Free Spokane!

A reader called NoStar informs us that 11 Washington State legislators are pushing a bill to split the state in two. I don't expect the proposal to get anywhere, but I certainly sympathize. When I lived in the northwest, I had a hard time figuring out just why the Washington-Oregon border had been drawn from east to west rather than from north to south, since it was painfully clear that the eastern and western halves of the two states had more in common with each other than with those oddballs on the other side of the Cascades.

Speaking of which: Whatever happened to that Republic of Cascadia that was supposed to unite the American northwest and British Columbia in ecotopian harmony? I could swear this was being pushed by some serioso yuppie types back in the '90s, but a Google search revealed only a parody site that proposed to defend the new nation with a Sasquatch Militia. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Comments

[Gary Gunnels]

Jesse Walker,

Presumably the idea was inspired by the book Ecotopia.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553348477/reasonmagazinea-20/

[NoStar]

I think East Washington should keep the name Washington. West Washington can change its name to Eechtopia.

[Sarnath]

For a while, there was a proposal circulating to split Eastern Washington, Northern Idaho, and Western Montana into a new state. Didn't go anywhere, but certainly had some merit.

[sage]

You know, even though I think it's disgusting that a warthog like Gregoire can get the governorship via cadaver votes, I think these legislators should quit throwing this tantrum and spend their time trying to get our budget gap closed WITHOUT raising taxes. I heard on the radio this morning that they are going to start by taking public art out of the prisons...sigh, they have a lot of work to do.

[Fred]

I only hope that we can get the same seriousness for the concept of splitting California. More important than the (already floating) California secession movement, is the fact that CA is Gerrymandered in such a way as to make most of us politically irrelevant. Splitting the state could allow the Red and Blue people to separate amicably, maybe even leaving a piece for those of us who are more "purple" than Red or Blue.

[Isaac Bartram]

51st state? What about the State of Jefferson?

http://www.jeffersonstate.com/

[Gary Gunnels]

Isaac Bertram,

What are they going to do with Ashland? 🙂

[Isaac Bartram]

Gary Gunnels

Doesn't every state need some effete urban intellectuals?

[Gary Gunnels]

Isaac Bertram,

Well, I don't know if Ashland is urban, but you got the rest of it right.

[CodeMonkeySteve]

Having "grown up" in Spokane, and after living in Seattle for several years, I can say I'm definitely all for this. The differences between East Wa. and West Wa. are comparable to the difference between, say, Wyoming and Brazil.

[Gary Gunnels]

Jesse Walker,

The links page on the first page that you link to has a shitload of Cascadia links.

[Gary Gunnels]

Jesse,

Including this "anarcho-monarchist" version of Cascadia: http://www.andrewrogers.net/Cascadia/intro.htm

[WSDave]

I'm all for it. I just can't figure out which side of the mountains I'd want to live in: The West has cool things like employment and culture while the East has cool things like a clue and snow. Tough call.

[effete liberal]

Hell, I hope they do split off. Then let's see what happens when they realize that they were getting back more in tax money than they paid in. buy your own stop signs, you ignorant twits.

http://www.fuckthesouth.com

[Gary Gunnels]

There's also the Cascadia Institute: http://www.columbiana.org/cascadia_institute.htm

[Stevo Darkly]

I've seen a pretty comprehensive Web page devoted to current secessionist movements in the United States, but I can't find it now.

There is a pretty good list here, though:

http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-active-autonomist-and-secessionist-movements

(Scroll way the hell down for what's relevant to the USA.)

I generally applaud the secessionist/devolutionist/home-rule movements and think it's inevitable we'll see some become reality. The flawed but interesting book The Sovereign Individual says the USA is due for a general break-up similar to the USSR's, for similar reasons, but ours will be slower and hopefully gentler. The authors argue that the era of the big, transcontinental nation-state is at an end, and that financial problems and difficulty in collecting taxes will force governments to downsize. Jurisdictions will devolve into smaller sizes, and will have to compete more citizens among an increasingly mobile population -- forcing political jurisdictions to act more like private-sector entities and treat citizens more like customers.

