Secession!

[Willie Escalade]

Okay...all fifty states have a petition online to break away from the USA. I want to know how folks - including those on the other side of the Atlantic - feel about this. What's your reaction?

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-white-house-secession-50-states-20121114,0,4408092.story

:offtopic

[MdR Dave]

Take all the signers and move them to Alabama and Mississippi. Tear up all roads, railways, airports and public utilities. Cut them off from all communications- mail, TV and Internet (FCC, thank you)- then check in with those redneck, white bread, chickenshit motherfuckers in a year it two.

[Prospero]

It is ludicrous.

Could that really happen? Not according to one of THE most right wing of your Supreme Court judges, Antonin Scalia in a letter he wrote in 2006. I wonder if he'll mintain that position were it to come to the court?

Oh and a picture from Texas... deep thinkers involved in a bid to secede.

[martin48]

Okay...all fifty states have a petition online to break away from the USA. I want to know how folks - including those on the other side of the Atlantic - feel about this. What's your reaction?

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-white-house-secession-50-states-20121114,0,4408092.story

:offtopic

We have, in little old Britain, so much enjoyed our time as a member of the European Union and forever a large section of our society wants to leave that we would have every sympathy with the US breaking up. Anyway Scotland is thinking about buggering off. If you do split up - that's the end of the US as a world power - China's time is coming!

[danthepoetman]

If we loosely follow the numbers in the article, about 300 000 peoples have signed the petition. It would mean that close to 1 moron out of 1000 persons have signed it so far, which is pretty much when you stop to think about it. I'd be curious to see some polls on the question. These people are nuts! completely nuts! This political crazyness has gone quite far; I wander if it's not getting out of hand. How can anyone govern such a mess. The conservative propaganda is to blame in my opinion; people who proclaim themselves patriots are probably in this occurence, those who are making this country more and more difficult to govern and give it more and more trouble getting anywhere... To me, this is no joke; it's seriously fuc**d.

[trish]

I'd be curious to see some polls on the question. These people are nuts! completely nuts! This political crazyness has gone quite far;These people so fucking racist they're blind. They're only willing to live in a democratic republic provided everything goes their way. If someone takes office they don't like they immediately declare that their main mission is to get him out of office, deny his legitimacy and stonewall his agenda. Now they want to secede!

I'm a U.S. citizen as are both my parents. My father's ancestors were southern plantation slaves, though he has Irish, Scotch and German blood as well as African. My mother's mother came from Korea and proudly became a naturalized U.S. citizen. So I look at all these asswipes who apparently don't give a shit about representative democracy and who whine that they want to secede and it just reminds me of all those times past when these same intolerant ignoramuses would look at me ask, "Why don't you back to where you came from?"

But you have to remember, these complainers are hurting bad. They've been forced to step out of the tea-bagger echo chamber and they're blinded by the truth of their situation. The world is not what they thought it was. They have a lot of readjusting to do. Give 'em a little time. Not far in the future I can see one of them holding a sign that reads, "KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY OBAMACARE!!"

[Stavros]

My gut reaction is simple -they are sore losers.

Looked at more closely, there are cases where secession has worked, in recent times the break-up of Czechoslovakia initially left the Czech Republic in a better economic position than Slovakia, where the economy has improved in recent years; it was also an amicable split, striclty speaking probably not secession. The creation of the Southern Sudan has been less fortunate and fractious relations with Sudan over resources will rumble on for years. The attempted secessions of mineral-rich Katanga Province in Zaire in the 1970s and 1980s were the occasion for the grimly relentless bloodletting that has blighted that country, but was never as bad as the impact of the secession of 'Biafra' from Nigeria in 1967 which caused widespread devastation for the Ibo and has been the subject of various novels and books, most recently by Chinua Achebe in There Was A Country (2012).

Scotland will vote in a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom in the autumn of 2014, but it is not not clear what this will mean in practice on a range of isssus, such as sovereignty over the oil and gas fields that exist in what may become 'Scottish waters' because approximately 49% of the oil and gas reserves of the North Sea are owned by independent companies that signed licences with the British Government. Scotland would not be able to nationalise the whole of the petroleum industry without first creating its own oil company, and it might spend years in the courts being sued for damages by the oil companies. It also seems odd that Scotland would want to take control of a declining resource, for while there are still substantial reserves of oil and gas, the peak has been passed, and in addition to managing a declining resource Scotland would have the burden of decommissiong numerous oil and gas platforms when the times comes. And this is just one resource. The implications for the tax revenue of the British government is obscure but so too is the tax burden for Scotland where proportionately more families claim welfare benefits than anywhere else in the UK; this means that an independent Scotland even if it managed to gain control of North Sea oil and gas and its profits, would be spending most of it on welfare rather than on economic development.

