains to Native Americans. If you don't, Vermonters are overwhelmingly French Canadian.
A Gyrene!?!
In Vermont??
Wow.
Ain't that bit like the camel's nose under the tent? 8-)
Also, never knew just how little population is. At ~609,000, its less than a quarter the size of the population of my county!
Up here in Minny-sootah, there's a pretty droll radio commnetator that has a rule that says, in effect, the closer you get to a region's tallest buildings (e.g. Minneapolis-St. Paul) the weirder/crazier/more lefty people become. We, too, are stuck with "two states," with a corridor running up I-35 to the old (TINS) Marxist stronghold of the Iron Range, down thru Duluth to the Cities, then heading SE to Rochester. The rest of the state? Solid Red. Which is how we unseated a "it's MY seat, peasants" Congressman-for-life and replaced him with a fiscal conservative Republican. Demographics hurt, and when they redrew the District the last time to make it "safe," they forgot old lefties die off like everyone else. In the meantime, people fled the Twin Cities and headed into the southern, unpopulated portion of his District. Oops. :-D
I'm not big on heat and humidity, nor cockroaches the size of alight tank, so I'll stay up here on the shores of Gittchee Gummi, thank you.
<span> "its less than a quarter the size of the population of my county!"</span>
A small group of like minded white _I GOT MINE_ pseudo intellectuals.
So now wonder Norsk considers it all kumbayah....
Not necessarily so - Jefferson County, and Clallam county (the northern-most two counties that make up most of the Olympic Peninsula) are decidedly Democrat. In Jefferson County's case, Port Townsend is full of ex-Californians who have swung the city's voting patterns to the left. There are, outside PT, a lot of classic liberal democrats as well.
<span>I still feel guilty. All of our friends registered to vote in Santa Rosa County, FL specifically for their local Wet / Dry election. It's sad that "outsiders" legalized liquor sales in their county. They weren't happy. Still, it was insanely satisfying.
But, as for red state / blue state, some of us "Yankee carpetbaggers" are actually true Southerners at heart.</span>
I put the Che and Casto pogues in the enemy column also. But, I don't consider Church Street to be particulary representative of Vermont as a whole.
And, I agree we have a lot of folks in the State House and elsewhere who don't think things through especially well. But not as many as in Texas or Florida, proportionally.
I have seen bumper stickers and attitudes about service members I don't like. But , I've also seen that we in Vermont have borne more than our share of the several wars in progress, since so many serve in the services and the Guard.
Diversity-wise, yeah, we are pretty white. But we also were one of the first states to banish slavery. And we haven't been going nutty about immigrants. We also have quite a few refugees here.
And, I did not have pie for breakfast. Apple crisp today!
CDR Norsk,
If you don't think Church Street and the protesters in Brattleboro and Montpelier reflect Vermonters as a whole, you are correct. But they do represent those who consider themselves the intellectual elite. Otherwise, it becomes exceedingly difficult to explain the voting records. And those people, the intellectual dilletantes and political idealogues, are some of the people who express those attitudes about service members, and the Armed Forces in general, that you don't like.
They just happen NOT to be the ones that serve. Funny, that.
<span>Back in The Day...
When you drove east on HWY 98 and civilization basically stopped at the turn off to P Beach until you got to the western fringes of Mary Esther (and had to watch out for black bears on the road at night)...
There used to be a little bar with a white fence around it on the south side of the road, just before you got to the wide spot on the road that constituted Midway, which sold alcohol.
Its long closed (and by now likely just another strip mall property), but I never knew how they got away with it.
And Navarre Beach never was dry.</span>
This is for all of the 'if it weren't for [big city], our state would be OK' comments.
Real Old Salt,
That is true now, but years ago it wasn't. Having been around the WA scene since they filmed Richard Gere, Debra Winger, and Lous Gossett Jr up at Fort Worden and having family living up in Sequim. I have watched as land that John Wayne himself thought was "God's Country" go from a nice counter point to the radical of Seattle and then watch as the Californians have discovered the region like PT or Port Gamble and turned them all from nice little logging, fishing or industrial towns with good hard working Scandahoovians who wanted to recreate the Yankee towns of the Mid-Atlantic and Cape Cod region; see those towns die as the Californians or other carpetbaggers move up because land was cheap and silicon jobs were booming over in Seattle turn these litttle paradises over into $$$$ towns that have closed the large tax base industrials because they are un-eco-friendly and destroy someone's idea of paradise. The carpetbaggers then wonder why some of the businesses are closing and why stores like Wal-mart is moving in or even why some essential services are being shuttered because the tax base isn't there to support the needs.
