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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'

#621

Post by sunshineforever »

listless wrote: post #558
yesBoot wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then the media is utterly and in conspiracy theory fashion lying about the situation on a daily basis. I’m not saying that’s not the case, just that it’s not the message the rest of us are getting, maybe and including these counties wanting out.

Yes they are obviously lying.

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

#622

Post by dataflow »

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…

I'm confused at how you go directly from "subsidizing" to money flow. By taking a low-paying job that makes middle-class life possible for you, aren't they foregoing income (and thus isn't this costing them)? Heck, push it to the limit—if a farmer's wages were $0, who's benefiting at the expense of whom here? Who's subsidizing who? If you never see the cash, vs. having it deposited and then withdrawn from your account, does that suddenly change the direction of the subsidy? Does the intrinsic/moral direction of a subsidy necessarily need to match the technical/legal definition?

I'm no expert in this, but as a layman, the question of who's subsidizing who is really only meaningful if you look at it from a human/moral standpoint rather than a purely legal/technical one. Otherwise you're using it to solve math problems, not human problems. And the latter seems like a really tough nut to crack to me. I don't know how to do it personally, so I don't know who's right. But I don't get how people talk about it as if it's some patently obvious thing you can figure out by looking at tax dollars or cash flow in the economy. It seems to me you'd need to assign some intrinsic moral value to all jobs so you can compare them against what they "should" cost or what they're "worth", and that is pretty darn difficult by itself, let alone the subsequent political controversy that would surely follow if such a thing was done.

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

#623

Post by smolder »

j_walter wrote: post #253
tacitusarc wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

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…

It's ironic that many of the people I know who have a right leaning politics and a hatred of government waste are also working in sectors that get fat off government waste.

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

#624

Post by cbozeman »

nverno wrote: post #542
zepto wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like in Russia or China?

How about just like an Eisenhower or Kennedy or Mandela? Competition isn't a good sign in politics, it just means people havent reached a good consensus.

Competition is the best sign of healthy politics. It means many different ideas are being expressed and debated. Politics is supposed to be an eternal struggle against competing ideas.

Stagnation is death.

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

#625

Post by relaxing »

maxerickson wrote: post #470
UncleOxidant wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Farms have gotten bigger, but family farms still dominate. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-structure-... I guess you can argue that a large closely held company isn't a family farm, but it isn't what "corporate" is meant to conjure up either.

The majority of production comes from a small minority of farms with > $1MM ARR. Most are still family owned, but I would argue they are “what corporate is meant to conjure up” in the sense of the scale and methods driving the farming operation (just not the legal structure and governance.)

That’s why the overall number of farms and farmers has gone down - the little guy can’t make it work economically.

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

#626

Post by sofixa »

philwelch wrote: post #292
sofixa wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 li…

But they aren't talking about a philosophy of government and system of laws, they're talking about a party.

I wonder how people like that function. Like, they chose a party, and automatically agree and favour everything that party says? That's weird. If not, like if you only believe in 2-3 of their core things, but disagree with the rest, why do you still talk about party affiliation?

What happens when you have a conflicting opinion with the party? Especially considering the party in question is blatantly anti-science. Take climate change for instance. There are young Republicans that aren't braindead or brainwashed enough to think it's a sham and want it taken seriously, but they're still stuck only with the Republican party as a choice because the the main things they believe in match only with them. And then have to support the party which proudly says that climate change means no more burgers, so it's obviously stupid and wrong and God wouldn't have wanted it!

The American two-party system is fundamentally broken and fucked up. Those people need more reforms and less religious bullshit.

> 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.

Or, hear me out... compromise? Otherwise you'd have half the country living in a backwards, religious law-based, science denying country with lots of guns, high teen pregnancies and child abandonment and mistreatment. I don't think anyone wins besides some politicians who are too stupid to function but will get automatically elected because they happen to have the right party affiliation.

Note: Not American, i don't have a horse in this race.

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

#627

Post by alistairSH »

nverno wrote: post #532
legitster wrote: post #492

I think it's interesting that the actual proposal is RIFE with some really, really bad analysis: https://www.greateridaho.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Grea... The best example is how they treat averages: As part of their "win-win" scenario: the new average income for the state of Oregon would rise. As if individuals would actually directly benefit from the average arbitrarily going up. Inversely, one of the benefit…

I get the feeling the people behind the proposal aren't doing it for political gain. It sounds like they are fully resigned to their group's lack of political power in the region, and just want some respite. Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.

Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.

Less competitive elections, at the federal level, are where we are now. As House seats have been gerrymandered to favor mostly conservatives (though liberals play the game too), we get more districts willing to elect extremists like MTG who are unwilling to compromise and hold positions anathema to the majority of the country.

Competitive elections should be more likely to result in moderate candidates, and therefore moderate elected politicians. In theory, this eventually leads to more compromise, and hopefully more progress. With extremists on both sides, we get lots of sound-bites, lots of feigned (and maybe real) anger, and not a lot gets done (and by "nothing gets done", I'm talking about things like government shutdowns because recalcitrant conservatives like McConnell refuse to play ball).

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

#628

Post by thehappypm »

twobitshifter wrote: post #22

A town in Vermont voted multiple times to join New Hampshire. It unsurprisingly never happened. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killington,_Vermont_secessio...

That's so interesting. Killington is the site of the largest ski resort in the East (by most measures) and an awesome vacation spot. It is completely in the center of Vermont, almost the geographic center. Moving to New Hampshire is a hilarious idea, one expressly forbidden -- states cannot be non-contiguous like that, land areas can only be separated by water (see Michigan).

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

#629

Post by w0de0 »

alistairSH wrote: post #627
nverno wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling the people behind the proposal aren't doing it for political gain. It sounds like they are fully resigned to their group's lack of political power in the region, and just want some respite. Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs.

Less competitive elections sound great to me. That would imply that whoever won would have good majority support and maybe politics would fade into the background where it belongs. Less competitive elections, at the federal level, are where we are now. As House seats have been gerrymandered to favor mostly conservatives (though liberals play the game too), we get more districts willing to elect extremists like MTG wh…

The elections aren’t so much less competitive, the competition simply exists at an extreme because there’s no upside to moderation in a partisan primary.

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

#630

Post by w0de0 »

nverno wrote: post #542
zepto wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like in Russia or China?

How about just like an Eisenhower or Kennedy or Mandela? Competition isn't a good sign in politics, it just means people havent reached a good consensus.

Both Eisenhower and Kennedy were moderates who could not get elected in a gerrymandered district because their strategy of appealing to the national center does not work in an idea logically homogenous district.
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