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We have too many rectangular states [Colorado secession talk]
AresProphet
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Splitting this from [chat] because it deserves some discussion. Some counties in northern Colorado want to secede from the state over concerns that they aren't receiving adequate representation in the state legislature, and are sending more revenue to the state than they are receiving in services.
As usual, the issue is more complex than it appears. My own opinions in a separate post, to keep the OP impartial.
As usual, the issue is more complex than it appears. My own opinions in a separate post, to keep the OP impartial.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57588393/several-counties-want-to-secede-from-colorado/
This article has the map of counties that are proposing such a measure. Keep this in mind.
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/colorado/percent-of-people-of-all-ages-in-poverty#map
This is a map of poverty levels in the state. Note that the counties in question are neither the poorest nor the wealthiest.
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/colorado/median-household-income#map
Here's median income. All but two of the counties have median incomes of $40k or higher (one is within a percentage point of that level) which with rural costs of living is not awful. One thing to note: the largest county leading this charge (both geographically and population-wise, with more residents than the other counties combined) is Weld County. Despite 14% of its residents living in poverty, the median income is north of $55,000. It is also home to Colorado State University, which explains the following map:
http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/united-states/quick-facts/colorado/percent-of-people-25-years-and-over-with-bachelors-degree-or-higher#map
Weld County has the most college graduates per capita of any of the counties in question by nearly a 50% margin. You should poke around in the racial demographics on that site to see what it's really like. Mostly white, with a sizable Hispanic population.
This reeks of a small handful of Weld County lawmakers using their superior political clout (thanks to the size of the county) to rally other, less-powerful counties (most with 15,000 or fewer residents) to their cause. It stinks of oil and gas money. If I was an energycompany drilling in northern Colorado and I wanted more lax regulations, I'd lobby the most powerful legislators in the region first and foremost and basically just buy out the votes of the rest. The best line from this article:
Apparently, it's too much of a burden to increase renewable energy requirements in one of the sunniest and windiest parts of one of the sunniest and windiest states in the nation.
Furthermore, the role of state revenue from the oil and gas industry is grossly exaggerated. The main reason spending on these counties roads and schools is neglected is because of the passage of things like TABOR (which prevents the state from raising taxes without a state-wide vote, leading to state revenues that haven't kept up with the state's growing population) and Amendment 23 (which allowed state lawmakers to cut education spending in response). In a twist of irony, TABOR was passed 20 years ago due to the outsize influence of rural state legislators.
We're in this mess because of them, and now they want to bail out.
I sort of imagine all those counties walking out and just going in circles around the state because they're not allowed to cross the street without holding a grown-up's hand. And then they give up and go back and it turns out mommy and daddy never even noticed they left.
Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota & North Dakota should be combined into a single state. It'd have about 4,710k people, sitting it just below South Carolina and above Louisiana as state number 25 by pop.
I think this is perhaps the most I've ever agreed with you.
A similar (nationwide) proposal.
I thought that this wasn't the craziest proposal. Entirely unrealistic - not even getting into the nightmare of logistics, gerrymandering, and all that...but not entirely crazy.
/facepalm
There has to be some level of government between the cities/counties and the feds. I wouldn't mind the state lines being re-drawn though.
That map reminds me waaay too much of Shadowrun's 2053 map.
IDK you look at so much of the fuck-Muppetry that's been going on in US politics lately and its almost all the rural+burbs crowd going fuck you people in cities.
I mean how many times have you heard stuff like "NoVa is nice, but fuck the rest of the state" insert, Austin, The NC research triangle, Memphis/Nashville, etc etc
"Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the West. Alabama in between"
I think the biggest problem with it is that it would violently exacerbate the problems people already have with state legislatures. If you live in New York on the tiny fringe surrounding the city, good luck ever getting anything done in your community at the state level. Same if you live in Denver; the Ogallala state legislature is going to be dominated by rural interests.
I mean, the population density of Denver is way the hell higher than anywhere else in the state, but there are only 600k people in Denver and ten times that many in Ogallala state as a whole. And conversely, there are 4 million people in NYC, outweighing the other New York state residents by a margin of two to one.
And the re-drawing state lines every time there's a census thing would be (while necessary in this setup) a logistical nightmare vastly larger than the initial redistribution.