Are you intending this map to DISPROVE the concept?
We got no gun laws. And no crime. No summer, either, but that is beside the point.
Born in a "blue" state where the small towns had a statue of a union soldier in the town square and thought well of the party of Lincoln. Nobody, city or country, had much use for the east of the appalachians crowd, and most wished the confederate by inheritance bunch would move on to practical matters, instead of nursing great grandpaw's grudge.
The Navy provided perspective and a lot of moving boxes, along with diverse and interesting assignments and the odd raw deal. It sent me to a state college of cows and mines where cowboys and indians and spanish land grants were the stuff of revered memory, the state bulls wore khaki and a stetson,. rather than blue or gray, and the confederacy never came up. Then the Northeast , Hawaii, and the land of fruits and nuts. After that to near one of Sherman's old marching and burning routes, the Peninsular City where two rivers join to form the Atlantic. Then north to a state which the above mentioned union soldiers burned several counties to the ground.
Newcomers everywhere tended to love all the things that made each place itself, and then try to turn it into the place they left.
Where I am now...you would hate it. Lots of things to complain about and deplore, for blues or reds, terrible problems. Don't come, except as a tourist - then take only pictures and leave only money behind.
Stay away, don't retire here. Move your business here? A wise choice, boundless opportunity! Just no icky heavy industry, please. And no New Yorkers, they are all crazy (except our kids' inlaws, they're really nice - if a bit on the liberal side).
My conclusion? This may well be a federal republic full of fractious people.
...and another thing: My town entered into the middle of the last decade staring at inevitable bankruptcy over a lavish retiree health care package that had been rolled over and over with each of the various city worker unions by preceeding mayors for decades. I actually paid attention to all this and learned a lot. "Back in the day," when governmental workers made only about 60% or so of what workers in private industry were making (we were a huge union town) the only way to attract and keep workers was the retirement packages that were offered. The ultimate back-breaker was comprehensive medical/dental care, full coverage, no deductables, for workers and their families, for the life of any surviving spouse. While the industrial heart of the town withered and died, the city unions just kept on rolling and aided and abetted by mayors who just wanted to keep things nice and steady, no one asked a whole lot by way of concessions. Finally, a few years back, the handwriting was on the wall. The bottom line was this: Either everyone gave up this free gravy train and helped out, or the city goes under and no one gets anything.
There was a lot of kicking and screaming, but in the end everyone ackowledged that the way things were couldn't continue. The old health care plan went away and new contracts don't have the "free stuff for life" clauses in them anymore. Local irony is that this was pushed through by a mayor most of us had written off as an Obama lefty, but has actually woken up, smelled the coffee and realized that things needed to change or he'd be known as the guy who led the city to the bankruptcy court. Even liberals get things right now and then. ;)
No, refine it.
And to harpooner and ASW community Yankee is a Red boomer class :P
federalism ftw. vote with your feet if you can sell the house.
Apple Pie.
Though i drive a Ford.
Most Americans are moderates. That is nothing new. Even in Vermont, where the non-Montpelier population runs from center-left to center. And the occasional center-right. But those cities, along with Brattleboro, are very-far left. Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, and he is a Socialist.
What your map really is, is an advertisement for the Electoral College, which is under assault from the Left for the last decade. If they win, then NY, LA, Chicago, Boston, and a handful of other large cities will elect every national candidate. Just for reference, what is the demographic of those places again?
I'm with you on the Electoral College.
I'd also like to see the 17th Amendment repealed, and the House expanded so that no Congressman represents more people than there is in the least populous state. At least double (or even triple) the amount of Reps to reduce their individual power.
I think the map should be shown in better context. In that one should have a movie of the trend in the last 40 years and you will be better amazed as the shift and why more and more of the counties are "Purple", dollars to donuts would show you a progression of folks who realized after voting in higher and higher taxes or more restrictive legislation they moved out beyond the city limits to do things. Well they still want to have access to shopping, mass transit, city services and also protect the enviroment. So in turn they vote to convert an unincorporated community into a town, still not enough for them so the town then becomes a city with more and more taxes and more restrictive legislation (all of which felt good at the time) and said people move out into the county or just beyond the city limits. Repeat and rinise.
We're Balkanizing. The mass immigrations and lack of distinct assimilation into an American way of life is helping the polarization we are seeing in the current state of politics.
