This is weird:
Weld County commissioners today announced that they want to join other northeastern Colorado counties in forming a new state -- North Colorado.More:
Commissioners said a "collective mass" of issues have cumulated over the past several years that isolate rural Colorado from the rest of the state and put those counties at a disadvantage....
Commissioners said Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties all expressed interest in the idea.
"The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be," said U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma. "The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don't blame these people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders of our state."...So what's upsetting them?
The "straws that broke the camel's back" included the signing of SB 252 on Wednesday, which increases renewable energy standards in rural areas in a way that rural energy companies say is too costly.Ahhh -- renewable energy, higher environmental standards for conventional energy developers, and new gun laws. On these subjects, Democrats have succeeded in passing laws Republicans don't like. That's not allowed to happen!
Commissioner Sean Conway told the Tribune oil and gas and agriculture in particular are being targeted....
Gov. John Hickenlooper's spokesman Eric Brown said "background checks on gun sales, increasing renewable energy and supporting responsible development of oil and gas are popular with rural and urban voters. Not everyone agrees, of course, but we keep trying."
Secession is the only possible remedy!
This could be on the ballot by August 1 -- seriously. (Although the rest of Colorado would apparently have to approve.)
If, as we keep hearing, there's a demographic wave that's going to make a lot of red states less and less red in the coming years, is this going to happen again and again? If Texas goes purple in a decade or two, is it going to split into Blue(-ish) Texas and Jesus-and-Guns Texas? And will secessionists start threatening to shut down state governments if they don't get to secede, the way Republicans have effectively shut down the federal government?
In other words, can we look forward to the biggest, whiniest tantrum in the recent history of self-governance?
We'll see.
As a resident of Seattle, we hear this kind of crap from the other side of the cascades all the time. Thing is, if it weren't for us Seattle taxpayers, few of those small communities would have schools.
ReplyDeleteCheck your constitution. The federal congress also has a role.
ReplyDeleteIf secession were on a state by state option, I'd say, go for it.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is, in pretty much all of the states, it's not the entire state, it's the rural areas.
The cities are, for the most part, blue, to Bluish purple. Ditto the nearest suburbs.
It's the rural areas in all state, mine, NY, included, that are Red.
People in cities have learned to tolerate one another's race, religion, place of origin, and sexual orientation.
And the rural areas are desperate NOT to have to tolerate any change, and don't want to have to be tolerant of anyone - in many areas, not even Christians of a different persuasion.
And they don't have enough votes, to counter what the cities and suburbs want to have done.
And I don't know how we resolve these issues.
Well, the simple answer is "yes," we are going to see the longest, whiniest, little bitchfest since the civil war, and for nearly the same reasons.
ReplyDeleteI say we let them practice, first, by cutting them out of federal money and state money entirely for a few years. No money for roads, schools, police, utilities--whatever state and federal taxpayer money is used for can't be used for areas that are voting to secede from the state. Let them try to find enough money to run their little local mini state governments and towns without being subsidized by the cities in their own states? Can't be done.
But in this case -- and I should have quoted the parts of the stories that noted this -- the resource-based industries in this part of the state are a big part of Colorado's economy, energy in particular.
ReplyDeleteOh, its the Kurds and the Iraqis all over again. This is sounding more and more like "Passport to Pimlico"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_to_Pimlico A wonderful, too often forgotten movie about what happens when a tiny part of London declares independence in order to gain control of an underground treasure. One of the things that happens is that the British Government ends up blockading them, they become a high crime area in which British law doesn't apply (in terms of the black market) and eventually they end up having to rejoin the UK because they just can't make it as the world's tiniest independent country inside another country.
ReplyDeleteWow, I hadn't heard about this yet. Man, there is a lot of butthurt in this state over the big, bad, mean, totally unfair background check and clean energy laws that just passed. There are also several recall attempts against some of the Demoncrats who led the charge.
ReplyDeleteIf it was up to me I'd say "let 'em go and don't let the door, etc." but no way the Legislature is going to let Weld County and all it's oil & gas get away so this is mostly sound & fury.
As far as funding the schools, the Demoncrats also passed a new school funding act which will rectify the very inequities they are whining about. But no reason not to claim victimhood anyhow.
Another problem with intra-state secessions is, they would create more red states, with more red Senators and Congressmen to bury the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteDon't let it happen.
Very crankily yours,
The New York Crank
Conservatives love America, they just hate Democracy
ReplyDeleteVicki.... Wrong! They love their *self serving* VERSION of America. The one whereby every one votes their way. Long live the 1950's (where?) What's more democratic than every one knowing their place now that's a majority.
ReplyDelete