[HN Gopher] Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Gr...
___________________________________________________________________
Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'
Author : rmason
Score : 161 points
Date : 2021-05-20 19:16 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.upi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.upi.com)
| chasd00 wrote:
| can a state hold on to a county by force? Send in state troopers,
| sack the existing county level leadership and replace it?
|
| Seems like states would have that in their constitutions.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| How is the 6-Californians proposal going, I wonder?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
| Nicksil wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Thanks, fixed the mobile link
| thehappypm wrote:
| I love how gerrymandered these proposals are. Make sure that
| the Bay Area is split across two states, so that both stay
| blue.
| [deleted]
| klipt wrote:
| You know we could solve gerrymandering entirely by using
| proportional representation like many other democracies do.
| jandrese wrote:
| The even more crazy part is the proposed Jefferson has less
| than 1/10 the population of West or South California but
| still has a higher population than both Dakotas, Washington
| DC, Alaska, Vermont, or Wyoming.
|
| West California would still be one of the most populous
| states in the union, coming in just behind Ohio in 7th place
| and South California would be nipping on its heels. Silicon
| Valley would be ranked near Tennessee. As crazy as this
| proposal sounds, it's probably less crazy than having almost
| 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when
| Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a
| million people.
| sharkmerry wrote:
| > it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million
| people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has
| the same number of senators for barely half a million
| people.
|
| This was purposely the design of the Senate. This complaint
| should be more applied to the House, where we stopped
| increasing the number of reps as population grew
| not2b wrote:
| The US constitution requires that, for this to happen, Congress,
| the Oregon legislature, and the Idaho legislature must all agree.
| There's no provision that it is a matter that local country
| residents get to decide.
| why55 wrote:
| Time for a constitutional amendment to curb non-consensual
| government. State and federal government should have a
| generational opt in.
| SllX wrote:
| We have have that every two years: it's called elections.
| srswtf123 wrote:
| If every state is gerrymandered beyond all sanity, are
| _any_ of our elections valid?
| why55 wrote:
| Half of the country is pissed no matter who wins. Imagine
| being born married and no option for divorce.
| [deleted]
| catgary wrote:
| Would Oregon necessarily be against this? This seems like a
| great way to (a) get rid of nut jobs from the state
| legislature, and (b) get rid of a bunch of counties that
| sinkholes (financially speaking).
| [deleted]
| nxc18 wrote:
| You're being downvoted, but living in Oregon I don't really
| see the problem. I'm not really attached to borders and I'm
| trying to understand why other people are. It is an aspect of
| political science I'd like to know more about if people have
| useful sources.
| bsder wrote:
| I don't see why Oregon would object unless there is some
| industry out there that is paying megabucks in taxes.
|
| Dumping a bunch of people sucking down more money than they pay
| seems like a win for Oregon.
|
| Idaho, on the other hand, might object. That would be comedy
| gold.
|
| "We secede." "Congratulations! Good luck finding somebody who
| wants you, though."
| omni wrote:
| Well for one, House representatives are apportioned based on
| population.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| That's fine, it doesn't matter what state the
| representative is associated with, and baring rounding
| errors the number of representatives would stay roughly the
| same?
|
| The more worrisome effect is on the electoral college and
| the senate, but I think tying this to DC statehood would
| get rid of that.
| icedistilled wrote:
| It sets a bad precedent. Any county can just vote to break
| off into another state due to political reasons or to form
| their own state? Either one party will use that to their
| advantage and disallow the other party from doing the same,
| or every state will devolve into fragments. Why stop at
| counties? Why can't zip codes choose the grouping that best
| represents them too?
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Well, this doesn't seem quite as extreme as the Cascadia
| movement, but with a similar appeal:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_(independence_movemen...
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| My first reaction was that this is against Article IV Section III
| of the Constitution. But, reading it again shifting borders of
| existing states doesn't seem to be prohibited. It would be
| interesting to see how something like this actually played out.
| buerkle wrote:
| There is precedence. Maine broke off from Massachusetts in the
| early 1800s and West Virginia from Virginia at the start of the
| Civil War.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Splitting states is specifically addressed in the section. It
| just takes a vote of the involve state legislatures and
| Congress.
|
| Moving counties from one state to another doesn't require
| Congress be involved as no state is created or destroyed. I
| assume that legislatures of both states would need to agree
| to the border change but it isn't something that is
| addressed.
| reilly3000 wrote:
| Mods: please consider changing the title to: Five Oregon counties
| vote to discuss joining 'Greater Idaho'
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| I don't see how this would be different than states trying to
| succeed from the US so it likely will just never happen because
| they don't even have the right in the state constitution.
| iwasakabukiman wrote:
| This article title is grossly misleading. As far as I can tell
| from the article, no actual votes have happened.
|
| The group behind this is just pushing for counties to support
| them.
|
| These types of groups pop up all the time, make hay and then
| disappear.
| orik wrote:
| There were votes, two more counties will hold a vote at a later
| date.
|
| https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=139
|
| https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=124
|
| https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=141
|
| https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=248
|
| https://results.oregonvotes.gov/SearchResults.aspx?ID=242
| dawnerd wrote:
| Still misleading, they voted to look into it. It's a HUGE
| waste of money since it wont go anywhere in congress.
| SllX wrote:
| If they're not creating a new State but joining an existing
| one, it just might. Depends on how this plays out in Oregon
| and Idaho too, but it won't affect the Senate.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| The vote was taken Tuesday of this week:
|
| https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/554332-oregon-count...
| la6471 wrote:
| Yes they can vote to leave the state but they should also not
| get any of the tax dollars from the more densely populated
| counties that stay behind. Thank you , Sayonara!
| casefields wrote:
| Much better article here:
| https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2021/05/more-oregon-coun...
| omegaworks wrote:
| The Greater Idaho project would absorb nearly the entire water
| resources of the East Cascades, placing them under the control of
| a single state entity.
|
| Doesn't bode well for a Western US that will be increasingly
| dependent on freshwater as the Earth warms.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| The coastal cities would have access to the major international
| ports. I suspect the states would have to get along or everyone
| loses.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| A town in Vermont voted multiple times to join New Hampshire. It
| unsurprisingly never happened.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secessio...
| akvadrako wrote:
| The Upper Valley in western NH (where I'm from) also kind of
| seceded to Vermont for a short while:
|
| https://www.flowofhistory.org/the-rebellion-in-western-new-h...
| ilamont wrote:
| Another weird border situation played out in the "Oblong"
| where a botched Colonial land survey created a kind of no-
| man's land between New York State, Connecticut, and the
| southwest corner of Massachusetts. How it got resolved
| related to an utterly bizarre incident in the 1850s.
|
| https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-
| Hell...
| asdff wrote:
| Michigan and Ohio once went to war over Toledo.
| kfprt wrote:
| Each tried to make the other take it....
| mattbk1 wrote:
| Good old Act 60.
| ddingus wrote:
| One future pop quiz answer:
|
| Tesla city is the capitol of the State of Jefferson.
| razster wrote:
| I doubt Tesla city, more like Trump city.
| fnord77 wrote:
| Putin city would be more like it, since the whole split
| california movement gets pushed hard by russian trolls
| Alupis wrote:
| California has some very diverse areas with very diverse
| people with very diverse needs.
|
| I'm not necessarily in favor of splitting California up,
| but it does make sense to have several smaller states that
| can better care for the needs of their constituents vs.
| what we have today where two major cities tend to drive the
| politics and priorities of the entire state.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Heh, not a lot of Teslas down there. More like F-150 city.
| [deleted]
| ddingus wrote:
| Totally! I am familiar. Have friends and family in the
| region.
|
| I come to visit them as the tree hugging, bleeding heart, gun
| toting lefty from lefty central.
|
| Always good laughs. Fortunately we have a good culture on
| politics. No worries. Not everyone does, and I wish it were
| more true. Can get along just about anywhere really.
|
| Wonder if the Ford electric F150 will see rapid adoption in
| that region?
|
| Ford got almost all of it's priorities right. The big screen
| is a mistake, like delicate work truck type, but maybe the
| great package overall is not impacted.
|
| I will be curious to see that play out.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| Ford's biggest problem with the F150 was using Biden as its
| salesperson. Someone at Ford didn't evaluate their consumer
| demographics properly.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yeah, that may not have been the best move. But then
| again, the F-150 is like a really solid brand. And it's a
| really great product. They will power through.
| DeRock wrote:
| Their biggest customer may end up being the US government
| (eg. for work fleets). So maybe it was a strategic move?
| Time will tell.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| This is a good point. seems that the majority of police
| vehicles have been Ford historically because if the
| requirement to buy American. Biden also is pushing a $2M
| infrastructure bill that is at is core described as for
| addressing climate change. There will be a lot of
| vehicles for that.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Next time you're at a national park, national forest, BLM
| land, or some other federal facility of that sort, check
| out the brand and types of trucks they have.
| DeRock wrote:
| I honestly don't know, can you tell me? One thing to
| consider is that Biden has been very public about
| transitioning US government fleets to all electric
| (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/25/biden-plans-to-replace-
| gover...), so even if other brands are currently used, it
| doesn't matter, because they don't sell an electric
| pickup.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I don't know the exact breakdown, but the Ford F-150 is a
| _very_ popular truck and the government buys a huge
| number of Fords, along with Dodge and Chevrolet. You can
| buy them at auction when the government is done with
| them. https://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/aucitsrh/
| jdhn wrote:
| I'm curious as to what you think Ford was supposed to do.
| Were they supposed to tell Biden that the batteries
| hadn't charged enough for him to drive it? If anything,
| conservatives who like the F-150 will just ignore him
| driving it and purchase the thing anyways.
| marricks wrote:
| As an left Oregonian I think this would be a win-win. Oregon is
| an extremely liberal state in the valley but outside of
| metropolitan areas, obviously not.
|
| Our state legislature is regularly shut down and forced to cater
| to far right views. Like, these conservative congressman refuse
| to show up and literally shut it down so nothing gets done.
| Liberal congresspeople in general not willing to do anything
| besides chastise them for it. So the whole legislature doesn't
| get big progressives projects done as much as they might
| otherwise.
|
| I imagine the biggest impediment to the counties leaving is the
| centrist portion of our legislature not wanting to give up the
| bargaining power having right winger congresspeople shut things
| down.
|
| They want their conservative great state with Idaho, go for it. I
| sincerely hope Idaho can provide as much needed relief for
| disaster and public funding for fires and such. We do that now
| but I have to imagine Idaho has a lot less money.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yes I absolutely agree. An to anyone worried about the
| electoral college and senate, well, those are salvageably crap,
| and stuff like this will put on pressure for reform or at last
| "heighten the contradictions".
|
| Even more simply, here's a wonderful grand bargain: DC
| statehood return for California, Oregon, and Washington
| boundary shifting. I would take that in a heartbeat.
|
| (PR statehood could sweeten the deal, but leftism says PR ought
| to be independent, and plain non-ideological pro-democracy me
| says PR should have a binding statehood vs independent
| referendum that isn't subject to boycotts to determine what
| Puerto Ricans _actually_ want.)
| pcan77 wrote:
| Why not just move to Idaho then? Or some other red state?
| throwkeep wrote:
| Guessing they like some combination of geography, neighborhood,
| house, job where they live?
| cronix wrote:
| Most are farmers who have been working the same land for
| generations. They know it inside and out under all sorts of
| conditions. It's kind of trivial to move a household vs an
| entire farm system. It can take several years to get it all
| up and running again, depending on your crop/animals of
| course.
|
| There is no political back and forth like there used to be
| where you'd have republicans controlling things for a time
| and then democrats. It's been mostly Portland democrats
| controlling the state for over 20 years now. The needs of
| most of the state, by geography but which has a lower
| population, are not the same as those in the 1 big city the
| state has, so a lot of people are interested in changing that
| with democratic votes.
|
| Since Portland pays the lionshare of taxes for the state,
| you'd think they'd be happy getting rid of the poorer parts
| of the states that they have to currently subsidize. Seems
| like it would be a win-win for everybody involved. What are
| the downsides?
|
| If you look at the state senate map, there is a lot more red
| land mass than blue. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
| Oregon_Senate_map.pn...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Most are farmers
|
| A few are farmers. Looking back a generation or two most of
| the people in southern Oregon were employed by the timber
| industry - that number has shrunk considerably over the
| last generation. There are Eastern Oregon ranches but they
| tend to be pretty large so not a whole lot of actual
| farmers/ranchers in total. Yes, they employ people to work
| on those farms/ranches. And yes, the counties involved in
| these votes are pretty sparsely populated, but I'd be
| surprised if even as many as 20% are employed in
| agriculture at this point. Here's some data from the ODA:
|
| "Oregon's principal operators of farms and ranchesmake up
| less than one percent of the total population of Oregon.
| However, when paid and unpaid on-farm workers are included
| the total number of workers on the farms and
| ranchesincreases to approximately four percent of Oregon's
| population." [1]
|
| > There is no political back and forth like there used to
| be where you'd have republicans controlling things for a
| time and then democrats.
|
| I'm old enough to remember when Oregon Republicans were by
| and large quite liberal - at least the ones who actually
| won statewide elections (Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield,
| Packwood - all Republicans, all would be considered quite
| liberal today). Both parties tended to have liberal and
| conservative wings back then, but the conservatives didn't
| win many elections.
|
| [1] https://www.oregon.gov/ODA/shared/Documents/Publication
| s/Adm...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >If you look at the state senate map, there is a lot more
| red land mass than blue.
|
| I have yet to come across a land mass that has a political
| leaning.
| ericmay wrote:
| Idk, why not just break up Oregon a little bit?
|
| I don't have a dog in this fight, but... why are we so adamant
| about clinging to certain structures even if they don't work
| for people?
|
| You might say "but not everybody agrees with this move..." well
| sure but at what point do we say the will of the general
| population matters more _without_ appealing to some higher
| authority like the U.S. to implement rules that you agree with
| even if the local population doesn 't?
|
| Some reasonable lines can be drawn. For example, obviously you
| can't let a group of people just murder other people or
| something. But what about letting them teach the Bible or Islam
| in their schools? I mean, it's their schools right? Don't their
| property taxes pay for them? It's a complicated subject, IMO.
|
| And if you want less clear examples it would be easy to find.
|
| The truth of the matter as I see it is that this "problem" is
| not going away. Nation states are an historical anomaly, and
| now that there's no war and need to organize for something
| meaningful, and the world has gotten much smaller, we're seeing
| fractures come into being. This could be (and I'm not comparing
| any of these) Basque rebels, Ireland, China geocoding Uighur
| Muslims to make room for Han Chinese, Quebec, etc. and you can
| also look at general wealth and outperformance of smaller
| countries that trend toward being city states as they can and
| tend to more freely compete without risk of violence on the
| international stage.
|
| IMO cryptocurrency, fracturing and bankrupt nation states, and
| other things will largely destroy the nation states as we know
| them today, barring anything unforeseen. It'll take a while
| though, we're just living through history.
|
| And FWIW I am a U.S. Army veteran - so I'm pretty 'Murica, but
| as much as I don't want to admit it, it seems to me that just
| having such a large country with a population that is
| increasingly divided, is just going to lead toward separatists
| movements.
|
| And just to get a cheap-shot at Texas. Sure is a whole lot of
| boot and no spur there when you want to deny federal aid to
| other states, but then have your own problems and come begging
| hat in hand from the feds. Where's your seccession now?
|
| Anyway.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Because America is balanced on a knife's edge, and the Senate
| and Electoral college basically runs the show.
|
| If you introduce a new state that leans blue, that's two more
| blue senators and N more electoral college votes for a blue
| president. Republicans will staunchly oppose this. And vice
| versa.
|
| If the senate were proportional to population, and if the
| electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote,
| then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It shouldn't be hard to divy up states (granted you might
| have to cut a state into more than two parts in some cases)
| in a way that results in no net gain for either party. It's
| a simple math problem.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| But that doesn't solve the problem. If the problem is,
| "East Oregonians feel disconnected from West Oregonians",
| I don't think there's a way to split Oregon that results
| in a net equal number of new representatives and
| simultaneously addresses the "we're too politically
| divided" concern.
|
| Yes, you could slice Oregon in half horizontally and
| maintain the same number of reps, but then you'd have two
| new states with the East feeling divided. If you split it
| vertically, then you have the problem of uneven
| representation.
| Ccecil wrote:
| They are. Coeur d'Alene, ID is at the top of the US for hottest
| real estate markets. Average housing cost increase of over 40%
| in the last year. [1]
|
| Boise and Eastern Idaho are seeing similar growth.