That's the libertarian wet-dread version of the future, anyway. The book also says it is likely that jurisdictions will take more coercive action to prevent wealthy taxpayers from leaving, like Clinton's proposed "Berlin Wall for capital" exit tax.

[thoreau]

I wonder if the DC statehood people could tag team with one of the various movements seeking to create a new rural state. One concern facing a secession movement in a 50-50 nation is that adding 2 Senators would make a big difference.

I know that the Senate isn't currently 51-49, but it's close enough that a few more votes one way or the other still matter a lot. And I know that DC statehood would require a Constitutional amendment while creating a new rural state would require ordinary legislation plus the agreement of the state or states involved in the secession bid. Still, it may be possible to strike some sort of deal.

Or, if DC statehood isn't feasible, find some other secession movement that would want to create a new liberal state (e.g. splitting CA) or something like that. One way or the other, I think that a deal that maintained the balance but gave some locals what they want has a better shot than a deal that changes the balance.

[Jennifer]

That's going to be one ugly country after Mounts Rainier and Hood go boom.

[The Lonewacko Blog]

Having "grown up" in Spokane, and after living in Seattle for several years, I can say I'm definitely all for this. The differences between East Wa. and West Wa. are comparable to the difference between, say, Wyoming and Brazil.

Hmmm... how so is Seattle like Brazil? Let me put it this way: would John Stagliano go there?

Here's the American Secession Project. Have fun!

And, here's a direct, Lonewacko-friendly link to Ecotopia.

[Czar]

I live in Coeur d'Alene (in Idaho, about 20 minutes east of Spokane) and grew up in Post Falls (right on the state line between the two). I've been saying this for years. Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho need to become a single state. Western Washington can keep its yuppie culture and keep on ignoring the eastern half of the (former) state, and Northern Idaho no longer has to deal with the goddamn Mormons. It's win-win.

[Czar]

Also need to add that there's no guarantee the resulting state would be a "red state." It's the afore-mentioned Mormons in the south who keep Idaho red, and Eastern Washington isn't as "red" as people in Western Washington would like to think. I'd think Bonner County up by the Montana border would be the "reddest" part of the new state, and that place is freaking desolate.

[gaius marius]

i hear this and ask "why?"

the answer clearly seems to be that people are so arrogantly individualistic today that they cannot compromise. people in spokane have decided that they cannot brook dissent with people in seattle. the tolerance that underpins representative democracy is dead on the altar on nietzsche, and suddenly carving up washington or texas or california looks like a panacea -- when in fact you're simply drawing fronts for a future civil war.

it's not like city-vs-country is a new phenomena. what is new is westerners' inability to tolerate one another with understanding. that's why nation-states are cracking.

[Czar]

Utter bullshit. It has to do with one small section of an entire state seizing control of all assets and power and then completely ignoring the majority of the citizens except for remembering to collect during tax season.

Beside that, "tolerance" is just another word for "putting up with shit I shouldn't have to." When you have assloads of yuppies and Bible-thumpers bossing normal people around, the normal people don't serve any constructive purpose in compromising and being "tolerant." Compromising means telling them that they're partly right, which just encourages them to keep pulling the same shit.

[Warren]

Here in Michigan, we live in a state that is already split in two. Part of the state is the upper penicilla, or U.P. and it's denizens are known as Yoopers. We would definitely benefit by splitting into three. East (Everything encompassed by I-69) being Detroit and all the part of the state that lives and dies with the auto industry. West being Grand Rapids and most of the Lake Michigan shore line (heavily influenced by solemn Dutch Christian Reform types). And Upper, including the U.P. and most everything North of Saginaw.

Having previously lived in upstate New York, that was another state crying out for division. I always thought New York State should give New York City to New Jersey. I thought that would make everybody happy.

[dead_elvis]

"it's not like city-vs-country is a new phenomena. what is new is westerners' inability to tolerate one another with understanding. that's why nation-states are cracking."

