This Friday, Vermont’s cigarette tax goes up by 38 cents to $2.62 a pack, a move that backers hope will bring in an additional $4 million a year in revenue.

But there might be some bad news in store for residents of the Green Mountain State hoping the hike would help boost state coffers.  Just as Vermont’s tax is set to go up, its neighbor, Live-Free-Or-Die New Hampshire is cutting its cigarette tax by 10 cents a pack.

The dual moves could prove a boon for New Hampshire businesses, which already do a steady trade in selling goods taxed heavily by other states to residents of neighboring states who drive across the border to stock up.  Now, Vermonters may have an added reason to do so, and New Hampshire grocery and convenience stores hope to clean up.

Via NH Journal:

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New Hampshire may become the 23rd Right To Work state. Today the Senate passed the Right To Work bill (16-8) that will soon head to Governor John Lynch for his signature. Lynch has publicly promised his Big Labor benefactors that he will ignore the overwhelming support for the Right To Work Bill that passed both houses with a veto-proof margin.

If you thought intimidation in Wisconsin was bad, start watching New Hampshire! Big Labor will fight using everything they have to promote compulsory unionism and its ability to force people against their will to pay into union coffers.

Gov. Lynch may see the tide has turned and consider signing the bill, but Big Labor cronies are already working on him. So he will likely make the weaker choice – veto the bill – and plunge New Hampshire into a Big Labor siege unlike anything Wisconsin or Ohio saw. It will take elected men and women by storm, and they will need your support to get through these tough days until they override the Big Labor veto.

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Last week, I had the honor of speaking to a robust group of conservatives in New Hampshire — and I saw a level of energy within our movement that I haven’t seen in a long time. People are fired up. And not just in the Granite State. Everywhere I travel these days, Americans are standing up and declaring themselves ready to fight for the principles and values that made this the greatest country in history – principles and values that are under attack by the Democrats in Congress and the current administration.

Today, the federal government owns or controls the nation’s largest insurance company, two of the three American auto manufacturing companies, the two entities that hold a majority of our mortgages, the entire student loan industry, wide swaths of the banking industry and now a major portion of the American health care delivery system.

Think about it. With his individual mandate, President Barack Obama and the federal government are now forcing Americans to buy a good or service simply for no other reason than they are alive. Their reform will lead to higher taxes and higher premiums – and not reduce the exploding health care costs that are the underlying problem of America’s health care system.

Let me put it bluntly: America is headed in the wrong direction.

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