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/lakeside-idaho-city-is-
| americas...
| notJim wrote:
| But is that being driven by people moving from rural Oregon?
| I am skeptical.
| astrognomy wrote:
| Your right to be skeptical as it's not the case. It's being
| driven by individuals within Idaho moving to more urban
| parts of Idaho.
|
| Locals say it's all "Californians," but that is just short
| hand for folks out of state but surveys and data from ITD
| (Idaho Transportation Department, i.e. DMV) show it's
| urbanization at work.
|
| Granted there are folks moving to Idaho from outside of the
| state but they are the minority causing the influx to CDA
| and Boise.
|
| Source: Local news, resident of Boise, and someone who is
| dismayed at the lack of housing in the area.
| omegaworks wrote:
| They would be abandoning some incredible watersheds[1] if they
| did. That's probably the point of this whole project, to put a
| huge chunk of western water resources under the control of a
| single state amenable to white supremacists[2].
|
| 1. https://geology.com/lakes-rivers-water/oregon.shtml
|
| 2. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/17/924461164/are-paramilitary-
| ex...
| jeffbee wrote:
| I mean, not wrong, but Oregon was founded as an explicit
| white ethnostate. The state constitution language barring
| "negroes, mulattos and Chinamen" was not even removed until
| 2002.
| dharmab wrote:
| In order to create 2 new Senate seats.
| cronix wrote:
| Changing the border wouldn't change senate seats. Oregon
| would still get 2 senators, and Idaho will still have 2 just
| like all other states. A new 51st state isn't being created.
| Representatives would change a bit though since they are
| population based.
| [deleted]
| dawnerd wrote:
| I've talked to a lot of these people in passing and they
| honestly believe Oregon is a red state but is being cheated by
| Portland. They always point to land area thats red as proof.
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| You don't just move a farm. And there isn't a lot of extra farm
| land available in Idaho anymore.
| jfengel wrote:
| I've been assured that moving a farm is very easy. That way,
| if the climate heats up part of the country, you just pack up
| and move the farm further north.
|
| I suspect that if you asked in Malheur, Sherman, Grant,
| Baker, Lake, Jefferson and Union counties, they'd agree that
| we can afford to ignore carbon dioxide production.
| jmcdl wrote:
| Bill Gates doesn't seem to think climate change is a
| problem either https://www.msn.com/en-
| us/money/realestate/bill-and-melinda-...
| jerf wrote:
| One of the things I periodically mentally noodle with is, what
| would the world look like if it was a lot easier for units to
| choose what larger units they would aggregate into? Like, cities
| choosing a county, counties choosing a state, states choosing
| their country, etc.
|
| I originally was noodling with this in the context of a space
| civilization, where there is no equivalent of "solid ground",
| everything's always moving, and everything _can_ move (i.e., even
| a "space station" can still move places, it just may be slower
| than a "space ship"), where these sorts of structures are
| probably inevitable because at the unit of 'space station' you
| can't hardly _stop_ them from moving around between what various
| borders there may be.
|
| But you can still noodle with the idea on planet Earth, too.
| Obviously, our current systems have a lot of institutional
| inertia in the direction of centralization; for instance, the
| various impacts this will have on the United States due to how we
| choose representatives, etc. But you can imagine a world in which
| this gradually becomes more popular, and imagine what the follow-
| on effects may be. And also consider why it not how things work
| here. There have also been times and places in history where
| things did work _more_ like this, such as when and where "city
| states" were the dominant organizations rather than "nations".
|
| (I present this as an interesting thought topic, not as the
| solution to the world's problems. I think one thing you will
| rapidly notice if you put serious thought into it is that
| especially on Earth, the nature of militaries has a lot of impact
| on why we find it advantageous to bundle into larger collectives
| than our neighbors. But I do find myself wondering whether over
| the next century or so we could save ourselves quite a few
| shooting wars if we were all more willing to break up amicably
| instead of fighting to the death over who gets to control tho
| overly-large, bloated collectives. Alas... we almost certainly
| won't.)
|
| (Another example... in the space case, your choice of governance
| might actually manifest as concretely as the _operating system_
| your space ship or space station runs on, with its corresponding
| grants of permission or lack thereof to whatever higher powers
| your choice of governance has. And then that raises a whole bunch
| of further interesting possibilities.... on Earth though I would
| expect geography to still loom large on all discussions of
| sovereignty, though.)
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >One of the things I periodically mentally noodle with is, what
| would the world look like if it was a lot easier for units to
| choose what larger units they would aggregate into?
|
| This sounds like the idea of voluntary association, one of the
| cornerstones of anarchist philosophy. I don't have much more to
| add, but many other people have spent a lot of time "noodling"
| the idea and you may find it interesting.
| [deleted]
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| A huge part of politics is distribution and use of resources.
| Resources are constrained by access, and distribution is
| constrained by ownership - not only of resources, but of the
| space between them. Where you are and what you have determines
| what you need and how you get it. This applies whether you're
| in space, on land, in the ocean, etc. Hell, it would apply if
| we were all just bits of data in the internet. It's all just
| relative access to matter in spacetime. Whenever people start
| moving around, or changing what other things move around (or
| how), conflict occurs.
| brobdingnagians wrote:
| There is currently a process of devolution in the world,
| including Scotland, Catalonia, basically the entire former
| British empire, former Soviet states, and other places in the
| world. As areas become more peaceful, quite a few places start
| the see opportunities for governing themselves, and the
| benefits of creating the laws which directly impact their
| lives. Some countries technically have the right of secession
| codified in their laws [1].
|
| The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, under secession, notes
| [2]: " As the fear of forcible annexation diminishes and trade
| barriers fall, smaller states become feasible, and independent
| statehood looks more feasible for regions within states." They
| then continue, "Second, in roughly the same time period, the
| idea that there is a strong case for some form of self-
| government for groups presently contained within states has
| gained ground."
|
| Really, the only major benefit of large states is in common
| military protection; another one would be facilitating economic
| trade, but that can be taken care of by creating economic
| zones, like what the EU started as, with sovereign members
| participating by means of standard treaties. Even military
| defense could be done by common consent. In Europe, quite a few
| countries with military ambitions were stopped by coalitions of
| countries.
|
| If a region has a peaceful and prosperous culture with a
| defensible geography, then it tends to be more advantageous to
| self-govern in a small region.
|
| With the unlimited right of secession, the main question is, if
| someone doesn't _want_ to be part of a country, why should they
| be _forced_ to be part of that country? You are born into a
| country, nominally without choice, but that doesn't mean that
| you should be required to assent to the laws. Of course, most
| of the time the benefits outweigh the problems, but if they
| don't, then it is simply coercion to make someone do something
| that isn't good for them. That's abusive.
|
| [1] https://www.nationalia.info/new/10936/ten-countries-that-
| gra...
|
| [2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/secession/
| pchristensen wrote:
| You'd probably be interested in reading about a governance
| experiment going on in Honduras, called Prospera -
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prospectus-on-prospera
|
| It includes a codified section about choosing your own set of
| laws to abide by, and mechanisms to resolve disputes between
| them. It's a long read, but I found it fascinating and it's
| closely related to your idea.
| abnry wrote:
| I wonder if what you have in mind is like what Germany was
| before it was unified. Lots of city states that essentially
| ally together or don't. I don't think it is a stable situation
| once someone gains the means to conquer by force.
| jerf wrote:
| "I don't think it is a stable situation once someone gains
| the means to conquer by force."
|
| Obviously, it hasn't been historically.
|
| But an interesting long-term trend (across the last few
| centuries) is that "conquest by force" is becoming less and
| less effective. In the ancient world, "conquest by force"
| meant you got to take their land, take their food, take their
| livestock, and just in general take all their _stuff_ that
| they worked for without you having to work for it, and this
| is clearly an advantageous move. If you destroyed their
| infrastructure, meh. It was easily replaced.
|
| As our world becomes more and more technological, though, an
| increasing amount of our wealth is in people, infrastructure,
| and relationships. It is effectively impossible today to
| "conquer" a country in the conventional sense and enjoy their
| wealth as a result. You can force a slave to harvest wheat,
| but you can't force them to participate at full capacity in a
| software engineering role with a hundred other people. (Part
| of why as many people have observed, slavery was on its way
| out in the South whether the civil war happened or not,
| albeit perhaps decades later.) Militaries remain an important
| component of how countries relate to each other, as a chess
| understanding would suggest, even the _threat_ of mass
| destruction is (whether we like it or not) a very big and
| important stick, but today the threat is military
| _destruction_... not conquest.
|
| If we continue even farther into this direction, well... what
| would the effects be?
|
| (An interesting test case for the point of view I am
| propounding here is China's attempts to _militarily_ conquer
| Taiwan. If they do undertake it, it would be one of the most
| interesting such conquest attempts in a long time, because
| unlike the Ukraine /Crimea where I think Russia wanted the
| land rights more than anything else, China wants the _people_
| of Taiwan. Will the people of Taiwan just acquiesce and
| continue generating wealth for China to take? Or will China
| discover that the jewel is much less desirable than they
| thought? Stay tuned.)
|
| I'll end with, please note the difference between "less and
| less effective" and " _in_ effective". Military conquest
| isn't necessarily _ineffective_. But it used to get you a
| much higher percentage of the "good stuff" of the conquered
| territory. Today, if you "conquer" a nation, but had to wipe
| out its entire industrial infrastructure in order to finally
| convince it to stop resisting you, percentage wise you've won
| a lot less of what there was before you started to conquer
| them. It's not hard to get to the point where you won less
| than you would have had you just taken what you put into your
| military effort and used it to build locally instead of
| destroy.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| It might be worth rethinking your notions of 'long term'.
|
| Typically, there's a kind of time dilation where things
| that have happened recently seem both historically normal
| and of a longer duration than they really are.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >I'm not sure what you're referring to.
|
| In the sense that any modern trend (let's say 1920-2020)
| isn't old enough to really compare to something that's
| truly long term. It's to early to say. That, and we all
| have to deal with Historian's Fallacy.
|
| I also have to say that I think that most of the Earth's
| land surface has more value as real estate (above and
| below ground) than it has as some sort of tech/people
| stack.
|
| I freely admit that German is less likely to invade
| France (or France to invade Germany or Russia or Russia
| or Italy for that matter) in the modern era...assuming
| that wars are fought for purely profit-seeking motives.
| jerf wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're referring to. One of my
| viewpoints here is the difference between the ancient
| world, prior to 500AD or so, and today... seems like a
| long enough baseline to me....
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| But if everyone agrees to prevent conquering-by-force, why
| wouldn't it work?
| ativzzz wrote:
| Because whoever has the largest force wouldn't agree to it.
| For instance, if these counties chose to ignore all the
| rules and join Idaho, the U.S. has a very large force that
| it can use to prevent this from happening. In fact, it
| doesn't even have to use the force, simply having the force
| is probably enough.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Because you can break cities into boroughs and boroughs
| into neighborhoods and neighborhoods into blocks, and where
| does it stop?
|
| At some point, a tribe has to use force.
| krapp wrote:
| Humans don't work that way. We always create hierarchies of
| power and control, it's innate to our primate nature.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Many primates don't do that. Many humans haven't done
| that. Stop shilling for the patriarchy.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Put more simply, no one would agree to the idealistic
| utopian-like rule of "no conquering".
| krapp wrote:
| Plenty would agree to it, with their fingers crossed
| behind their backs of course.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| It doesn't work because of externalities. Like, you live in
| a city state, that's great, but the rural county that your
| water comes from decided to elect Trump as their leader-
| for-life and he decided that all water should now contain
| uranium and lead to ward off COVID-25. Good luck living!
| mkka wrote:
| A great book series that touches on "micro-democracy" in a
| fictional setting is Malka Older's Infomacracy series. Highly
| recommend along these lines.
| yesBoot wrote:
| What's great is all these exceptional, gritty people will put the
| work and expectations on everyone instead of simply moving to
| Idaho themselves.
| lostmsu wrote:
| What if they are the majority?
| yesBoot wrote:
| Rule of law, not majority.
|
| It may look that way should "one side" or the other control
| an official political body, but at least for now, we still
| abide election laws insuring the "rule of law" bit.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I don't think anybody is saying thid should happen without
| following the law so I am not sure what your point is?
| yesBoot wrote:
| The post I replied to was plainly written.
|
| If there's nuance and context intended it should be
| communicated.
|
| There is no "rule of majority". Questioning what should
| be if they're simply a majority is just not allowed given
| our system.
| nscalf wrote:
| Then they would probably be winning elections on the state
| level instead of trying to redefine what the state is.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| The person you were responding to in all likelihood meant
| majority of the rural / eastern part of the state not the
| entire state,
| yesBoot wrote:
| It does not matter.
|
| They have no power in our system to simply upend norms as
| they choose.
|
| They can pack up and move themselves if they don't like
| it. Others reality is not in their hands.
|
| The onus is not on everyone else to cater to them. It's
| to abide laws as they are written within our system of
| elections and statutes overseeing them.
|
| I'm not saying that's ideal. I'm saying that's how it
| works.
|
| Down votes do nothing to make it any less true.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As an Oregonian not living in one of those sparsely-populated
| counties that voted for secession, I wonder why the folks who
| want to be part of Idaho don't just vote with their feet and move
| there? There's no border wall keeping them in Oregon. These votes
| are just symbolic and won't get them to their Idaho paradise near
| as quickly as a U-Haul could.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| The whole point of democracy is to vote to change things you
| don't like about your government. I don't agree with them but I
| respect their right to vote on it. I wouldn't respect or
| legitimize a violent insurrection.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Yeah, but it's not like this vote is going to accomplish
| anything. It's just symbolic. If they really want to live
| under a more conservative government, well, there's one right
| there to the east.
| [deleted]
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| >I wouldn't respect or legitimize a violent insurrection.
|
| You know that's how the US was formed, right?
| jessaustin wrote:
| Sure, but the future can be better than the past. It would
| be wonderful for humans if the process of changing
| sovereignty were normally non-violent.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| It's almost like different situations are different.
| Violence has been a part of Oregonian state politics for a
| long time and as recently as within the last 12 months (1).
| I certainly do not condone nor support the violence of the
| far-right in the place where I've spent the majority of my
| life.
|
| I would love to learn about your perspective though. What
| deep issues do you think require violence in this
| situation? Do you support their right to leave the state
| violently if the state legislature doesn't let them? What
| level of insurrection do you think is okay? Are they just
| allowed to defend themselves within their county or are
| they justified attacking the state government outside of
| their lands?
|
| I'm excited to hear your response. I'm sure you're trying
| to add to the conversation and I can't wait to learn from
| you.
|
| (1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/01/oregon-
| state...
| petermcneeley wrote:
| There is more than just 'exit'
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
| dunkinkong wrote:
| For all the times you hear "if you don't like it, leave", it
| does rub me as rich that they would want to move the line
| instead of stepping over it. I'm not saying it's easy, but
| giddy up, how about some pioneering spirit?
| therealjumbo wrote:
| What is the typical response to "if you don't like it leave"?
|
| Why isn't "if you don't like it leave" a productive
| suggestion in pretty much any case?
|
| Per the guidelines of this site, we are recommended to take
| the most charitable interpretation of the other commenter's
| post. Similarly, you could pay more heed to the more nuanced
| arguments of the other political side, and just ignore the
| non-productive arguments like "if you don't like it leave."
| Throwing that suggestion back over the wall, isn't going to
| lead to a productive conversation.
| avalys wrote:
| Maybe they like their home, their community, and their
| neighborhood, but what they don't like is having a bunch of
| people living in population centers far away who don't share
| their values telling them how to live their lives?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I don't know if you've lived in a lot of these places, but
| most of them are utterly dependent on those population
| centers to meet their basic medical, financial, and
| infrastructure needs. The cores in turn need resources from
| the peripheries to sustain themselves. There's no reason any
| of this has to be oppositional, except that the rural
| counties are pissed off about elections and lockdowns right
| now.
