A bunch of wingnuts in Colorado want form their own state of Crackpottopia, which they intend to call Northern Colorado. I expect that we will see similar sentiments before too long in Nevada and Arizona. I suppose it is better than seceding from the union, but it still reflects an unwillingness to deal with the reality of changing demographics.
Colorado is no longer a red state, but there are plenty of people there whose politics are indistinguishable from the people of Wyoming. Perhaps they should move there.
Fine — but if they have any illusions about statehood with two senators and a member of the House, they can forgetaboutit.
Heh, what if we countered approval with DC statehood?
Have to include statehood for Puerto Rico and Guam to the trade. Personally, prefer the non-state region set-ups for rightwing yahoos conditioned on the approval of the state they’re seceding from.
Article 4 Section 3 of the Constitution:
“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
How likely are the current representatives and senators of the United States Congress to approve this idea?
Disgruntled conservatives and Teabaggers in Illinois used the proper procedure and submitted a bill to the Democratically controlled state legislature petitioning Congress to sever Cook County (Chicago) from the rest of Illinois.
Like the majority of Coloradans, I imagine, most Cook County residents (who even knew this gnat was buzzing about) just smiled.
Never going to happen, but not such a crazy idea. It would split the state’s population in half. The political result would be two Democratic Senators from the State of North Illinois and two Republican Senators from South Illinois replace 1 Democrat and 1 Republican. Net, a wash.
There’s been a half-serious effort to “Free Baja Arizona” for a very long time; I remember bumper stickers with the phrase back in the 70’s.
Here’s one of the latest incarnations
I remember when libertarian survivalist and hippie types tried to get this going in northwestern california, where I grew up. They still have the bumper stickers, which are kind of awesome (US out of Humboldt Count). Some of this was driven by marijuana interests, but a lot of it was driven by true right wing anti-gov nuts in a weird alliance with what I’ll call the breakaway left (so left they’re right, so right they’re left).
How’d that work out for them? Well, the northwest of california is now one of the most staunchly democratic areas of the United States. And ain’t nobody talking about seceding anymore.
Even the old northern cal / southern cal buzz is gone. If anything, western cal would like to divorce eastern cal. But that won’t happen as long as western cal likes to go skiing. Marin County is happy to subsidize the food stamps over there as long as they can go to Tahoe.
You folks out on the plains go right on ahead and form your own state. Folks here in Denver wish you all the best.
It’s mighty dry out your way. Call us when you get thirsty. We’ll negotiate your water rights.
Certainly those counties fit the profile of a deeply red state. The citizenry has a fierce pride in their alleged independence but in fact is highly subsidized by the Democratic areas.
Isn’t that a general pattern? The blue states financially support the red states that claim to hate federal subsidies.
It’s more specific than that. I laughed when (in the linked article) one of the quoted commissioners claimed that Crackpottopia pays more in taxes to the rest of the state than it gets back.
Nope. Not even close. In every state with this sort of urban/rural divide, the urban center is wealthier and pays far more in taxes, while the rural areas are more infrastructure-heavy (more miles of road maintenance, fewer people per state office or service, etc.) and get way more tax dollars per capita than they contribute. It’s just like the red/blue divide on taxes, only on a smaller scale and more stark. This is like the worst example ever, as the counties he named as Crackpottopia only have about 300,000 of Colorado’s 5 million people (i.e., 6 percent). Metro Denver alone has almost 60 percent, and the Front Range overall (Fort Collins to Pueblo) is 75 percent.
In other words, it’s a big state and Crackpottopia is only a small portion of it – about a sixth of the area and a sliver of the population. But apparently it produces at least half of the state’s cow manure.
There has been a movement to create a state with the southern part of Oregon and the Northern part of California. They call it Jefferson. During the drought in the 70s Northern California wanted to split off from Southern California. The people of inland California wanted to secede from the coast. I guess there may be a half dozen states in California.
But I wonder what about Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. How about them?
As several commenters have noted, this has happened elsewhere. Quite a bit, actually, over the years. Northwestern California, Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho, Western Montana, Southern Arizona, Northern Nevada, Southern Utah – that’s pretty much every lower 48 state west of the Rockies, right? – various parts of Texas, the Florida panhandle, downstate Illinois, parts of upstate New York, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (wanting to become the new state of Superior)…it goes on and on.
Crackpottopia would even need to get in line for Wyoming – some people in the western part of Nebraska, which is far closer to Cheyenne than Lincoln, have wanted to join Wyoming for decades.
I hear Liberia is nice this time of year. Perhaps disgruntled rightists could form their perfect state there.