If nation states actually were to start cracking, I think the reason has more to do with people applying their brains to things that have always been taken for granted, like borders. Reasons for drawing a border somewhere might have made sense 100-200 years ago, but why should we be bound by that? Who says that the best of all possible decisions was made at that place and time, and the people who made that decision had such incredible forsight that even 200 years later they knew what would be best for us?

I would be leary though of forming states that are too dependent on one sector of the economy (like the proposed eastern MI). Or eastern WA/eastern OR, which would be dependent on... whatever the heck is they do off in the high desert. From what I've seen, it looks like they grow sagebrush, rocks, and fenceposts 😉

[WSDave]

E. Washington also grows apples and apple pickers (if they don't get deported).

While it could be argued (even by me) that the non-coastal states don't have much going for them, it's also true that most of the costal states are very intolerant of the "leave me alone" idea. Seattle and Portland (at least) both have sticks-up-their-asses when it comes to city planning and zoning. They have this idea that you can zone "community" by clustering the houses around a common building. I just don't see this being tried in the mid-west.

Freedom-I Won't!

[Mo]

This reminds me of my best friend?s crazy stepdad (though now that I think about it, he might be a hardcore libertarian and frequenting these boards). He wanted to split California into two states, "Those damn liberals in LA and San Francisco get one and the rest of us normal folk get the other." Forget the illogic of a state consisting of two metropolises 400 miles apart, how hilarious would it be to have those cities, which hate each other, being one state. Not to mention how much "real" California would charge them for water.

[ai]

two states! oh wait, idaho can have 'em 😀

[thoreau]

I think it would make more sense to either divide CA in two (be it coast vs. inland or north vs. south), or else divide it into something like 8 different states.

Several years ago Michael Lind (yes, I know) wrote a funny article in Mother Jones (yes, I know) saying that the larger states should be divided to offset the advantage currently enjoyed by smaller states in the Senate. While people here would obviously object to most of his goals and ideas, the names that he came up with for the new states were hilarious.

Check it out:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1998/01/lind_DUP2.html

[Guy in the back row]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articleiv.html#section3

This is all a cool mental exercise, but would congress and the state legislatures agree to any such changes?

[zeroentitlement]

Lonewacko, John Stagliano might visit Seattle, but the namby-pamby, dickless, passive-aggressive, sanitized corporate-campus, God-forbid-we-offend-someone culture (this is the town that outlawed Fat Tuesday, I might mention) would mean that only "The Stranger" alternative paper would herald his arrival. Besides, once John discovered how much more live the culture is in Vancouver, BC, he'd be outtie. Until he got his Canuck tax bill, that is.

[Fido Santorum]

Geez, when you guys are done we'll have roughly 250 states...

[Shem]

Western Washington can keep its yuppie culture and keep on ignoring the eastern half of the (former) state

And we can also stop dumping millions a year into the east, and their economy can collapse. I don't care for the west and the entitlement culture, but at least over here the people who are paying into the system are the ones who get the bennefit.

[Curious]

But aren't you getting a benefit in keeping a depressed part of your state semi functional with assistance? That way there is a source of labor and soldiers from disaffected youngsters born in those areas. Plus you get the benefit of only those with enough smarts and/or gumption to move away from home. The slower folks won't get in front of you in the line at Starbucks.

[Brett]

Forget the illogic of a state consisting of two metropolises 400 miles apart...

But it worked so well for Pakistan and East Pakistan...

[Shem]

Curious, the idea is that they aren't part of our state anymore. Besides, we're a bunch of lefty peacenik cowards over here, what would we need for soldiers 😉

[Rikurzhen]

I imagine most states could be subdivided without much objection from the citizens.

Even a little state like Delaware has a natural division -- north/south.

This would likely improve representation in the Senate.

[Pro Libertate]

Huh. Isn't Seattle due for another "bust" period? It's been in a boom/bust cycle for a long time. I wondered whether the Boeing move would be the proximate cause of the next bust, but my money is on some sort coffee backlash, followed by the acquisition of Washington Mutual by Canada. Then the apple growers will have to support the rather odd folks on the coast.