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| I don't quite agree with this view based on what I've
| seen/heard from small town folks.
|
| The narrative that rural counties depend on the centers for
| their infrastructure needs is a view that was created by
| the cities. In practice, people is small towns and rural
| counties are extremely self-sufficient. They know help
| isn't coming their way, and therefore are totally okay
| doing what needs to be done to preserve their communities'
| health. People grow their veggies, raise their own pigs,
| hold three jobs to pay the bills ...etc.
|
| People in small towns really couldn't give 2 f()cks about
| people from the city, but they get pissed off because city
| people come and try to tell them what to do. Basically,
| they've not asked for any help from cities before, so why
| should they be handed down constrains now?
|
| At least that's what I've seen.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Can you be more specific about where you've seen people
| in eastern Oregon and modoc/siskiyou living on local
| subsistence agriculture? These areas are mountainous,
| high altitude, and incredibly arid, not exactly prime
| agricultural land. That's a big part of why they're so
| lightly populated.
|
| As for jobs, their main employers are typically some
| combination of tourism, ranching, and most of all,
| government. Often it's colleges and medical facilities
| that are the largest employers overall, which critically
| rely on state funding.
|
| I've definitely heard people in these areas who _say_
| they don 't need doctors, schools, or roads, but
| hopefully we can agree that it's a silly position and not
| an argument most people would make.
| resntoirnetien wrote:
| > In practice, people is small towns and rural counties
| are extremely self-sufficient.
|
| The narrative that rural counties are extremely self-
| sufficient is utter-nonsense, cult-like thinking. They
| don't have the population, tax-base, or non-
| individualistic thinking to do anything at all. They're
| dead in the water without outside funding, which comes
| from the state/county where people actually live/work.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Sure, but if they feel that way and if they actually think
| Idaho will be more aligned to their values then it's not far
| away and it looks a whole lot like Eastern Oregon. These
| symbolic votes won't change anything for them. Ironic that a
| lot of these folks are in the "love it or leave it" camp.
| xrd wrote:
| I'm confused, are we talking about the electoral college
| system, or about Oregon?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean their statement can be generalized to both but they
| are talking about the urban centers in Oregon.
| wwweston wrote:
| > a bunch of people living in population centers far away
|
| "Far away" being "within the same state"?
|
| > "telling them how to live their lives"
|
| Yes, tell us the horrifying tales of distinctive
| micromanagement the people of Eastern Oregon have to suffer
| from.
|
| If you live in society featuring representative government
| and rule of law, no matter where you live you'll run into a
| situation where you won't be part of the plurality.
|
| And yes, frequently, "population centers" are going to be
| where the majority of people live, which means in _any_
| state, you 're going to have the same problem. Which means
| this complaint is essentially about the idea that certain
| minorities get that they should have the right to impose
| _their_ values on the majority.
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| > "Far away" being "within the same state"?
|
| Don't confuse Oregon with some small New England state.
| It's the 10th largest, clocking in at nearly 400 miles E-W.
| For reference, if you drove 60mph and managed to take a
| straight line across it'd be over 6.5 hours of drive time,
| and the physical geography drastically changes in that
| distance.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| >Which means this complaint is essentially about the idea
| that certain minorities get that they should have the right
| to impose their values on the majority.
|
| I don't think you understand what the word impose means.
| How is asking to leave imposing something on anyone?
|
| If you want to see an example of minority groups imposing
| beliefs on the majority you should look at BLM and lgtbq
| communities.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Idaho has become very expensive in the last few years. It's
| basically Western Wyoming, but for poors.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| More expensive than Oregon? What parts of Idaho? It's a big
| state with lots of empty space hard to imagine that it's all
| expensive.
| bombcar wrote:
| Because voting is easy and moving is hard.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I do have to wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just move state
| functions, as many as are practical, to the county level.
|
| Counties are perfectly capable of being 100% in charge of their
| own schools, roads, police. They largely are, but subject to a
| great deal of probably unnecessary state control.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| This might make school quality even more unequal. No thanks.
| pii wrote:
| I think we might end up with counties mandating the teaching of
| some pretty abhorrent things if we did that
| jdminhbg wrote:
| School systems are already run at a sub-county level, and
| depending on your politics you can pick which things being
| taught are abhorrent.
| jfengel wrote:
| That sounds to me like it would create a ton of redundancy, as
| different organizations reimplement nearly-identical policies.
|
| And then it creates a ton of uncertainty. A different thread
| was already complaining about the uncertainty of whether
| children can inherit debts from their parents, which varies
| from state to state. Is it really a boon to have it vary county
| by county?
|
| "Simpler" would generally be to centralize what can be
| centralized. Put all your eggs in one basket, and then make
| sure it's a really good basket. That's not always the best
| policy, but if you're looking for the _simplest_ policy, it 's
| usually Don't Repeat Yourself.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| Tons of redundancy also creates tons of room for fresh ideas,
| this basically applies the ideas of capitalism to government.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| The natural endgame for that is to place all governmental
| function at the federal level.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'll be honest, I do find it kinda weird that we have 50
| different definitions of "murder" in the US, and a lawyer
| from the next state over is legally forbidden from helping
| you out if they haven't also studied for your state.
|
| And I find it equally weird that each separate state gets
| to define health care regulations, such that separate
| companies are required in each different state. Lots of
| duplicated efforts.
|
| There are certainly some functions that are best managed
| locally, and I suppose there must be some value to the
| "laboratory of the states" notion (though there are way,
| way too many variables for any of these experiments to
| actually be informative).
|
| But in general, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff that I'd
| just as soon see pushed up rather than down. It would save
| a lot of headaches. There is surely some stuff that could
| be pushed down, as well.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It's a delicate balance that needs to be constantly
| observed and adjusted. That's why politics is messy.
| asdff wrote:
| Having things at the county level that are currently state
| functions will break a lot of cities, like Atlanta, which are
| divided into several counties and leads to issues when it comes
| to regional planning or transit. I think that we should instead
| remove the city government from having undue influence on the
| wider region. Beverly hills managed to stall the LA county
| purple line subway extension for nearly 25 years, and now the
| costs to do work planned several generations of planners ago
| are enormous.
| jspaetzel wrote:
| Welcome to the Libertarian party.
| blakesterz wrote:
| The URL of this story is interesting:
|
| https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/05/19/Oregon-Idaho-Dona...
|
| I assume the "Oregon-Idaho-Donald-Trump-Joe-Biden" is some SEO
| thing? It doesn't seem all that central to the story.
| joekim wrote:
| Trump is a central facet of the story because those counties
| wanting to join Idaho favored Trump in the election.
| lmkg wrote:
| The most innocuous explanation is that the URL was
| automatically generated from the headline, and then the
| headline was later changed but the URL was not. I've seen that
| situation happen on multiple news websites. Most commonly as
| new information is added to an existing website, but sometimes
| the headline will simply get changed over the course of the day
| as the article is promoted from the middle of the page, up to
| the top, back down to the bottom.
| nkozyra wrote:
| It strikes me as though it's just jamming tags together to
| build a slug.
|
| This was once really useful for SEO but is less so in 2021.
| specialist wrote:
| Those voters will be surprised by Idaho's tax burden. Higher than
| OR and WA, closer to national norms. Very reasonable.
|
| I've been pitching the idea of an astroturf (fake) tax revolt
| campaign in Eastern WA, demanding the commies in Olympia adopt a
| proper conservative tax regime like Idaho's. IIRC, WA State's
| yearly tax revenue would then be $3b greater.
| danaris wrote:
| They'll be surprised first by the fact that they can't actually
| _do_ this on their own--AIUI, it would require Congressional
| intervention to reassign land from one state to another.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| For reference, this is about 100K people of 4.2M in Oregon (1).
| The rural counties of Southern Oregon and Northern California
| have been proposing the state of Jefferson for a while now (2).
| From my experience living there for a few years, it's the most
| libertarian place I've ever seen. It's like Texas without the
| Christianity. People there generally support gay marriage,
| abortion, and cannabis legalization but also low taxes, no gun
| restrictions and limited government.
|
| (1) https://www.oregon-demographics.com/counties_by_population
|
| (2)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_st...
| jdhn wrote:
| The counties that make up Jefferson could also be absorbed into
| Western Nevada, but that's not as sexy as becoming your own
| state.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It varies a lot. I spent some growing up years in Southern
| Oregon and there definitely was a strong evangelical, anti-gay
| marriage, anti-abortion etc. contingent in the town where I
| was. Lots of Birchers & KKK types as well. This was in the 70s
| and while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically
| shocking, it seems like we had a lot of similar kinds of
| conspiracies running rampant in small southern Oregon towns
| back then as well.
|
| My dad was a science teacher so we felt pretty much like an
| island of progressivism in a sea of very right wing folk. More
| than once I recall him shaking his head and muttering something
| like "These people are nuts!" after an exchange with a local
| that went off the rails into conspiracy land.
| [deleted]
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| I mean Oregon was founded as a white only state it's right in
| there constitution.
|
| > No free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the
| time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside
| or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any
| contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative
| assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by
| public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for
| their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the
| punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or
| employ or harbor them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws
|
| So it's not surprising so much of the state is like this.
| People give the south crap but the Pacific Northwest was
| literally founded on these ideals and it still very much
| persists to this day.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| The current racism in Oregon is certainly not something I
| want to understate but it's unfair to compare Oregon now to
| the deep South now. The whole of the United States was
| founded on slavery but a lot has changed. Not nearly as
| much as has changed in the South. For example, President
| Obama lost the national white vote 43% to 55% in 2008 (1).
| In 2008, more than 89% of the voters in Oregon were white
| and voted for Obama by 59% to 41% (2). I think it's fair to
| say at least recently, the white people in Oregon think
| very differently than the white people in the South. Of
| course, issues around race continue to exist in significant
| and meaningful ways in Oregon. But saying it's all the same
| is deceitfully misleading.
|
| (1) https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2008
|
| (2) https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/states/e
| xitpo...
| smaryjerry wrote:
| This assumes all votes were based on race and that voting
| for a white person makes you racist and voting for a
| black person makes you not racist. There is just so much
| wrong with that.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Your response is disgustingly incorrect. President
| Obama's election as the first black president certainly
| included significant racial elements. When comparing it
| to Clinton vs Dole in 1996, Clinton lost the white vote
| 42% to 44% (1). Obama lost the white vote 43% to 55% (2).
| Both Clinton and Obama won by 8% differences.
|
| Yes, not voting for the black candidate over the white
| candidate doesn't make you racist. But to ignore race
| altogether as a factor is just as ignorant and even more
| damaging. The 2008 president election was one of the most
| racially divisive elections in US history (3).
|
| (1) https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1996
|
| (2) https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2008
|
| (3) http://www.columbia.edu/~tko2103/GVF20110722.pdf
| generalizations wrote:
| You left out something important. In 1996, Clinton won
| the African-American vote 84% to 12%. In 2008, Obama won
| the African-American vote 95% to 4%. That's a far larger
| difference.
|
| You're right: let's not ignore race. _By your own logic,_
| if you 're saying the white polling numbers show white
| racism, then you have to admit that the African American
| polling numbers show far more extreme racism on the part
| of African Americans.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It doesn't _assume_ anything. It registers evidence for
| one hypothesis over another. If the evidence doesn 't
| move your priors at all, then you're not thinking
| rationally. Of course there are other factors as well
| (which perhaps dominate), the strictness of the Dem/Rep
| split, etc. but this one piece of evidence _should_ move
| you in the direction described.
| generalizations wrote:
| > The whole of the United States was founded on slavery
|
| Citation needed. I'll be curious how you show that each
| state was "founded on" slavery, and how that was true
| from the inception of each of those states.
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| Slavery was the chief issue preventing the colonies from
| creating a united government. At first, the Articles of
| Confederation created a shell of a government that
| quickly fell apart leading to the constitutional
| convention and the creation of the US Government as we
| know it today. At the time, slavery was the most
| contested issue when writing the current constitution.
|
| It's important to recognize almost all of the economic
| power of the US came from slave labor exports like
| tobacco. That's why we have so many Virginians as
| founding fathers and why the capital was put in Virginia.
| The compromise that led to the Southern Colonies
| accepting the US constitution is famously known as the
| 3/5 compromise. This compromise heavily impacted US
| politics for decades as new states had to be evenly added
| to maintain the balance between slave holding states and
| non-slave holding states. When this balance fell apart,
| the civil war started.
|
| The issue of slavery weighed heavily in the creation of
| the US from political, economic, and cultural
| perspectives for decades. Slavery formed the economic
| basis of the early United States and 250 years later,
| we're still feeling its impact.
| cafard wrote:
| There were exclusion laws in a fair bit of the Midwest back
| in the day. I don't know that those states are any more or
| any less racist than the rest of the US.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| >while the whole QAnon thing now is epistemlogically shocking
|
| only if you have forgotten, as you say, the great satanic
| panic(s) of the 70s and 80s. And, every few decades, going
| back to about Carthage...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-
| pa...
| dumbfoundded wrote:
| I recently moved from Eagle Point so probably not too far
| away from where you were. It's certainly a strange and
| diverse set of people. Everything from weed growers to
| hippies to evangelicals to conspiracy nuts and everything in
| between. Most of the people I met there generally distrusted
| the government and couldn't care less about what you did on
| your own land.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Wandering around the back roads near Cave Junction, I rode
| past a barn with a giant mural advocating world peace and
| love for all. The fence around the barn was plastered with
| 'trespassers will be shot' signs. It is, indeed, it's own
| world...
