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Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

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Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#101

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

wwweston wrote: post #71
avalys wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 plur…

> "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.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#102

Post by vixen99 »

mjevans wrote: post #35

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 physica…

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.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#103

Post by klyrs »

Frondo wrote: post #54
UncleOxidant wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 libertarian…

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...

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#105

Post by justinlink »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #82

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?

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.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#106

Post by UncleOxidant »

URSpider94 wrote: post #85
mjevans wrote: post #35

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 physica…

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 noth…

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...

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#107

Post by joshka »

shaftoe wrote: post #72
mjevans wrote: post #35

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 physica…

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"?

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.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#108

Post by pii »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #97

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.

I think we might end up with counties mandating the teaching of some pretty abhorrent things if we did that

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#109

Post by smaryjerry »

ddingus wrote: post #89
UncleOxidant wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, not a lot of Teslas down there. More like F-150 city.

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 al…

Ford’s biggest problem with the F150 was using Biden as its salesperson. Someone at Ford didn’t evaluate their consumer demographics properly.

Re: Five Oregon counties vote to leave state, create 'Greater Idaho'

#110

Post by jfengel »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #97

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.

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.

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