Incidentally, the final word on Eastern Washington came from Seattle's Bob Rivers Show in its classic tune, Spokane (scroll down to play).

[Miles]

I think it would make more sense to either divide CA in two (be it coast vs. inland or north vs. south), or else divide it into something like 8 different states.

Why not just give California back to Mexico and be done with it...

[dead_elvis]

"Incidentally, the final word on Eastern Washington came from Seattle's Bob Rivers Show in its classic tune, Spokane (scroll down to play)."

That is hi-frickin'-larious. Perhaps only because, being from N. Idaho, I've had to correct peoples' pronounciation many, many times.

Anybody else here went to the '74 World Expo? Now that was a real hootenanny!

[David T]

Yeah, let's have Eastern Washington get two seats in the Senate. I mean, small states are already overrepresented there, so how about still another state whose voters will effectively have several times as much representation per person there as those from Califronia or Texas or Florida or New York?

Yes, I know that the overrepresentation of small states in the Senate (and therefore in the Electoral College as well) is deliberate, part of the consitutional scheme, etc. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the more of it the better.

(Some people on this blog may think that such overrepresentation is a good idea because they think low-population rural states are more libertarian. On guns, maybe. On other things? I doubt it.)

[Twba]

What this country really needs is another senator defending federal ag subsidies. Let the partitioning begin.

[thoreau]

Twba has the best comment on this thread!

[pragmatist]

"Who says that the best of all possible decisions was made at that place and time..."

Okay, so forget the maps everybody. We're gonna draw new lines *every day*. If you don't like where the lines are today, you can help redraw them tommorrow.

This has one massive virtue: nobody will *ever* have time for a civil war. How could you figure out which side to be on if the map is always shifting around?

"Geez, when you guys are done we'll have roughly 250 states..."

Nope. Close but no cigar.

What's the population of the US? In the end, everybody gets their x of square feet of land, each of which becomes its own Person-State.

We shan't elect our officials anymore in that glorious day, but rather we shall need to hire them. Think: jobs for Mexicans. They gotta do what you tell them because you write the paycheck.

And each day, as the population grows, we can all watch our own little Person-State borders creep in on us....

[Cartographer Magnus]

Fido Santorum said:
"Geez, when you guys are done we'll have roughly 250 states..."

And that's a problem because...?

As 'dead elvis' wondered earlier, why are we so stuck on boundries that were drawn over 100 years ago, often arbitrarily? If revolution is impractical (not to mention dangerous), why not try changing dance partners on a semi-regular basis by redrawing the maps?

Think of it as re-apportionment, super-sized.

I asked this question about Portlands "regional government", known as Metro (clever, ain't they?) Metro is some sort of quasi-county that handles things deemed common to the urban areas of the 3 counties that make up the Portland metropolis. But this raises the question, why didn't they just redraw the counties? Put the urban area in a single county and leave the rural areas in other counties? Suddenly, there is no need for "regional government", because -- gasp! -- a county IS a regional governement. Is this so hard to grasp? Short answer: Yes.

When I ask this question, people look at me as if I were mad. The idea of changing boundaries seems so... so... *communist* (to grab a loaded word). That just ain't the 'Merikun way. (But ask them where Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia sometime, and all you get are blank stares.)

There is no way boundary redrawing will succeed without a long and sustained marketing campaign. But we gotta start sometime.

[JD Allen]

Man. You guys. Are you just jacking off, or do you not have enough to do?

Splitting the entire world into small, autonomous city-states similar to those of the ancient Greeks would be ideal from the standpoint of personal liberties. If you didn't like the way things were being done, you could just move a few miles down the road. If you were allowed to leave. And, the road probably wouldn't exist, it would probably just be a couple of ruts in the mud. And everything would be wonderful until a Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Rome, or whatever came along and stomped the idyllic city-state into the previously mentioned mud.

Besides, who decides who gets to live in Athens, and who has to live in Sparta?