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| It really is kind of a weird place. I recall that soon
| after we moved there one of my dad's colleagues explained
| the situation something like this: "You know about
| Appalachia, right? Well, it's like there was a part of the
| Oregon trail that went directly from Appalachia to Southern
| Oregon - this is Appalachia West." The KKK was really
| active in that area for a long time which seems weird for a
| place on the West Coast - but then again, Oregon was
| founded on excluding Black people.
|
| But then we also had The Rainbow People which were a large
| hippie group that traveled around the PNW and often came
| into our area for big camp outs. Talk about a cultural
| divide.
| Frondo wrote:
| Oregon has a long history of encoding racism into law,
| from the Black Exclusion laws from its early history to
| sundown laws that lasted into the 20th century.
|
| Idaho, too -- the Aryan Nations had their headquarters in
| the Hayden Lake area for a long time, until the early
| 2000s if I remember.
|
| It's only in the big cities that you get a lot of a
| liberal/progressive presence, outside that you get
| anywhere from libertarians to evangelicals to the
| outright racists/alt-right types.
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| Neo-nazis and other racial separatists explicitly
| advocate for the pacific north west to be their home, as
| they consider it to be the furthest from Atlanta, which
| they consider to be majority black. The PNW is also home
| to Christian nationalist terrorists like Matt Shae, who
| advocate forced conversion and murder of non-Christian
| minorities.
|
| Fun fact: Oregon arrests and prosecutes minorities more
| aggressively than every other state in the nation.
| klyrs wrote:
| The University of Washington in Seattle was super
| progressive and accepted black students. Cool, right?
| Nah, the campus was north of the Montlake Cut, so black
| students weren't allowed on campus past sundown -- a
| little past 4 PM in the winter -- until the late 60s.
|
| This wasn't somehow special to Seattle, either, but I
| grew up south of the cut and always wondered why the
| north end was so white until I learned my history[1].
|
| In public schooling, the framing of the civil rights
| movement in history classes made me think that it was
| somehow a problem that the South had. Turns out, every
| major city I've looked into was segregated, until that
| became illegal. And even so, real estate agents subtly
| perpetuate the intent of those old laws _to this day_
| [2].
|
| [1] http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/realestate/blacks-
| minorit...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Idaho votes republican right? And Oregon is a swing state? So
| moving 5 republican counties from the later to the former would
| be a good move for anyone opposed to Trump 2024...
|
| As an old style Liberal, it's nice to be able to have my cake and
| eat it, though I'm not actually American so...
| jessaustin wrote:
| The last Republican who won Oregon was Ronald Reagan. Although,
| to your point, _LBJ_ was the last Democrat who won Idaho.
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| I'll take "things that will never happen" for 500 Alex.
| mjevans wrote:
| Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards the
| belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative values
| in government and probably a lack of understanding in how the
| government of the people serves the people. More precisely how
| taxes and math work.
|
| The GAO and similar offices should do a better job of preparing
| reports on where every collected tax dollar is being spent; both
| in the physical sense as well as in the sourced income sense. A
| citizen should be able to approach this from either the
| government side (pick a city or unincorporated area) or enter
| their zipcode and approximate income and see where the money is
| flowing from and to. Of particular interest would be trying to
| categorize areas with positive or negative contributions to a
| person's or region's productivity. Investments in infrastructure,
| such as education or for transport (of various things), should
| also be given special categorization as they are some combination
| of a shared burden and long term payoff.
|
| Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in the
| US very elusive. My personal believe is presently, for lack of
| data that I can digest, that the far right is probably focused
| around emotions.
|
| # Possibly religious, in that some interpretation of ancient
| values systems drives them to desire a simple world in which
| those are imposed upon others?
|
| # Possibly anarchist, in the sense of some romantic fantasy of
| self reliance (minimal government) and true grit; while
| forgetting or being ignorant of how society and government
| provide benefits (E.G. civil services such as fire, medical, and
| security aid).
|
| # Possibly just believing the lies of people that say things they
| want to hear.
|
| Or maybe the driving force is something different entirely that I
| haven't realized because it's just so obvious to someone that
| believes in it that it doesn't get said.
|
| Offhand I don't think it's likely to be religiously based, and if
| it's charismatic attraction based I'm not sure what siren song is
| luring the voters.
|
| I wonder if the interactive report on government spending and tax
| effectiveness might help find a common ground, or at least
| salient points to discuss for those who don't understand the
| benefits of buying in bulk and enriching the commons.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| I would love to see the data, but from the data I have seen,
| the data conflict with the popular (populist) narrative. A lot
| of people in America seem to believe that the hardworking "real
| Americans" in the middle of the country are subsidizing the
| poorly-run coastal liberal enclaves. In reality, the money
| almost always flows in the other direction; taxpayers in cities
| are subsidizing the rural-dwellers. This has nothing to do with
| work ethic, it's just a hard fact that a lot of costs scale
| with square miles instead of with people (roads, emergency
| services), and that lower cost of living in the country leads
| to lower incomes which lead to lower tax revenue.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Part of this has to do with how we've been able to drive down
| agricultural costs by means of automation over the last
| century which has driven a move away from family farms to
| larger corporate farms. In 1900, just under 40 percent of the
| total US population lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in
| rural areas. Today, the respective figures are only about 1
| percent and 20 percent.[1]
|
| Sure the coasts are creating more economic output by far, but
| people need to eat food. Agriculture is always going to be
| important, but lot less people are involved in it than ever
| before. This is part of what's led to the urban/rural divide
| where the rural folks feel left out - there just aren't as
| many of them as populations have migrated to cities. This is
| why people in rural areas feel increasingly left out. It's
| mostly due to economic forces that are out of their control.
|
| [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-
| americ...
| threatofrain wrote:
| But only a slim slice of rural living is on farms, or are
| you talking about immigrant Latinos who are left out of the
| political picture?
|
| The supermajority of people working American farms and meat
| shops are Latino immigrants.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| I definitely don't think we should ignore or minimize the
| contributions of rural Americans. I do think we need to do
| a better job of making the costs associated with rural life
| more explicit. This is a big deal in California, where
| people have pushed further and further into the wilderness,
| putting themselves at huge risk for wildfires while also
| increasing the number of miles of power lines that need to
| be built and maintained; these very power lines are one of
| the main causes of wildfires.
| causality0 wrote:
| _New_ power lines are almost never the cause of
| wildfires. Old, poorly-maintained lines are. For example,
| the Camp fire that killed 86 people was caused by a
| hundred year old line that hadn 't been serviced in
| decades. For miles of line around the origin site of the
| fire the C-hooks looked like this:
| https://i.imgur.com/r42KsHR.jpg
| u801e wrote:
| This has also happened to manufacturing and coal mining to
| a certain extent. But, unlike agriculture, the demand for
| certain resources like coal is significantly less than it
| used to be, but people in the affected areas haven't been
| able to find work in other fields.
| ghaff wrote:
| You have to be careful with the 80/20 US Census split
| numbers between urban/rural. Between myself and a couple
| neighbors, we're on 100 acres next to even more
| conservation land. One neighbor has an apple orchard.
| Another a Christmas tree farm. The town I'm in is
| considered urban because we're near a major city and
| adjacent to another small city.
| philistine wrote:
| But you are urban. You are near a major city, and
| adjacent another small one like you said. Urban versus
| rural is not a measure of closeness to nature, it's a
| measure of closeness to other humans.
| ghaff wrote:
| It depends on your definitions. A lot of people would
| object to defining urban as encompassing having to drive
| anywhere except to connect to immediate neighbors. I can
| basically go to my two immediate neighbors. Otherwise I
| have to get in a car. Is that urban?
| thoughtstheseus wrote:
| Sounds like a suburb. The real inefficient structures.
| briefcomment wrote:
| In what suburb do you have only two neighbors within
| walking distance?
| edoceo wrote:
| Rural is defined in USA here:
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-
| population/rur...
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Those people in the middle of the country believe that if
| they all quit their jobs and demanded a government-given
| wage, that the country would starve to death.
|
| If all of the people at facebook, google, and twitter quit
| _their_ jobs, however, all that would really happen would be
| that the country would get a bit more peaceful.
|
| You're talking about how much is taken in taxes. These people
| are talking about how much is given in life.
| [deleted]
| threatofrain wrote:
| Are you talking about immigrant Latinos, who constitute the
| supermajority of the farm and meat production labor you're
| talking about? Yes, I can totally see how they feel left
| out of the American political process; sometimes they are
| even called "illegals" by their fellows!
|
| And the families who own farms capture the lion's share of
| the fruits of labor!
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Sounds like someone's been watching a bit too much Fox
| Propaganda.
|
| Farms are already subsidized by the government. Imports are
| already subject to tariffs precisely to protect farmers.
| Who do you think pays for those subsidies, and who pays for
| the tariffs? Yeah, the "coastal elites" that you've been
| trained to hate.
|
| In farmers stopped benefiting from the largess of the
| coast, _they_ would starve to death, and everyone else
| would have cheaper food.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| Just FYI if they starve to death there's no one to plant
| or harvest the food.
|
| Also, if your argument is that the subsidies are
| unnecessary that would indicate that farming is
| profitable and they would in fact not starve to death.
| The point you're trying to make kinda collapsed on itself
| bud.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Your reading comprehension skills are terrible.
|
| 1. In this hypothetical situation, the cheaper food comes
| from abroad, now that there are no import tariffs.
|
| 2. I never said subsidies aren't necessary: I don't know
| how you can infer that point from what I wrote. I said
| that subsidies exist to protect American farmers, so
| American farmers should stop complaining about those who
| fund them. American farming is as profitable as it is now
| precisely due to those subsidies.
| CountDrewku wrote:
| I think you need to read up on why the subsidies were
| started in the first place because you're obviously
| clueless.
|
| The rest of your argument is laden with all sorts of
| cognitive dissonance. Subsidies are given for things like
| food because if a society doesn't of have food it's a
| really bad thing so the government props up the industry
| in bad times (in this case during the Great Depression)
| and we don't starve. It's not an altruistic handout, it's
| way of keeping you from starving to death genius.
|
| The fact that you think it's a generous handout from the
| "elites" and government indicates that you think it's
| unnecessary which means the farmers are profitable on
| their own and your entire asinine "hypothetical" comment
| about them starving to death without it gets thrown out
| the window. The subsidies cannot be both necessary and
| considered a generous handout from the coastal elites.
| Pick one.
|
| We import about 15% of our food supply right now. Good
| luck making up the other 85% with cheaper imports.
| Relying on external food supplies is a massive
| disadvantage as well.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| Yeah, you should definitely read up on how farming
| subsidies came about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agric
| ultural_policy_of_the_Uni...
|
| Food got so stupidly cheap it makes no sense to grow it
| in the US anymore. So farmers demanded that people in
| cities pay for their lifestyles out of our taxes. And
| then they go around being entitled about it.
|
| I've had enough of farm welfare queens. Get farmers off
| of welfare and let us import food from places that can
| grow it competitively. If we can't make up the other 85%
| from somewhere else, that's great, then US farmers will
| show that they can grow food at a reasonable place
| without welfare.
|
| These hateful people that survive on the welfare handouts
| from cityfolk and then turn around and vote for
| Republican idiots like Trump have gone too far. Time to
| cut them off.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Even though I understand your outrage, it's a terrible
| idea to move our food chain abroad instead of subsidizing
| farmers. That's a huge national security risk.
|
| It would be better if the subsidies were limited to
| smallholders on ~100 acres or less, which would resolve
| the rural depression issue.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| After Covid, I never thought I would see an argument for
| why all of the nation's food should be grown in another
| country...
| lief79 wrote:
| Have you considered just how much of the international
| surplus the US produces, and how much of the total
| production it currently consumes?
|
| I suspect running the numbers would indicate a clear
| international need for the US breadbasket, and not a
| decrease in overall cost due to a large drop in supply.
| aeternum wrote:
| The US is only the world's largest producer of corn, and
| of that, 40% is turned into fuel (ethanol) and 36% is fed
| to animals. 20% is exported, where again a significant
| amount is used for animal feed & ethanol.
|
| So meat and maybe gas would become slightly more
| expensive but the world would most certainly not starve.
| TracePearson wrote:
| Because thats the divide? Silicon Valley vs family farms.
| Give me a break...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Is this suggesting we could actually live without Facebook,
| Google and Twitter.
|
| Many of us did that for many years of our lives. At the
| time, I never anticipated with the internet and eventually
| the web is that people who had never experienced life
| without it could so easily be caused to lose sight of what
| is possible, in favor of the mess we have today. The
| biggest impediment I see to positive change is that younger
| generations are being indoctrinated into a world where
| "tech" companies, intermediaries supported by advertising,
| are perceived as an essential part of using the internet.
| This is of course patently false. But these companies are
| ultimately surveilling and controlling the dialogue. After
| all, internet subscribers use these "tech" company
| intermediaries to communicate.
|
| Before advertising took over the internet, the inter-
| network's user base was relatively small. Folks who used
| the internet recreationally during that time were likely to
| be technically minded people who enjoyed computers, the
| type of people many of which who are working with
| advertising supported "tech" companies today. Few of them
| are going to portray an advertising-free internet as a
| viable option. Their livelihoods today depend on
| advertising. Supporting Big Tech is their "work".
|
| Anyway, it is good to see at least one commenter can
| contemplate a better course for the future.
|
| It is possible to communicate and share over the internet
| without the use of Big Tech. However, as long as
| advertising-supprted "tech" companies sit between users,
| operating as intermediaries, that truth will keep getting
| buried deeper with every new generation.
| pchristensen wrote:
| To take this view you've shared charitably, what would
| "Those people in the middle of the country" who keep up
| from starving want in order to be satisfied with ... life?
| America? whatever bothers them about the current
| arrangement?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| To be clear: these aren't my views. I live on the Coast,
| and probably work at the same company some of you guys
| work at. I just also happen to have close friends who
| live outside of the bubble we all inhabit.
|
| They think that they want to be left alone. They don't
| want what they perceive as coastal values forced upon
| their kids in school.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The need for many government programs (money spent on
| enforcing hollywood copyright) and the tax rules that create
| corporate wealth but cost other areas must be considered. The
| midwest could do away with many expensive budget items but
| are forced to pay a share.
|
| The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties
| were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.
|
| Things are the way they are because the powerful like it.
| foota wrote:
| > The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import
| duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.
|
| You mean the wealth of the nation would decrease?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Any quality would decrease, and some people value that,
| so in that argument the wealth of the nation would
| increase.
