They are killing Jeffersonian Principals Bill - HCR0006!!!?!!

[D Stewart]

The hypotheticals which are running here about the effect of our no longer being within the union are, IMO, somewhat overblown.  Goodness knows, I hope that nullification of the union, secession, what have you, does not happen any time soon.  But if it were to, I think you would have to contemplate a scenario in which several states, not just NH, are threatening to do this or have done this.

The feds would be weak and might well not want to upset all of the individuals in those states, even if they wanted to wreak revenge and havoc on the state governments, why would they seek to reduce the number of citizens?

Our neighbors would want to continue to have their businesses function, and receive their income taxes.  Why would they shoot themselves in the foot by restricting trade, freedom of movement, employment, whatever?

It means if you travel or work outside NH you'll be arrested as an illegal alien.

This is nonsense.  Most people in NH are also US citizens, and it would be incredibly complicated for the US to determine which of the people in NH, if any, have renounced their citizenship.  Nullification of the compact between the states does not cause one's US passport to burst into flames.  And even if there were controls on non-citizens, that would really only be tantamount to moving the existing border patrol out of NH and into the surrounding states.  They already may operate within impugnity near our Canadian border and near the coast... most of the state, in fact.  I will grant you, that it might be jolly convenient to have remembered to actually acquire a passport before this would have happened, since I do realize some folks don't routinely possess one.

It also means that things like food, gasoline, etc can be shut off from NH.

Sure.  So could communications (phone/internet/etc.), electricity, and so on and so forth.  There could be tariffs, currency controls, all kinds of restrictions.  They could treat us as Cuba.  The question is, are any of these things likely?

I submit that they are not.

In some ways, cutting these things off would be more disruptive to them than to us.  Food, fuel, financial assets and communications would definitely be issues.

If the tariffs were small enough that they were simply designed to counterbalance their losses, then we could live with it as and until we had grown our economy, which we would be likely to do given our lower debt burden and lower tax structure.  If the controls and tariffs were designed to prevent all flows of funds out of the US, then either it would be specifically for flows into NH or would be general.  If general, the rest of the states and the rest of the world would be up in arms about it.  If specifically NH, it might be more painful, and some of our residents might initially leave the state in search of a better economic environment elsewhere in the US, but I bet that although we might not like the initial effects, we would survive, even if we needed to make unwelcome allegiances and treaties with foreign nations and take loans from international bodies.  It's worth noting, too, that the US might be so keen on ensuring that we didn't make certain concessions to certain foreign nations that they wouldn't want to force us to such a position.

Even if they had a justification for doing so, I can't believe that they would seriously try and lock down our borders against all trade.  They are way too porous.  Even if they did, smuggling would still be successful, it would effectively turn it into a big tariff, except one that was paid not to the US treasury, but to the highly lucrative smuggling operations which would bring yet more employment to New Hampshire.

Communications... our present connectivity is largely reliant on infrastructure and entities elsewhere in the US.  I submit that attempting to cut off or restrict communications would result in hugely unwelcome international sanction, and alternative infrastructure could be built within a year or two.

And so on and so forth.  It's an interesting fantasy to contemplate that the US would try to create Darfur out of New Hampshire simply for our insistence on constitutional principles, but I just don't buy it.  As screwed up as it is, the federal government has at least two attributes which would moderate its response here -- first, there are a reasonable number of moral and freedom-loving folks hidden in its midst, and secondly, and far more importantly, its self-interest would not be served by seeking to prove how stubborn the New Hampshire population could be, especially once those less stubborn have already fled the state.

It seems far more likely to contemplate that the US, in reaction to such a nullification, would seek to carry on with business more or less as usual, still attempting to collect its taxes (since taxes are due on income, even if earned outside of the US), but dropping the funding it provides to NH and would chip away at our privileges here and there, with the intent being to convince us to "voluntarily" rejoin the union, perhaps with some concessions, perhaps not.  As a strategy, it has way more chance of "working" (i.e. avoiding its own dissolution and possible formation of a new union).  Or, in the alternate, enough states will rebel and refuse to allow federal enforcement actions on their soil that the union fails by going bankrupt, and we get to start over with a clean balance sheet.  In the event that the latter should happen, I would sooner see us out of the union, and having reclaimed the "federal" land within NH unto ourselves, than see it paid over to the foreign creditors of the US.

But again, hopefully this is all absurd hypothesis and conjecture.

[John Edward Mercier]

The problem is that even in your conjecture... things aren't that great.
And I believe the 'problems' tend to appear long before the 'solutions'... change is just that way.

But does the NH Legislature wish to end the 'veil of collusion'... the mandatory seatbelt bill makes me think NO.
I can't think of a single State on the list that would willfully give up federal government money flowing into their State... or federal contracts to their manufacturers/producers.

Since the federal government is really nothing more than ambassadors from the fifty States (equal in the US Senate)... its doubtful that the federal government has done anything without the collusion of a majority of the fifty States.