And, did we not have a war way back in the late 1800s over some guys who decided to bail out on the union? Just like back then, if one group decides to split off, the rest will band together and force them to continue to endure the pain caused by forced association with incompatible neighbors. Kind of like having to sit next to a homeless person on the Metro?

[VoiceOver]

JD that post has to be the worst I've read in a long time on these boards.

So full of illogic it's amazing.

"If you were allowed to leave" - making wrong assumptions.
"of ruts in the mud" - ditto

"came along and stomped the idyllic city-state " - no one here mentioned abandoning common defense. Wrong again.

"who decides who gets to live in . . ." well you only contradict yourself here, as you stated "would be ideal from the standpoint of personal liberties"

Your pretty clueless when it comes to the positions of the people on these boards.

[M1EK]

Czar,

The problem with your theory is that it rests on the 100% absolutely false contention that Eastern Washington pays more in taxes than it gets back in spending. That simply isn't true for any rural area of non-trivial size anywhere in this country, even outside your beloved state of Washington.

Cities subsidize YOU, not the other way around. Sorry to be the bearer of inconvenient facts.

[Twba]

The suburban taxpayers subsidize the rural and downtown areas.

[NoStar]

M1EK,
The urbane of the urban west and wet side of the state may subsidize us hicks in the sticks of East Washington, but their regulations (as well as attempts to remove our damns) stifle our economic growth.

AirBus is considering Moses Lake as a manufacturing site. Senator Patty Murray all but said "We don't need them here."

[NoStar]

As for "Spokane" being the last word in the East vs. West don't make a decision until you hear "Big Hair of Lynnwood" Ah-oooo!

For the ignorati, Lynnwood is a suburb separating Seattle from Everett. Again, scroll down to find it.

http://www.bobrivers.com/audiovault/tunes/tunes.asp?Var=B

[Gary Gunnels]

NoStar,

What's her rationale on that one?

[NoStar]

Gary G.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/v-printer/story/4535269p-4255860c.html

?I encourage Washington state communities to explore new paths of economic development, but I?d hate to see them waste their time on a plane that will never be built in the United States,? said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Seattle).

If she felt she had to do anything more than represent Seattle and Boeing she would be making encouraging statements, not discouraging ones.

[gaius marius]

Beside that, "tolerance" is just another word for "putting up with shit I shouldn't have to." When you have assloads of yuppies and Bible-thumpers bossing normal people around, the normal people don't serve any constructive purpose in compromising and being "tolerant." Compromising means telling them that they're partly right, which just encourages them to keep pulling the same shit.

thank you for validating my case, mr czar.

[Fred]

>> Why not just give California back to Mexico and be done with it...

[gaius marius]

What's the population of the US? In the end, everybody gets their x of square feet of land, each of which becomes its own Person-State.

precisely, mr pragmatist. don't stop until we are all in our own cube of isolation, never having to engage with anyone or anything else we don't wish to. what a fantastic society that will be!

The urbane of the urban west and wet side of the state may subsidize us hicks in the sticks of East Washington, but their regulations (as well as attempts to remove our damns) stifle our economic growth.

mr nostar, when did you first adopt the us/them language of civil war when talking about your fellow citizens? and how many separate "thems" can you discern in america for each of the "us's" you identify with?

that's what i mean about nation-states cracking. nationalism -- even in established ancient nations like france and britain -- is waning vis-a-vis more individualistic self-nominations and giving rise to fractionating separatist movements.

i think the issue is actually less advanced so far in america than in europe, which is probably baneful for us. europe's nations may more peacably disintegrate into looser associations; the united states, on the other hand, might have a more violent time of it.

[NoStar]

Gaius,
The Us vs. Them language has been a part of Washington state culture since its inception.
The counties were formed and named after the civil war (e.g. Grant, Lincoln). The rival state universities chose Purple/Gold and Crimson/Grey which are not that far from Union and Confederate colors.

So, it is not a matter of when I adopted the language. It is part and parcel with Washingtonian culture on both sides of the cascade curtain.