|
| Most all the income and productivity gains from
| globalization and go to the wealthy, so if they lost
| billions of dollars, it is true that the nation would be
| less ""wealthy""...
| Aunche wrote:
| > Most all the income and productivity gains from
| globalization and go to the wealthy
|
| Income gains, perhaps. Productivity gains no. People buy
| foreign goods because they tend to be significantly
| cheaper. Capital in the US tends to be reinvested, so we
| would stagnate in innovation.
| icelancer wrote:
| Often forgotten about "subsidization" of one group to another
| - which area is more likely to have higher participation in
| the military and armed forces, and deaths in foreign conflict
| zones?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The whole "who's subsidizing who" is a bullshit talking point
| for both sides.
|
| The net inflows/outflows from any given state aren't that big
| on a per capita basis. They're small enough that anyone who
| either wants to not have to be told what to do by big city
| liberals or doesn't want to be held back by rural
| conservatives that would consider it a small price to pay for
| freedom.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I think it's worth considering whether or not rural vs urban
| is the best way to partition the argument. Cities tend to be
| very office/payroll dense, and rural areas more home dense.
| Some of the people who work in the city, and generate some of
| that revenue, may live in a rural area and consume services
| there.
|
| As far as cost scaling, I kind of disagree. That calculation
| doesn't work well in the US, where a large portion of the
| people who work in the city commute. I come from a rural area
| and live in the bay area now, and I can say without a doubt I
| spend much more time on the road here. Same with emergency
| services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and
| poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at
| all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running
| the same services here.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better
| in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response
| times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that
| would cost more than running the same services here.
|
| It matters on a per capita basis. What's the ratio of
| emergency service workers and their salaries to residents
| in your small and poort hometown compared to the bay area?
|
| Also infrastructure (roads, running water, electricity) are
| much more expensive on a per capita basis than less dense
| areas
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I'll agree with the latter point, but I think having less
| per-capita emergency services is a bug as opposed to a
| feature. I'd be willing to bet it's a matter of the
| land/buildings/employees necessary to run such services
| are far more expensive in areas where
| land/labor/everything is more expensive.
| rhacker wrote:
| I think the reason they think it's subsidizing the rich
| enclaves is because they believe the rich enclaves aren't
| really working - they're just generating revenue from
| information advantage. We're just building systems of control
| and making money from it. Compare that to them cleaning out a
| grain cart or chopping up a 300 pound pig. What is work? And
| why did I make nearly $300 today vs them who will make $300
| for that pig that they had to raise for 6 months?
| [deleted]
| _jal wrote:
| > Compare that to them cleaning out a grain cart or
| chopping up a 300 pound pig.
|
| Here is employment data on meat industry workers:
|
| https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-
| demographic...
|
| Here is ag farming:
|
| http://www.ncfh.org/facts-about-agricultural-workers.html
|
| The people you are holding up as exemplars are not the
| people who hold the views you're discussing.
| kolbe wrote:
| Why would you spend so much time writing so much about people
| who you admitted to knowing nothing about? Go visit rural
| America. Talk to people. Getting upvotes on Hacker News for
| presumptuous rants is no way to actually learn what's
| happening.
| GongOfFour wrote:
| Here is the website for one of the groups pushing for this:
| https://www.greateridaho.org/
|
| Taxes are just one part of this. They list these other issues
| of concern:
|
| > 1. American Values: Oregon will continue to violate more and
| more American values and American freedoms because normal rural
| Americans are outnumbered in Oregon. Not in Idaho. Addicts will
| be attracted to Oregon from all over the world by the 2020 drug
| decriminalization law.
|
| > 2. Law and Order: Oregon refuses to protect citizens from
| criminals, rioters, wildfire arsonists, illegals, and the
| homeless, but then infringes your right to defend your family
| with firearms. Idaho enforces the law.
|
| > 3. Low Tax: Idaho is the state with the 8th smallest tax
| burden, and Oregon ranks 33rd, according to
| https://taxfoundation.org/tax-freedom-day-2019 . Combining all
| taxes together, including sales tax, the average Idahoan pays
| $1722 less in taxes per year than the average Oregonian. That's
| averaging together every adult or child, employed, retired or
| unemployed. And cost of living is 39% higher in Oregon than in
| Idaho. Oregon tax rates will continue to go up due to a lack of
| willingness to control spending.
|
| > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent
| destruction of housing from huge wildfires.
|
| > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other
| state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries
| to revive and employ us again.
|
| > 6. Representation: The ruling party in the Oregon Legislature
| doesn't have a single representative from a rural district or
| from eastern or southern Oregon, except one Ashland
| representative. But our reps would be in the ruling party in
| Idaho, where our concerns and needs would be heard.
| joshka wrote:
| >American Values ... normal rural Americans are outnumbered
| in Oregon
|
| What sort of logic supports that American values are those
| held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest
| they are the normal ones?
|
| > 3. Low Tax
|
| The counties involved have median household incomes of
| 30-35K, making their tax burden $600-1100 total, a far cry
| from the average quoted, which is skewed right strongly by
| outliers (1%), which tend to be outside of the counties in
| this idea.
|
| > 5. Thriving Economy ... low unemployment
|
| Economy is a second order effect. How does having a low
| unemployment affect the number of jobs in the actual areas?
| Cause and effect are reversed in this claim.
|
| > 6. Representation: ... But our reps would be in the ruling
| party in Idaho
|
| I think the word is "governing", this is a little confused
| about the difference.
| troutwine wrote:
| > What sort of logic supports that American values are
| those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values
| suggest they are the normal ones?
|
| There's a very present "last bastion" framing in most of
| the right-wing media I track. It'll depend on exactly what
| the foundational beliefs of the community are that drive
| this framing -- John Birch society derivative folks arrive
| here via a different path than white supremacist
| survivalists and them a different path than evangelical
| fundamentalist Christians -- but it's common enough. It
| goes hand in hand with the notion that the US has fallen
| from the ideal set forth by the Founders and that only your
| in-group really gets it and has a hope of restoring it.
|
| Alex Jones is a good, mainstream-ish example. Dude's a
| Bircher and has spent decades coaching his audience to
| believe that Globalists are in league with Satan and intend
| to destroy humanity, if only they could get the US out of
| the way. Satan/The Globalists are _this_ close to
| succeeding. Once they do, Real American Values will
| disappear from the world, ushering in the post-human era.
| Jones preaches survivalism (sorta, feeding your neighbors
| to your daughters will give your daughters prion disease)
| to his audience and I hope you see how the two strains of
| thought would fester into a framing like you've called out.
| joshka wrote:
| Thanks - as a non-American living there, this is pretty
| helpful to further my understanding.
|
| I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the
| values being brought back from a point where they have
| disappeared.
| troutwine wrote:
| > I wonder whether there's any actual examples of the
| values being brought back from a point where they have
| disappeared.
|
| I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying
| here. Are you asking about examples of people that have
| been de-radicalized?
| joshka wrote:
| To be clearer - given Jones asserts that the reversal of
| satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where
| such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a
| society? I'm looking to understand perspectives opposite
| to my own here (as an atheist, non-American, liberal
| leaning person).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| One common example is that religious cultures have a
| family culture that can propagates through time by having
| replacement levels of offspring.
|
| So far, to date, every secular and atheistic culture
| tends towards inverting the demographic pyramid by having
| about half the required number of offspring to stabilize
| their culture/viewpoint through time.
|
| This view assumes that there is any meaning to life, of
| course.
| joshka wrote:
| And the counter example on that is that disproportionate
| taking of POC adult males from the community has a
| destabilization effect on that community / family.
| troutwine wrote:
| > given Jones asserts that the reversal of
| satanists/globalists is good, are there examples of where
| such a reversal has had positive measurable effects on a
| society
|
| Uh, it's not that kind of belief system. The notion that
| we should order society by measurable things is not
| necessarily a universal belief, even if it's one I agree
| with personally. Last bastion apocalyptism like I've
| described doesn't really do "measurable".
| samatman wrote:
| > _What sort of logic supports that American values are
| those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values
| suggest they are the normal ones?_
|
| America has been here for a long time. It's fair to say
| that values which are of long standing, still held by a
| significant fraction of the population, and them
| disproportionately descended from ancestors who have been
| American for many generations, are more American values
| than ones which fail one or more of these criteria.
|
| Note that the value that people who come to America and
| join the national experiment _become American_ is one of
| those values! That 's unusual, and needs to be pointed out:
| values aren't more American because they're held by old
| American stock, causality flows in the other direction.
|
| Not everything is a pure popularity contest. 51% of people
| supporting strict gun control (for the sake of argument)
| doesn't make that position more American, it just means
| more Americans happen to hold to it. That the Constitution
| makes altering its own text a matter of supermajority, both
| in passing and ratification, supports the idea that what it
| is to be American is not intended to simply shift in the
| winds on the strength of a bare majority.
|
| That all said, the bottom line is that these five counties
| feel that their values are better represented by the state
| government of Idaho than by that of Oregon. Federalism is
| one of those old American values I was droning on about
| earlier; I don't see why they shouldn't get the chance to
| secede from a state which isn't serving their needs, and
| join one which they think would.
| [deleted]
| fyijbxmuyidudm wrote:
| > What sort of logic supports that American values are
| those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values
| suggest they are the normal ones?
|
| The majority of the world has never shared American values.
| American values have always been divorced from popularity.
| American values does not mean something that corresponds to
| the values held by people that live in America,
| necessarily, either. And perhaps quite simply, the
| political majority in Portland does not, in any capacity,
| share a moral system with the people of rural Oregon.
| Furthermore, Portlander's would not identify their value
| system as American, nor would they associate something
| called "American" with something good. The people of rural
| Oregon would.
| madengr wrote:
| "What sort of logic supports that American values are those
| held by a minority of Americans. What possible values
| suggest they are the normal ones?"
|
| The US Bill of Rights.
| mjevans wrote:
| That's more informative than the article was, thank you.
|
| Points 1 and 2 should be combined and addressed as "how civil
| services protect and better the community".
|
| The issues of homelessness, drug addiction, and dis-
| enfranchisement of displaced people all relate to failed
| social safety nets and social planning. My understanding is
| that decades ago, in the early 80s IIRC, a terrible abuse and
| system for housing the mentally ill was disbanded.
| Unfortunately nothing took it's place.
|
| There are also very troubling issues related to lack of
| housing, lack of jobs, and lack of a proper program to
| connect displaced individuals with that type of societal re-
| integration. A New "New Deal", in any form, could enrich the
| value of society by re-educating and providing jobs which
| enrich the commons of society thus improving the lives and
| economic fitness of all. Better those handouts from our taxes
| trickle up to the rich, as all else currently does, than go
| directly to their coffers in tax cuts.
|
| Point 3, and probably 5 as well: The report I suggested would
| be the best way of understanding this issue for everyone. The
| issue is Taxes VS Benefits; not absolute tax taken. Until the
| balance of benefits to taxes is understood this is a straw
| man which needs more data for all sides to understand.
|
| Point 5: Regulation in specific. Ideally regulation prevents
| more problems than it causes. Regulation should allow
| assumptions about fitness for use, safety, and fairness to
| all parties involved to exist. If there is some regulation
| which does not contribute to this common good, to the
| preservation of the commons, or if there is a lack of
| regulation which is resulting in abuse, then said regulations
| should be revisited by the representatives of the people.
|
| 6: "the ruling party" I take this as slang for the currently
| dominant political party, but it is strikingly 'Us' vs 'Them'
| and very divisively secessionist. Extremely misguided. Reform
| of our electoral systems and categorization of representation
| should be undertaken to finally liberate all citizens from
| the First Past The Post voting system to ANY kind of instant
| runoff. We need to have a spectrum of political parties to
| promote compromise and plans that work for many rather than
| for few.
| fyijbxmuyidudm wrote:
| Point 6 goes beyond the voting system. The divide between
| the moral systems of the people of Portland and the people
| of rural Oregon, which mirrors the divide of the rest of
| the country, is a genuine religious schism. The
| iconoclastic woke and the Christians do not and do not want
| to share moral beliefs or behavior. There is no resolution
| to this.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > Points 1 and 2 should be combined and addressed as "how
| civil services protect and better the community"
|
| No, point 2 is specifically calling out antifa and BLM, and
| catering to racist fears, but in coded language.
| akomtu wrote:
| Looks like it's the old dispute about 2A and I kind of
| understand them. Last time I heard, Oregon voted to outlaw
| mags with more than 10 bullets. Rural folks have disagreed
| and resolved the conflict in a civil manner: by declaring
| that they will have different laws from the big city Oregon.
| schaefer wrote:
| Can I just say, for me the use of the term "illegals" under
| the section of Law and Order comes across as a dehumanizing
| slur.
|
| how unfortunate.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I'm struck by how "homeless" is included in a list
| containing "criminals", "arsonists", and "rioters". The
| homeless aren't people we need protection from, they're
| people we need to help.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Traditional conservative dogma requires the belief that
| poverty or misfortune follows from an inherent moral
| failing, never from circumstance. Therefore criminals
| cannot be reformed, homeless cannot be helped. The only
| solution is to remove them.
| fyijbxmuyidudm wrote:
| They can be both.
| fyijbxmuyidudm wrote:
| Illegals is, of course, a shorthand for illegal alien. The
| shorthand was created because of the regularity of having
| to describe such an individual. In what way could someone
| describe the reality of "a person who has violated
| international border agreements and is residing in a
| country in violation of the laws of that country" that you
| would not consider dehumanizing?
| staplung wrote:
| > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent
| destruction of housing from huge wildfires.
|
| I just spent a month in central Oregon and there were
| proscribed burns going on all over the place. It was the most
| forest management I've seen in any state.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| >violate more and more American values and American freedoms
|
| If they were really a proponent of freedom then they would
| support the freedom of adults to smoke/injest/snort/inject
| anything they want. "Addicts will be attracted to Oregon..."
| precisely because of _that_ freedom.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent
| destruction of housing from huge wildfires.
|
| If that's true then they'd be better off moving to Idaho,
| right? Given the vast area involved it's difficult to imagine
| that in a span of even a decade or more that the forests
| would be transformed so as to prevent wildfires. Staying
| where they are would only leave them in harms way for quite
| some years.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| > Oregon will continue to violate more and more American
| values and American freedoms
|
| Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an
| American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to
| decide what an "American *" is?
|
| > > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent
| destruction of housing from huge wildfires.
|
| They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates
| and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western
| Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes.
|
| > > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any
| other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural
| industries to revive and employ us again.
|
| Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe
| dream to me that's totally unfounded.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| > Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally
| an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to
| decide what an "American *" is?
|
| Have you watched Fox News recently? They're very clear:
| "American" refers to their (conservative, older, rural)
| viewers; "anti-American" refers to everyone else. People
| believe this.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I know. I just... I keep hoping that by pointing out the
| obvious silliness of the phrase "American Values" that
| maybe, someone somewhere will read it and be like, "Huh,
| you know, maybe what I meant to say was, 'My values'...."