A matter of time...
They have contaminated Whatcom and Skagit counties as well. Oregon was contaminated about 1966 after the Watts Riots in 1965. Tom McCall had the right idea, "Welcome to Oregon. Enjoy your visit." Those fleeing the excesses of government and crime (sometimes one-in-the-same) brought their nasty habits and thoughts with them. They need only to look in the mirror to see the real problem.
"<span>And, I did not have pie for breakfast. Apple crisp today!"</span>
Sounds like a personal problem to me. =-O
This isn't minor or even marginal disagreements between different parties and groups of people. This is wholesale differences dividing us in ways that haven't happened in years. It is getting scary. I wonder how fractured we have been over time where it has been fixed but I do not have great HOPE that this will CHANGE any time soon.
<span>And, I did not have pie for breakfast. Apple crisp today!</span>
Had a good little bowl of grits with my eggs...
TUS,
Your right about Skagit and Whatcom as well. My folks now live in Whatcom and for the last decade at least there has been a growing movement in Whatcom and to an extent that has extended down the I-5 corridor to split these large counties up so the City folk can have thier way and the country folk can have thier way. The other problem with both Whatcom and Skagit to some is they are getting people coming down North out of that supposed paradise of Canada. Some of the Canadains are finding that Whatcom, Skagit and to an extent even San Juan or Island counties are great places to live with less taxes, less stupid regulations, less crime (and where there is crime it is enforced not debated in committee) and in general a better place to live then Vancouver or Abbostford or some of the other big cities in BC. Yet, just like some of the Harvard Liberals or UC Berkley types that have moved up to WA state pushing thier own brand of "For the good of...." elections, they are turning these paradises away from the government into what they just left.
URR, you know we all think you're awsome BUT. I once worked at 84 lumber, We were talking one day and somehow started mentioning states. Well we found out our dick of a boss (havent met a boss from up north anyone could stand for some reason) was from Vermont. "Vermont! Wtf do they have in Vermont!?" We all thought about it...decided it was tree's and white people.....a few years later i found out.........it was tree's and white people........
Sorry man its true....at atleast when you say "I'm from Tennessee." the idiot in the corner doesnt go "thats where Al Gore is from right?"....to our eternal dismay......sigh.
Is the commentator on WCCO 830, Friend to the Great Northwest?
Au contraire, James. You have a right to concealed carry state, and no crime. Vermont is also the home of Calvin Coolidge, whom, when presented with a bill to buy half a million dollars of seed and fertilizer for Texas farmers, refused to sign it. His reasoning?
"I do not believe it the place of the Federal Government to spend a single dollar of someone's tax money to the exclusive benefit of someone else."
O, how we could use Mister Coolidge.
Strange, isn't it - 'least diverse' and 'lowest crime' all in one package. Obviously the latter can't have anything to do with the former.
Guest, I think it has more to do with small-town feel and right to carry, because if one accounts for Native American descent (above 1/8th), then somewhere in the neighborhood of 33% of Vermonters are "ethnically diverse".
There were little towns in South Carolina that reminded me of here. They weren't diverse, either, being almost without a white resident. But, despite some pretty low education levels, were without crime. Same feel, could walk down the street with ten dollar bills hanging out of one's pockets, and nobody would bother. And they were more polite than some of the Vermonters.
Snort. I like your math on the American Indian percentages. I was once on the receiving end of a Norwegian national's rant. It had something to do where he complained about the Israeli lobby in the USA and I responded that we had one because we didn't kill our Jews (yes, alcohol was involved) - he then took a side-angle about the slaughter of the "Native Americans" (AKA Siberian Americans...). "Where are they in your Amerikkka?" he flecked - I responded, "Well, when I'm not deployed I have breakfast for them every day." I then went on to inform him of the very American habit of marrying and having children with whoever you wind up with. Silly purebreds. Lack of hybrid vigor is so sad ......
yep, especially when we have nothing in common with each other any longer except Football...
Yes and we here are always trying to batten down the gun grabbers and idiots in the cities. We have crime but much of that is from those same big cities and the meth labs which we pretty much have declaired war on...no wait we did actucally declair war on them.
We'll never be crime free.
That said i watched a show on vermont once looked like a pretty place.
Of coure anything is better than Flat. Flat land is just weird.
Well, a disarmed populace is much more pliable and easy to control. They tend to not offer much resistance when it is time to force them into things.
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