Because we impinge on the glory of the American falls to make sure you guys have power AND we pay more for power than you do down there
EDIT: Basically, my point is is that these things are a little more interconnected than you think.
I think it goes both ways, in regards to rural and urban interests clashing. It's hardly a one way street.
It's not often going the other way since there's not a ton of places where the city outnumbers the not-city. Not in the legislature anyway.
In terms of state wide workings it would be great.
But consider what the Federal senate would look like.
I would just like to say that this map looks cooler, and the state names sound cooler than what U.S. has now.
My god, those state names are terrible.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
In all honesty, even if they did this at current population growth rates chances are they would be unrepresentitive again within 50 years. To keep it fair you would have to redraw the US every 50 years.
SHIPROCK
OP, is this actually a serious issue in terms of being discussed as a real possibility? Or is it more like when the old guard in Texas starts hollering about how maybe America could do without one of the stars on it's flag (that is, nobody is actually putting it on the table)?
And how would it even work? Are they proposing to become new little states? if they are, they realize that they would actually end-up having less political power, not more, right?
The Atchafalaya Basin is a large wetland and swamp in southern Louisiana; the largest in the US actually.
King I assume would be as a tribute to Martin Lither King, although how much of a tribute is it really to name one of the shittiest parts of the country after someone.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Americans have trouble deciding what level of government is legitimate. "As local as possible" is obviously inconsistent with an egalitarian redistributionist outlook. Insofar as politics has to regularly intrude upon distributive issues, localism is going to be problematic, and I'm fairly certain that most forumers here do not wish to therefore discard redistribution at all.
The notion that your central government is only legitimate if your community receives some adequate level of representation, rather than you alone being enfranchised, is fundamentally in conflict with a society that conceives of individuals (rather than groups) possessing rights.
It would make Massachusetts worse than it is now. There's some disconnect between Boston and Western Mass, but nothing like the political disconnect between Boston and northern Maine. They'd be better to rework New England to keep rural Maine with vermont, new hampshire and upstate New York, and keep boston with worchester, portland and providence.
Like the page says, it's more an art project than a serious proposal. There weren't any real considerations made for cultural ties, etc, just minimizing the population variance between states and using existing county lines.
As amusing as the map of 50 states put together based on having equal populations, I can't help but feel that it wouldn't practical even if it was a series proposal and even if you could get the constitutional amendment to make it happen. Seems like it would be easier just to go with a proportional representation system, given that most of the political differences are a result of urban v rural.
i think there's some desire to have states have something of a more coherent body politic in general. sure you could just abolish the senate or rig up states such that they have the same populations roughly, but you still end up with the fact the New York state has a hard time administering coherent state-wide laws that are relevant and appropriate to NYC and Buffalo and the upstate sticks.
Realistically, it's too radically different to be workable in our current system. There are just too many different problems that would come up to change to a system where our 'state' lines are balanced based on population instead of the relatively arbitrary lines of most states today.
That said, it could - possibly - be doable - with a technological solution in the future. There would still be county seats of government, so defining states by changeable groupings of counties seems like it could be theroretically possible. While it might be a bit confusing when the lines were readjusted, using similar technology to networking / work from home stuff along with some sort of future expansion on modern 'ad hoc' teaming where members join and leave as necessary (like in development projects) you could possibly create a workable model of flexible governance that way.
Hell, do something like team balancing - if a state or district needs to gain / lose population, put it up to a vote if counties want to shift, then assign them to change if nobody elects to. Remote voting or voter profiles, tied to some bastardized parliamentary system could be doable too.
I don't think it's an entirely unworkable model where government could be flattened out, but nothing that would / could realistically ever happen in the United States. In some ways, having local / county government, state government, and Federal government is a bit of an anachronism with so many aspects of state government basically reproducing Federal government and adding a ton of inefficiencies.
But hey, an interesting thought exercise, and interesting to see how disproportionate a lot of representation is.
It's kind of an interesting discussion plumbing out the motivations, but it's kind of hard to keep going here because it's fundamentally a stupid idea that won't ever actually happen.
Nope.
Unlike secession from the nation, there is nothing illegal per see about seceding from an existing state. There is precedent, albeit from the 19th century.
I think this is more of a play for attention than anything serious. A couple of county commissioners want to ride the back of the individualist/Tea Party movement into something approaching the political relevance they had in the early 90s before population growth in Colorado exploded