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| One interesting discussion point about American values
| it's about whether it should be determined by the number
| of humans inside of American borders, or if it is just a
| birthright.
|
| I support using satellite imagery to get a day by day
| census count to include tourists and everyone inside of
| America as part of the decision making and voting process
| to improve infrastructure at least.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > violate more and more American values and American
| freedoms
|
| By this the folks in eastern Oregon are criticizing
| Democratic Gov. Brown for her approach to the pandemic: you
| know, normal things like closing restaurants and churches,
| requiring masks indoors, etc.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values"
| concretely somehow.
|
| Because right now they are just saying their opponents
| are "un-American" which means whatever it needs to mean
| without actually saying anything of substance.
| cratermoon wrote:
| They put it that way on purpose, it's coded language,
| full of dog whistles. They don't say the quiet part out
| loud.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?
|
| Their intended audience.
|
| Keep in mind, this is written to appeal to someone who is
| already likely to agree that Oregon is handling these
| topics poorly.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| I think I'm mostly just expressing frustration that this
| actually works. That anyone looks at that phrasing and
| says, "Yes, this makes sense."
| kardianos wrote:
| The last 30 years in Oregon, Both D's and R's have dis-
| empowered rural communities (Bill Sizemore comes to mind).
|
| The cultural assumptions present in rural Oregon, Suburban
| Oregon, and Portland are vast. Go out to Christmas Valley. Go
| there. Then walk around the Pearl district in Portland.
|
| You're trying to use pure reason. Go get some experience.
| [deleted]
| BobbyJo wrote:
| >My personal believe is presently, for lack of data that I can
| digest, that the far right is probably focused around emotions
|
| Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in
| their platform. For instance, what basis is there for universal
| healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You can't
| make the argument that it would 'save the government money' to
| the right, because, in their opinion, the government should be
| spending _any_ money on it, other than maybe paying for
| employees ' insurance. Every dollar the government spends on it
| now is just an example of how the government can't do anything
| right.
|
| I think it's common for people on opposite ends of the spectrum
| see the other side as 'not grounded in data'. After all, if
| they saw the reason in the opinions of the other side, they'd
| be in the middle instead of the end they're on.
|
| All that being said, I think more clarity in government
| spending would go a long way in creating more/less trust in
| government's handling of certain operations. Maybe the right
| sees less inefficiency than they imagined, maybe the left sees
| more, but we'd at least have some real data to compare.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| Except a lot on the left is driven by data.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Banning plastic straws, asserting that men should compete
| against women in sports if they identify as women, and
| eliminating SAT scores doesn't _seem_ like a science-driven
| approach, but more of a faith-based science-denialism.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > doesn't seem like a science-driven approach, but more
| of a faith-based science-denialism.
|
| Only if you are deliberately framing these points that
| way. I'll try to explain how these points can actually be
| explained as science-driven
|
| > Banning plastic straws
|
| In the US _alone_ , 500M straws were used per day (https:
| //www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-...
| ). Given that many of these end up in the environment as
| consumers simply discard the container wherever they are
| walking, this is a serious reduction in litter.
|
| > asserting that men should compete against women in
| sports if they identify as women
|
| This one is a really hard debate, however... hormone
| distribution varies enormously between the two major
| biological genders so we're already (effectively)
| selecting athletes with the "best" ratios. Add to that
| people with intergender bodies (e.g. XY chromosome set
| but fully presenting as "female", XX chromosomes but have
| "male" body parts), and it becomes a real mess to define
| what is a male, what is a female and where a specific
| individual should be allowed to compete in - even if
| you're only going by purely biological metrics (hormone
| levels, appearance of gender-specific body parts). Add to
| _that_ the "faith-based" stuff aka social gender norms
| and gender equality/anti-discrimination, and it gets very
| messy very soon.
|
| tl;dr: for this point, there cannot ever be a "scientific
| consent" on what's correct and what's wrong. Personally
| I'd argue for a body-weight differentiation in sports (as
| it's done in boxing) instead of gender-based, since that
| way you have at least some common factor that is closely
| linked with physical strength.
|
| > and eliminating SAT scores
|
| Scoring of almost all kinds has provable issues - and
| especially in education:
|
| - social background has massive effects on scores: rich
| parents can afford a lot of things closely linked to
| higher educational outcome such as private tutors, each
| child having their own room from a young age, send their
| children to well-funded public or private schools, or
| offering a stress-free environment for the child in
| general whereas poor parents are stuck with whatever the
| public school system offers, children often not having
| their own rooms which means they can't effectively learn
| if their baby sibling is crying in "their" room, and
| parents passing on their stress (poverty, overcrowding,
| homelessness, messy divorces, domestic violence) onto
| their children
|
| - ethnic background: children of minorities have been
| proven to be discriminated against by teachers even at a
| young age, not to mention stuff like systemic under-
| funding of schools in geographic areas where school
| funding is based on the taxable income of the people
| living in this area, which is (again) closely linked to
| ethnic background as a result of segregation and
| gentrification
|
| - government background: additionally to that, public
| schools may differ wildly in quality of teaching based on
| the funding priorities of county and state
|
| - scoring leads to teachers "teaching for the test" aka
| "bulimia learning" instead of actual long-lasting
| knowledge transfer. This is something tests aren't
| primarily at fault for, but nevertheless play an
| important role
|
| - scoring _disproportionally_ affects students with
| mental health problems (e.g. test phobia), with dyslexia
| / dyscalculia and other learning impediments, and also
| those whose talents are outside of language and math
|
| tl;dr: scoring is deeply flawed as a concept, where
| especially children from poor backgrounds (no matter if
| the family or the government is poor) suffer from massive
| discrimination.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| Genuine question: what's wrong with banning plastic
| straws?
|
| Edit: I know that paper straws are a pain to drink
| through, my question was more: why is banning plastic
| straws an example of "faith-based science denialism"?
| Alupis wrote:
| > Genuine question: what's wrong with banning plastic
| straws?
|
| The push to ban plastic straws was nearly entirely based
| on misinformation or lack of information. Most of the
| debate was propelled to the highest levels by a 4th
| grader that literally made the data up[1], but that data
| was used to prescribe a "science and data driven ban".
|
| Turns out, plastic straws really were never a big
| problem. Sure, single-use-plastic is a problem in
| general, but the ban of plastic straws has had nearly
| zero impact on the environment - or it could be argued
| it's had a negative impact since companies like Starbucks
| started using "multi-use" recyclable lids which in
| reality end up being single-use and are often thrown into
| the trash instead of recycling bin, and use more plastic
| material than dozens of straws combined.
|
| The plastic bag ban is the same way too... turns out
| those reusable cotton tote bags consume way more energy
| to produce than thin plastic bags, causing dramatic
| increases in GHG releases, energy consumption, etc[2][3].
| We now know plastic bags and straws are not a major
| contributor (or at all, really) to that massive plastic
| dump in the Pacific Ocean, which is mostly from fishing
| vessel waste tossed overboard. Good intentions with poor
| consequences unfortunately.
|
| It's this sort of "theater" that puts people off...
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-
| straws-b...
|
| [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/sustainable-
| shoppin...
|
| [3] https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-
| change-cotto...
|
| [4]
| https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-
| pacifi...
| Smilliam wrote:
| Hypothetical answer: A ban on plastic straws can
| unintentionally make life more difficult for individuals
| with motor disabilities.
|
| Paper straws break down relatively quickly and can lose
| suction effectiveness as a result. Reusable metal straws
| can cause chipped teeth or gum damage if bitten down on
| by someone with poor fine motor control. No straws at all
| can leave an individual unable to ingest liquids
| entirely. Reusable soft plastic straws would be ideal,
| but the tradeoff is that now we've placed yet an extra
| burden on an impaired person (or their caretakers) in our
| society because now they'll need to maintain a supply of
| clean, reusable straws that they need to transport with
| them. Disposable plastic straws are "soft" enough to not
| damage someone's teeth or gums too severely when bitten
| down on, but are more durable than paper straws to ensure
| reliable suction over time, and they do not require any
| upkeep or maintenance for proper hygiene due to their
| disposable nature.
| techsupporter wrote:
| I'm not sure if I can do this topic justice solely over
| text, but I'm going to try because I genuinely think it's
| important to address, and with the plea that I'm truly
| not trying to be a horse's ass here and disparage people
| who have different needs. If anything, I think people who
| have different needs are the ones being taken advantage
| of, both coming and going.
|
| This quote really stood out to me:
|
| > and they [disposable plastic straws] do not require any
| upkeep or maintenance for proper hygiene due to their
| disposable nature.
|
| It's a rather bright example of the problem our global
| society has put itself into: there's still a need to deal
| with these items, but that need is no longer on the
| person using the item; it has been outsourced to the
| rubbish bin and, thus, to society and the environment at
| large.
|
| We've done this to ourselves in myriad ways. Expanding
| public transport is "unfair" to people who have different
| needs because perhaps some people cannot quickly or
| easily board transit vehicles, or those trips do not go
| to the front door of where some people need to go. We
| cannot eliminate or shrink parking requirements or
| availability for the same reason.
|
| Politically, we stop at "well, can't do that" without
| considering "OK, how _could_ we do _almost all_ of that
| _with modifications_ for people who have other needs? "
|
| We've fallen into the perfect must be the only outcome
| otherwise why bother. Some of that is genuinely not
| knowing, but large parts of opposition to the changes we
| know we need to make--both individually _and_ on the
| companies and businesses supplying us in environmentally-
| poor ways--are disingenuously hiding behind those
| arguments simply to obstruct.
|
| That's frustrating.
| blisterpeanuts wrote:
| Tangentially, has anyone developed a good use for old
| plastic straws? Like melting them down to 3D printer
| filament, or maybe just switch to corn/soy based plastic
| that is biodegradable within a reasonable time? Paper and
| metal are just not good substitutes. I think some of the
| "anti-big government" sentiment comes from banning very
| useful items without some sort of acceptable substitute.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Paper straws don't work well if you take too long to
| drink or if you are drinking something thick.
| chx wrote:
| There's a lot to unpack in your short utterance I just
| would like to comment on eliminating SAT scores.
|
| > Noninstructional factors explain most of the variance
| among test scores when schools or districts are compared.
| A study of math results on the 1992 National Assessment
| of Educational Progress found that the combination of
| four such variables (number of parents living at home,
| parents' educational background, type of community, and
| poverty rate) accounted for a whopping 89 percent of the
| differences in state scores
|
| from https://alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/Standardized%20Te
| sting%20... if you really want I can dig up the old
| study.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Those same factors explain a large portion of differences
| in educational achievement. Doesn't that mean the test is
| then doing what it is designed to do?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Citation? Or is that just a data-free assertion? ;)
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Republican Reagan signed EMTALA which makes it so hospitals
| can't refuse service in emergencies due to ability to pay. It
| stopped people from dying in the street. They did not fund
| this new mandate and so we currently pay for this through
| higher insurance premiums and county/municipal emergency
| service budgets. Universal healthcare would be a more
| efficient way to pay for an already existing benefit. When
| uninsured chronic conditions have reached the point you are
| literally in the ER / close to death, you suddenly get tons
| of subsidized healthcare. Subsidized in a grossly inefficient
| manner. Universal healthcare would lower costs through
| prevention.
|
| I would have more respect for the right if they just admitted
| they are ok with people dying in the streets since they just
| ignore the economic effects of EMTALA.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Reagan is not 'the right'. He's a member of the Republican
| party who served 50 years ago. And again, universal health
| care only saves money if you start with the basis that the
| government will force private companies to take on
| customers that can't pay for service, something that is
| very much _not_ a right wing ideology.
|
| I'm not saying it's a bad idea or a good idea, I'm just
| saying there is no basis for universal healthcare that
| doesn't start with 'we need to help people'. Same with
| social security. Same with many other left wing policies. A
| lot of the problems around market inefficiency in
| healthcare are perfectly solvable without helping the poor.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| > if you start with the basis that the government will
| force private companies to take on customers that can't
| pay for service,
|
| EMTALA already does this and I don't see a push on the
| right to repeal EMTALA. Universal healthcare is a more
| efficient model of what is already happening.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I also don't see a push from republicans to repeal social
| security. That doesn't mean it isn't a socialist policy.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Are you saying EMTALA (people not left to die on the
| street) is socialism? I don't think that meets the
| definition of socialism.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| No, I'm saying something being supported (or at least not
| repealed) by republicans doesn't make it ideologically
| right wing. Republicans, like democrats, have a wide
| variety of beliefs in their platforms, both right and
| left.
| rmah wrote:
| Repealing social security has been a wink-wink, nudge-
| nudge part of the unspoken Republican platform since
| social security was created.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Here:
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-the-2005-social-
| secur...
|
| It wasn't sold as a push to repeal Social Security,
| because that polls extremely badly, but that's what it
| was.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| I live in a predominantly right-leaning area and know a lot
| of people who are against universal healthcare. I've talked
| with a lot of them about it, and every single person would
| be in favor of it if there was a magical guarantee the
| money would actually be spent properly and not corruptly
| misallocated. But the track record is so poor, and there is
| such little transparency, that they have no trust
| whatsoever. I can hardly fault them. And the left's
| argument of "give us more money, we promise to get it right
| this time" is hardly compelling. Obviously, accusing people
| on the right of being ok with others dying in the street
| doesn't help matters.
| [deleted]
| kstrauser wrote:
| Wait until those same people find out how private health
| insurance works. It's not fair to hate on public
| healthcare in a vacuum without comparing it to the
| horrendous private system we have now. Then it doesn't
| look very bad, correct, or opaque at all.
| j_walter wrote:
| This is exactly right. Pretty much anytime the government
| takes anything over or has a new program...it's a shit
| show from the beginning. See "Cover Oregon" for a waste
| of a few hundred million dollars...see "Pandemic
| Unemployment Fraud" for what is probably a hundred
| billion...see "PPP program" for what is continuously
| being found as having tons of fraud...see "Oregon
| Unemployment still programmed in COBOL and can't adjust
| the waiting period" for non-financial incompetence. If
| any area in government could run efficiently and we saw
| evidence of that...it would be a lot easier to convince
| everyone that things like universal healthcare would be a
| good idea.
| chrononaut wrote:
| I am not certain the point you are making.
|
| Are you saying you believe that there are no programs in
| existence, which are government-run, that are not "shit
| shows" ?
| ABeeSea wrote:
| >But the track record is poor, and there is such little
| transparency
|
| What exactly are you talking about? Don't republicans
| have a 40+ year strategy of "starve the beast" to
| purposely make government services worse specifically to
| build this distrust?
| la6471 wrote:
| Yes they can vote to leave the state but they should also not
| get any of the tax dollars from the more densely populated
| counties that stay behind. Thank you , sayonara!
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > Both sides have appeals to emotion and appeals to logic in
| their platform. For instance, what basis is there for
| universal healthcare other than 'we should help each other'?
| You can't make the argument that it would 'save the
| government money' to the right ...
|
| You're right, you don't say it would save the government
| money. You make the argument that it would save _everyone_
| money. No one has any incentive to care about the price of
| healthcare, currently. Not the suppliers, not the providers,
| not the insurers. And the consumers simply have no choice.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| >No one has any incentive to care about the price of
| healthcare, currently
|
| That's a problem that can be fixed without making the
| government the sole customer: Make people pay for their own
| healthcare.
|
| >Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers
|
| That's simply not true. They all have profit motive.
|
| >And the consumers simply have no choice.
|
| That's only true in emergency medicine, which is the
| minority of care most people receive.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| > That's only true in emergency medicine
|
| What would you do about emergency medicine in your ideal
| world though?
| BobbyJo wrote:
| I, personally, am pro universal healthcare to a degree.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > For instance, what basis is there for universal
| healthcare other than 'we should help each other'? You
| can't make the argument that it would 'save the government
| money' to the right ...
|
| Something else: It fosters a more competitive work
| environment, by allowing capable workers to choose the best
| firms.
|
| It also separates health cost, whose administration is
| expensive for businesses, from working capabilities of
| employees. It's a major problem for small companies.
|
| Finally, anything more than essential coverage could and
| should still be privatized, and paid for by individuals.
| Much like today's life insurance today. e.g., long cancer
| recovery and care.
| rhacker wrote:
| I own land in a rural area (house coming in maybe a year) and I
| have spoken to the neighbors. For the most part it's little
| things actually. Rules that the major cities deal with, like
| not being allowed to put up a specific kind of fence because
| the bureaucrats in the city look at .1 acre plots of land and
| don't like how certain fences look - where out here we're
| dealing with 5 to 100 acres (and in some cases a 40000 acres of
| land). Or that we should be required to pay "school fees" when
| we build a house because there's "no fucking school" out here!
| One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he's a builder)
| because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can have.
|
| There was one guy talking about Jesus but for the most part
| we're pretty sure he wasn't an anti-masker. Actually all of our
| neighbors have told us they wear a mask by the way. So yeah,
| it's really just getting away from the legal requirements that
| the populated places need but forget to loosen the rules far
| away.
|
| Now every county is different so take my input as a grain of
| salt.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| yea, thats not really the story in idaho/oregon area. A lot
| of the issue there is that lots of the land is owned by the
| federal government, and the people who live near by and are
| in ranching/mining/logging don't want to follow the rules the
| fed gov puts on operations in BLM land. There is a bit of
| "some guy 4k miles away in washington isn't allowed to tell
| me I can't ride my dirt bike here" attitude.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| > _One guy had to dismantle a building he erected (he 's a
| builder) because he maxed out on "how much roof" he can
| have._
|
| Please tell me what part of the country this is so I can
| avoid it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| If I were living in that state, I would build a fractal
| roof for my dog house that had close to an infinite surface
| area and then I would sue myself to teach people how dumb
| that rule is.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| >Given the article's mention of Rural vs Urban I lean towards
| the belief that this is driven by a sense of both conservative
| values in government and probably a lack of understanding in
| how the government of the people serves the people. More
| precisely how taxes and math work.
|
| Given the metastasizing of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real
| estate) sections of the economy, and their typical
| concentration in urban areas, I'd say that rural areas are
| basically in the same position as a colony to a colonial power.
|
| Shipping cheap raw materials to the cities, who in turn own the
| shares, banks, and mortgages, has always been pretty common.
|
| Of course, if you are in favor of colonialism....
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| A different lens to view this through has to do with economic
| and population shifts over the last century. Specifically the
| huge increase in agricultural productivity.
|
| "In 1900, just under 40 percent of the total US population
| lived on farms, and 60 percent lived in rural areas. Today,
| the respective figures are only about 1 percent and 20
| percent." [1]
|
| That's a large erosion of political and economic power in
| those rural areas as more people moved out of agriculture
| into other industries that tend to be located in population
| centers. Not sure how that changes unless we move away from
| large corporate farms back to smaller family farms (See
| various Wendall Berry essays and novels where he lays out
| what's happened to rural areas over the last century as
| family farms have dwindled), however, that seems very
| unlikely.
|
| [1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-
| americ...
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| The current definition of what is urban vs rural is very
| shaky. I don't think when theses numbers are brought up
| there is an understanding of what counted as rural then and
| what counts as rural now.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| In addition there's urban and there's urban.
|
| Remove the imperial capitals (DC or London) or financial
| capitals (London or New York) and the next tier down
| ain't so much.
| oogabooga123 wrote:
| What a patronizing take. No wonder they want to leave, if
| they're governed by people with your attitude.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| You're being downvoted because your statement is a bit
| inflammatory and leaps to condemnation. However, it is
| otherwise a very accurate take in my opinion. OP has
| presented their view as inherently rational, correct, and
| moral, and presented conservative views as "emotional" or
| "lacking understanding". That type of moral assertion
| absolutely IS one of the main complaints I see from rural
| conservatives about urban liberals.
| jpttsn wrote:
| What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a greater
| good, is shown to be wrong?
|
| Let alone the difficulty of tracing it: assume it's possible to
| show where every tax dollar went.
|
| Would you still favor this trnsparency if it's shown to
| sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of
| their would be constituents? Just hypothetically?
| wvenable wrote:
| > What if your assumption, that tax dollars go toward a
| greater good, is shown to be wrong?
|
| Wouldn't we call that a success? You can't fix something that
| isn't measured. If nobody knows anything concrete then all
| people have to go on is vague feelings.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _Would you still favor this trnsparency [sp] if it's shown to
| sometimes benefit individual politicians at the expense of
| their would be constituents?_
|
| Just Devil's Advocate, but wouldn't that be the _best_
| outcome? If it showed to which company every tax dollar went.
| Who the principals are in those companies. And the
| connections those principals have to politicians allocating
| the dollars?
|
| Especially if it showed this for every dollar, I'm finding it
| hard to see a downside. Am I missing something?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It is always about power.
|
| No reason to make it so complicated.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| The main driving force is that the rural residence are the
| remnants of the racist that moved to that area even pre-
| statehood. They don't like that their white power is fading and
| they want control.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| This is not only baseless, but incredibly inflammatory and
| dehumanizing. Hackernews is not the place for this type of
| comment.
| paxys wrote:
| The biggest driving factor is overexposure to news & social
| media which convinces otherwise well-off and content people
| that the "other side" is out to destroy their lives, so they
| must do something about it.
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| I think Covid is driving a great deal of this division now.
| People in rural Oregon see red states like Idaho almost
| entirely back to normal, without the promised piles of dead
| bodies in the streets, and feel like they could have that for
| themselves if not for Governor Kate Brown and the state's
| ridiculous protocols and mandates, which even include masking
| for outdoor youth sports.
| mc32 wrote:
| Note that this movement isn't recent and I think I'd traced to
| the proposed state of Jefferson[1] (in the NorCal, south and
| east Oregon areas), which was going to get a vote in Congress
| but WWII got in the way and never happened. It comes up from
| time to time; you'll see banners for it in rural areas.
|
| So it should not be framed as a pushback to current politics.
| They feel they've had reasons for a while.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_...
| cratermoon wrote:
| You can trace it all the way back to the Mormons and their
| idea of the State of Deseret
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret
| shaftoe wrote:
| Do you notice that you've defined your own viewpoint as
| rational and supported by data and the viewpoint of others as
| "probably focused around emotions"?
| DaniloDias wrote:
| OP's structure of argument should be a well established anti-
| pattern.
|
| I wish more people recognized that it is a tempting and lazy
| logical fallacy. It is fundamentally disrespectful to assume
| that people who don't agree with you are too emotional. If
| you make this argument, you are killing your own argument,
| unless you support it with facts. OP demonstrates this
| uncharitability by asserting a lack of data, and then
| assuming emotions explain it. Go hang out with a more diverse
| crowd, OP. You are robbing yourself of life's tapestry.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| It's particularly troubling language because depending on
| who the subject is, the validity of the argument is often
| treated differently.
|
| For example, If OP had made this argument about women I
| don't think we'd see so many upvotes on the comment and
| we'd see a lot more uproar. Despite the fact that women are
| routinely dismissed as being "emotional".
|
| Here, OP presents that there is insufficient data to hop to
| conclusions. That said, OP still dismisses "conservatives"
| on the premise of acting purely on emotion. The irony seems
| lost on OP but also other HN viewers.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > OP's structure of argument should be a well established
| anti-pattern.
|
| Agreed that accusing your opponent of not using facts or
| reason makes it hard to have an honest discussion.
|
| At the very least, if reason and facts are so important to
| you, what about the fact that this style of argument is
| empirically ineffective, and almost never persuades anybody
| to switch views? It's even dangerous to your cause, in the
| sense that it makes people defensive and more extreme in
| their views. If you care about outcomes, don't poison the
| conversation.
|
| I'm also skeptical whenever I see an argument that depends
| on the assumption that if _you_ just had access to all the
| facts, you 'd agree with _me_. In my experience, the more
| facts I learn about anything related to human behavior, the
| more complex the picture gets, and the less certain I am
| that anybody has it right.
| joshka wrote:
| Do you have rational data that would present this viewpoint
| as otherwise? How about helping us liberals understand the
| conservative viewpoint better if you have insight on this.
|
| Edit: please don't downvote based on disagreement - write
| something instead. This is a reasonable question asking to
| further understand the conservative viewpoint. Case in point,
| I'm upvoting buzzert's comments because they present a
| contrary, but interesting perspective.
| buzzert wrote:
| One particular example might be Oregon's decision to
| decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses are
| at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in just the
| last year. You might say the political party who calls the
| war on drugs "cruel and inhumane" is acting on emotion
| rather than reason in spite of all the statistics.
|
| [0]: https://drugpolicy.org/press-release/2021/02/drug-
| decriminal...
|
| [1]: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ERD/Pages/Oregon-trends-
| with-U.S....
| listless wrote:
| Another _could_ be letting people in Portland tear the
| city apart with impunity.
| yesBoot wrote:
| For most folks in Portland, pandemic aside, it's been
| life as usual.
|
| I have yet to encounter lefties in my SE hood terrorizing
| anyone.
|
| Plenty of Trump caravans last year, waking us up,
| shooting guns.
|
| All from outside the city.
|
| Sure violence is up but it's up all over. A side effect
| of a nation coddling old wealth, leaving the masses to
| rot.
| [deleted]
| yesBoot wrote:
| The war on drugs put people in prison for emotional
| belief those people were morally inferior.
|
| It rightly so should be abolished.
|
| To be replaced with trained medical help, detox programs,
| and a conversation about morality not tethered to
| superstition, or black and white judgments.
|
| But the fundies, acting out of emotion, prefer boxes.
|
| It's all emotion since humans are motivated by such. It's
| the outcome that should be judged.
| buzzert wrote:
| > To be replaced with trained medical help, detox
| programs, and a conversation about morality not tethered
| to superstition, or black and white judgments
|
| Why can't these programs exist while also having drugs be
| illegal?
|
| Also it doesn't help your position by using childish
| words like "fundies", FYI. Keep that on Reddit please.
| joshka wrote:
| > Why can't these programs exist while also having drugs
| be illegal?
|
| How would you make that work? Consider if drugs are
| illegal, then getting medical help / detox requires
| admission of guilt. This seems like a fifth amendment
| problem.
| buzzert wrote:
| Why should you have to admit anything to get treatment?
| Is that some kind of medical requirement I'm unaware of?
| whatisthiseven wrote:
| How should a doctor know how to treat you if you don't
| tell them what caused the problems? Doctors don't just
| hear you list a bunch of things you are "feeling" as
| symptoms and then output a pill to take. They need to
| look at your overall health, wellbeing, symptoms,
| medicine you are taking, diet, etc.
|
| You can't just show up to a hospital with crack or heroin
| withdrawl and be like "I don't feel well, please help
| me". They are going to ask _why_ you don 't feel well.
| joshka wrote:
| I'm talking just human nature here. If something is
| forbidden , illegal, subjectively immoral, etc. then it's
| difficult to both admit and seek help with that thing. I
| don't have any data to hand to back my assertion that
| criminalization negatively affects treatment, however if
| such data exists, then it would be less surprising (to
| me) than the inverse (criminalization makes it easier to
| get treatment).
| yesBoot wrote:
| Why must drugs be illegal?
|
| Is it everyone else's responsibility to protect you and
| your sensibilities?
|
| It hasn't prevented folks from consuming them, or
| becoming addicted.
|
| If I'm childish for the use of a euphemism, what would
| you call living in an idealized reality that's never
| existed?
| rurp wrote:
| Except that the evidence mostly points towards harsh drug
| laws having a net negative effect on people's lives. The
| logic of "drugs are bad" -> "we should outlaw drugs"
| without looking at the real world effects is the more
| emotion based argument.
| standardUser wrote:
| Anyone who genuinely wants fewer people to die from drug
| use will support drug legalization.
| ncallaway wrote:
| If drugs have been criminalized for decades, and that has
| led to overdoses being at an all time high, isn't that
| just a pretty strong point of evidence that criminalizing
| drugs isn't an effective means to prevent overdoses?
|
| We tried that strategy for many decades. It has failed as
| a strategy for decades. I don't think that's necessarily
| evidence that decriminalization will work, but it seems
| like...maybe we should at least try something else?
| buzzert wrote:
| "Try something else", as in the complete polar opposite
| of what we were trying before? I cannot rationalize such
| a decision.
| klyrs wrote:
| We tried prohibition of alcohol for a time, and then
| rolled that back when it was obvious that the experiment
| failed.
|
| Decriminalization has its own issues, to be sure. I'd
| prefer legalization (the actual polar opposite). I want
| addicts to be able to buy a clean supply from a
| legitimate business. The US won't see a reduction in
| organized crime until we offer a path to legitimacy.
| Decriminalization is the easiest, but least effective
| middle ground.
| joshka wrote:
| What would you do instead?
| buzzert wrote:
| In my city (San Francisco), the Tenderloin is nationally
| famous for having an "open-air drug market", which means
| a place you can go to _buy_ drugs with impunity. It also
| happens to be one of the most dystopian parts of the
| city, rampent with crime, overdoses, unsanitary
| conditions, and needles everywhere.
|
| It seems like any rational person could see the
| connection between drugs and the dystopian aspects of the
| Tenderloin. What I would do instead is precisely what I
| would do if my children were addicted to drugs; tough
| love. I would make it impossible for them to acquire
| drugs and deal with the consequences of withdrawl.
|
| Japan and Singapore are examples of countries that are
| extremely tough on drugs. I believe it is no coincidence
| that these places also turned out to be essentially the
| opposite of the Tenderloin with regards to public safety
| and heigene.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > I would make it impossible for them to acquire drugs
|
| But how? Drugs are already illegal. There is currently a
| vast government apparatus designed to make drugs
| impossible to acquire. The US has the largest prison
| population on the planet due in no small part to the war
| on drugs. It's not like we go easy on drugs.
|
| And yet, in your city there is an "open-air drug market".
| Making drugs illegal doesn't make drugs harder to get,
| because drugs are profitable. To paraphrase Ian Malcom
| from Jurassic Park "drugs will find a way."
|
| I think you're noticing a correlation and labeling it a
| causation. If people had a place to safely do drugs,
| would they be overdosing in the street? If SF had more
| public restrooms would people defecate in the streets? If
| the city had more affordable housing would people be
| living in the streets? If people had access to jobs so
| they could earn a living, would they be committing
| crimes? You blame the drugs for the problems, but I see
| them as a symptom of larger societal causes.
| klyrs wrote:
| > I would make it impossible for them to acquire drugs
| and deal with the consequences of withdrawl.
|
| Depending on the drug and the severity of their
| addiction, that could kill them. Would you take it that
| far?
| buzzert wrote:
| Absolutely not, but we have tools at our disposal for
| that as well (Methadone comes to mind).
| samatman wrote:
| Good! You're most of the way to a rational and
| compassionate response to drug addiction. Let's see if we
| can get you further.
|
| Methadone maintenance therapy leaves several problems,
| starting with the fact that other opioids still feel good
| and are still being profitably sold on the street.
| There's supply and demand, right there.
|
| The illegality makes it expensive. Most opioid users
| start with pills, and continue to injection because
| heroin and analogues are expensive, and injection works
| better. Unfortunately it's also a much better way to kill
| yourself, as is taking what you think is one drug (such
| as heroin) and lacing it with a stronger one (such as
| fentanyl). It's possible to kill yourself with a bunch of
| pills of a known opioid of a guaranteed strength, but
| it's pretty tough to do by accident.
|
| So let's remove the profit motive, by letting the state
| take over the sale of opioids. No advertising, of course,
| and this is done in settings where help can be made
| available to anyone who wants to quit being addicted to
| drugs. Make it expensive enough that it isn't the
| cheapest way to have a good time (opioids cost basis is
| very low), but not so high that constant petty crime is
| the only way to stay high. Limit purchase quantities;
| maybe give known addicts a license, so they can have a
| slightly higher limit to account for their tolerance. A
| little bit will leak onto the street, sure, that's
| tolerable compared to a hundred kilos at once arriving
| from overseas or the southern border.
|
| This puts the dealers out of business, clears out the
| Tenderloin, reduces opioid overdoses, puts addicts where
| they can get help, and reduces the burden on our
| overcrowded prisons. Evidence from Switzerland and
| Portugal suggest that over time it will also reduce the
| number of opioid addicts.
|
| All in all, pretty big win.
| joshka wrote:
| > It seems like any rational person could see the
| connection between drugs and the dystopian aspects of the
| Tenderloin.
|
| There seems to be a correlation vs causation issue there
| though. An equally plausible rational explanation is that
| the criminal act of selling drugs tends to make more
| sense in a place where that act is overlooked. If drug
| sales were decriminalized then those areas would tend to
| be less focused. Case in point is the proliferation of
| legal marijuana dispensaries. At least in the places that
| I've seen these (in Seattle), they don't seem to induce a
| higher criminal / unsanitary / dystopian atmosphere.
| Perhaps my perspective is unique.
|
| >Japan and Singapore are examples of countries that are
| extremely tough on drugs. I believe it is no coincidence
| that these places also turned out to be essentially the
| opposite of the Tenderloin with regards to public safety
| and heigene.
|
| Yes, and Singapore's approach still regards possession /
| use as a medical with an initial focus on rehabilitation,
| not just punishment. Singapore has some pretty big
| advantages over the US in its administration of the law
| (single jurisdiction / set of laws, single highly
| populous city). The laws vary widely in the US (consider
| Marijuana legalization an obvious example).
| ncallaway wrote:
| We tried a strategy. All evidence point to that strategy
| being a complete failure at accomplishing any of its
| goals.
|
| Yes, let's try a different strategy. Yes, that different
| strategy might be the opposite of the thing we were
| trying before. That's because the thing we were trying
| before has failed in almost every metric for decades
| (including drug overdose deaths, as you've noted).
|
| Honestly, I genuinely don't know how one could
| rationalize _preserving_ the existing strategy. Can you
| explain the desire to continue applying the same failed
| strategy? What's the logical argument for continuing to
| do the same thing?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Governments that have addressed drug use as a health
| issue, rather than a criminal issue, have shown good
| results.
|
| If this is the direction Oregon is intending to go, it is
| certainly worth trying. But if it will just be an
| unstructured free-for-all I doubt it will result in any
| improvements.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I'm not closely familiar with the Oregon legislation, but
| usually decriminalizing drugs is paired with those kinds
| of approaches, so I would be very surprised if that
| wasn't the case with Oregon's legislation.
|
| Decriminalization is usually just a necessary
| prerequisite to make the medical approach practically
| workable. I'd expect most legislatures would avoid
| touching the decriminalization issue if they could.
| vkou wrote:
| > But if it will just be an unstructured free-for-all I
| doubt it will result in any improvements.
|
| For a functioning addict, drugs not being illegal is
| _itself_ an improvement, even if overdose rates stay
| completely unchanged.
|
| When you have an addiction problem, getting the legal
| system involved typically results in you getting two
| problems around your neck, instead of just one.
| snypher wrote:
| This is why we can't have a rational conversation; your
| very first point was to link two statistics in a
| misleading way. You immediately imply that enforcement of
| drug laws is connected to the number of overdoses.
| However anyone can see that both overdose and enforcement
| have increased over time.
| cratermoon wrote:
| > decriminalize all drugs[0] during a time when overdoses
| are at an all time high[1] and increasing over 40% in
| just the last year.
|
| You're assuming overdose rates are negatively correlated
| with criminalization of drugs. Have you considered the
| possibility that it's exactly the opposite, then when
| drugs are decriminalized, people can have access to
| better information and health care?
|
| If you're a professional and you have alcoholism, you can
| get care and treatment, and it may even be paid for by
| your employer's health care plant. If you're addicted to
| cocaine, OxyContin, hydrocodone, or amphetamines, then
| maybe one day you OD because you never talk about it and
| you don't see a doctor about it, for fear of being
| convicted of a crime, losing your job, your health care,
| and ending up in prison or homeless.
| rhacker wrote:
| I've never heard of a company accepting and paying for
| alcohol treatment? It's 100% fire rate in my opinion.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Most health plans will cover at least a portion of
| substance abuse treatment. Things like HIPAA are there to
| keep your employer out of your business. You might be
| surprised how many of your co-workers have been through
| some kind of substance abuse program.
| joshka wrote:
| The idea that treating drug problems with criminal
| punishment rather than medical care is effective for
| solving the drug overdose problem without data to back
| that viewpoint sounds more emotionally driven than the
| converse view. I'd anticipate that we would both agree
| that the former has provably not worked, it's time to
| give the latter a chance.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| So the current system with drugs being illegal leads to
| an all time high of overdoses, but you suggest a switch
| to a different approach is timed badly? Yes, I do think
| going the opposite route of the one causing record levels
| of overdoses is a good start.
|
| I have a hard time following your line of thought.
| 35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote:
| Is there evidence that criminalizing drugs decreases the
| incidence of addiction/overdose?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| This is a major issue today. People do not understand why
| people with different views hold the views they hold. There
| is an assumption that the other people are not data driven,
| are just emotional and cling to the way things used to be. I
| think one reason is the completely different lifestyles held
| by people. We have some people in urban / suburban areas and
| some some people in rural. So many people who do not live in
| rural areas have never even been to such an area for any
| extended period of time. They don't get to know the people or
| mentality thst comes with it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Exactly this,
|
| One thing that has stuck with me recently was a quote where
| it basically said that 'everyone is skeptical, but just
| about different things'
| belorn wrote:
| > Of particular interest would be trying to categorize areas
| with positive or negative contributions to a person's or
| region's productivity
|
| Having a map which highlight regions which has a negative
| balance sheet in terms of taxes vs government costs would
| mostly just be a map of segregation of class, which in turn
| would be a map showing segregation of different demographics.
| Illustrating which demographics are costing the government more
| than they pay in taxes is _not_ something the left in my
| country are very happy to do, and I doubt it is that much
| different in the USA.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Not to understand the benefits of buying in bulk and enriching
| the commons - what can one say about such people! But at least
| you do.
| cratermoon wrote:
| You can understand what's going on in eastern Oregon (and Idaho
| and Nevada) a bit better with some background. It's not
| especially about taxes.
| https://longreads.com/bundyville/season-one/
| marricks wrote:
| Having good information accessibly presented is helpful but
| when local news outlets are owned by Sinclair Media[1] and Fox
| News is the most watched cable outlet for the conservatives
| that live there the facts really don't matter.
|
| We can bend over backwards to explain how helpful the valley is
| to them but it's going to fall on ears which don't want to
| listen.
|
| I'm not saying they shouldn't be provided for, they 100%
| should, just them actually leaving will do more to show them
| the inefficiencies of a conservative super state.
|
| Short of that the most effective way to change the information
| disconnect is actually address the source of the issue: media.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group#Polit...
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Though I find understanding the deeply divided viewpoints in
| the US very elusive."
|
| It's not a big mystery. A lot of politicians are making their
| careers by dividing people.
|
| Some policies are just downright mean, and seem to serve little
| purpose other than division.
|
| Conservative/rural people are often on the receiving end,
| because they just don't have a large enough constituency to
| fight it. Sure, they are winning some battles, but each one is
| uphill and the slope is steepening rapidly.
|
| Sadly, the country will suffer greatly. The left is wrong on a
| lot of things (or at least too extreme), but they are in
| control and there will be little pushback going forward. Even
| moderate democrats are being trampled.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| What are some things that are too extreme? And what are they
| extreme in relationship to?
| erehweb wrote:
| If this did happen, what would be impact on EC votes and House
| seats?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| It will not happen; these are votes for show. Counties do not
| have the legal authority to jump from state to state.
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| Sour grapes. It the opposite side of the liberals threatening to
| move to Canada when W or King Oompa Loompa got elected. Just
| another example of American polarization and unwillingness to see
| the other guys point of view. They'll keep f*cking up the country
| with their stubbornness until they get old and die, which
| fortunately, is fairly near term for the right wingers. Sadly,
| they'll be replaced by a legion of young people doing the same
| thing for the left.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Doesn't Eastern Washington also have a similar demographic? Maybe
| combine them too.
| standardUser wrote:
| Here is a proposal from greateridaho.org:
| https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea...
|
| It includes chunks of OR and CA but not WA for some reason. It
| may be explained in the doc.
| philwelch wrote:
| It's explained in their FAQ:
|
| > Idahoans are very concerned about keeping their state as
| conservative as possible. They had 2.46 conservative votes
| per liberal vote in the 2016 presidential election, but
| eastern Washington only had 1.43.
|
| > Moreover, eastern Washington has a population of 1.6
| million in 2017, as compared to Idaho's population of 1.7
| million. Idahoans don't want to be outvoted by others in
| their own state, so they're not likely to want to include
| such a large population into their own state. If Republican-
| voting southern Washington state is included, that's an
| additional 0.8 million.
|
| > When we created the modern Greater Idaho proposal in 2019,
| we searched diligently for any possible combination of
| Washington State counties that would be both as prosperous
| and as conservative as Idaho. We only find this group of
| three counties: Columbia, Garfield, and Asotin counties. We
| are including these counties in our proposal.
|
| > Here is a plan for rural WA liberty that is more likely to
| get approvals than joining Idaho is:
| https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-
| become...
|
| https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/
| yongjik wrote:
| Geez, they aren't even hiding that they're gerrymandering
| for a jumbo Republican state (with the added "benefit" that
| the remaining OR and CA will become even more Democrat).
| Exactly what the US needs in 2021.
|
| I'm half amused and half horrified.
| philwelch wrote:
| Gerrymandering has to do with influencing representation
| in the US Congress. I think this has more to do with
| state government, particularly the ability for more
| people to live under the type of state government they
| would prefer. Portlanders would probably prefer an even
| more liberal state government than Oregon already has
| while eastern Oregonians evidently prefer the Idaho state
| government to their own.
|
| I sincerely think this is _exactly_ what the US needs: a
| civil agreement that you people can live over there under
| the laws that you prefer, while we can live here under
| the laws that we prefer, and that we coexist as a
| federation of states instead of just fighting to impose a
| single national politics on everyone.
| yongjik wrote:
| I think "you live under your laws, we live under our
| laws" is a cop-out that's never going to work as
| intended. 33% of Idaho voted for Biden in 2020. Unless
| you're OK with disenfranchising 1/3 of voters, you're not
| going to have your ideal government. (Of course they same
| can be said for places like CA - all the more reason why
| states shouldn't be divided over partisan lines.)
| sofixa wrote:
| Isn't it sad that they directly state they want to do this
| for party reasons? Like, "we only want people who vote for
| that party in our state". As someone from a country that
| isn't basically a dual one-party state, it rubs me off as
| very weird and very anti-freedom, liberty, logic, etc.
| philwelch wrote:
| I don't see it as sad at all.
|
| There's a certain philosophy of government and system of
| laws that most residents of Idaho and eastern Oregon
| would prefer to live under. There is a different and
| fundamentally incompatible philosophy of government and
| system of laws that most residents of the Portland
| metropolitan area would prefer to live under. If the goal
| of a democracy is to enable the largest number of people
| to live under the laws and philosophy of government they
| prefer, this is a move in the right direction.
|
| The only alternative is for two increasingly polarized
| parties to try and impose their preferences on the other
| half of the country. That rubs me as very weird and anti-
| freedom compared to just embracing federalism.
| smaryjerry wrote:
| It actually makes a lot of sense because their issues are
| mainly with the party that is currently in charge and
| lately almost every vote in Congress on anything
| substantive like trillions in stimulus has been along
| party lines.
| hirundo wrote:
| Eastern California too, particularly North Eastern. If we
| gerrymander states by equal numbers of red and blue residents
| there would be vast rural red states surrounding small blue
| sub/urban enclaves.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| And the red states will pay 'out of state' prices for higher
| quality universities in the blue areas, leading to even
| greater segregation along educational lines. (Actually, this
| is probably already happening...)
| Ccecil wrote:
| I believe there is a separate proposal somewhere being thrown
| around where Eastern Washington, North Idaho and Western
| Montana become a state...which really makes sense politically
| and commercially.
|
| Source: I have lived in North Idaho most of my life...this is
| not a new proposal :)
| kyleblarson wrote:
| You mean the demographic that doesn't support nightly riots in
| major US cities like Portland? That's a pretty big demographic.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| What's the likeliness of this happening? The greateridaho.org
| website says this has happened before, but at a smaller degree.
| Is this legal, or just symbolic?
| justinlink wrote:
| Not very likely to happen. Would take a lot of votes where they
| would be in the minority to go there way.
|
| Borders between states do change on small scales. Since the
| 1940's:
|
| 1950: Kansas and Missouri exchanged land along the Missouri
| River due to flooding in 1944.
|
| 1961: 20 acres of land was transferred from Minnesota to North
| Dakota
|
| 1977: Texas and Mexico exchanged some parcels of land.
|
| 1998: Supreme Court gave part of Ellis Island to New Jersey
|
| 2017: North Carolina and South Carolina moved about 19 homes
| across state lines.
|
| Honestly the formation of West Virginia comes to mind as a
| similar situation where they had political disputes, had a bill
| of secession, and just generally felt they were not represented
| and outnumbered by the government to the east of the
| Appalachian mountains. They weren't able to succeed until the
| Civil War broke out and they stayed with the Union.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| Huh, thanks. Even though it's a long shot, it seems really
| interesting.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-20 23:01 UTC)