On the other hand Scotland has its own currency, its own legal and education systems, and its own Parliament. Like the states of the Union, where 'states rights' grants autonomy on a range of issues such as state versions of the law, you could argue that individual States have in place the mechanism for independence, assuming for example that they eschew the protection of the US military and establish their own 'national guard' and so on. Or, if they did wish to remain part of the US military defence shield, might they be asked to pay extra for it?

And so on; the more you look into it, the more unanswered quesions arise, but as I say, it really is just a small group of sore losers who want the benefits of being American without being asked to pay their fair share of it.

But what does California Republic mean on that state's flag; one Californian once joked to me we will break away from the union one day...it was a joke, and he wasn't referring to an earthquake along the San Andreas fault turning the south west into an island...

[Prospero]

Good posts by Tricia and Stavros.
Racists AND poor losers.
It is depressing there are so many in the US.

[Jericho]

Untied States of America :shrug

[trish]

Next time we're using Velcro®

[muh_muh]

Oh and a picture from Texas... deep thinkers involved in a bid to secede.

is that pronounced sec-dee like in second or ses-dee like in secede?

[Willie Escalade]

But what does California Republic mean on that state's flag; one Californian once joked to me we will break away from the union one day...it was a joke, and he wasn't referring to an earthquake along the San Andreas fault turning the south west into an island...

It didnt last long and it wasn't official, but...

California Republic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic)

[hippifried]

To all the klan/nazi secessionists out there:
From real Americans all over:

This is America, where you're free to despise your country. But if you snivlin' pecks really can't deal with reality, you're perfectly free to leave. Just pack your copy of the John Calhoun manifesto, pack it in teabags, & don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. You won't be missed. But here's the "but". You whining assholes don't get to take any part of the Country with you. This is my country too, & everybody else who lives here. So as far as your petitions asking for permission to break up the country, the answer is NO! "One nation...indivisible...". How many times have you recited those words? How many times have you gotten bent out of shape when someone didn't want to recite them? All this time & you didn't know what you were sayin'? Are you really that stupid or just a bunch of lyin' punks? Maybe both. So damn disgusting!!!


Stavros,
There's no such thing as "State's Rights". That was just a line of shit lapped out of John Calhoun's stanky ass to try & justify the Southern Rebellion, & later to end Reconstruction & overturn gains in "rights" recognition with a bunch of Jim Crowe crap. People have rights. Governments & their various subordinate jurisdictional entities have powers that can be granted or taken away. Rights are innate.

You're right though, about all this stupid being nothing but a bunch of sour grapes.

[Stavros]

To all the klan/nazi secessionists out there:
From real Americans all over:

This is America, where you're free to despise your country. But if you snivlin' pecks really can't deal with reality, you're perfectly free to leave. Just pack your copy of the John Calhoun manifesto, pack it in teabags, & don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. You won't be missed. But here's the "but". You whining assholes don't get to take any part of the Country with you. This is my country too, & everybody else who lives here. So as far as your petitions asking for permission to break up the country, the answer is NO! "One nation...indivisible...". How many times have you recited those words? How many times have you gotten bent out of shape when someone didn't want to recite them? All this time & you didn't know what you were sayin'? Are you really that stupid or just a bunch of lyin' punks? Maybe both. So damn disgusting!!!


Stavros,
There's no such thing as "State's Rights". That was just a line of shit lapped out of John Calhoun's stanky ass to try & justify the Southern Rebellion, & later to end Reconstruction & overturn gains in "rights" recognition with a bunch of Jim Crowe crap. People have rights. Governments & their various subordinate jurisdictional entities have powers that can be granted or taken away. Rights are innate.

You're right though, about all this stupid being nothing but a bunch of sour grapes.

Powerfully put Hippifried, and thanks for correcting me on State's rights.

Willie: thanks for the link, clears that up!

[MdR Dave]

Stavros, don't let hippiefried mislead you. The idea of states rights is enshrined in the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

"States rights" as a rallying cry of the Civil War was a morally weak but widely held argument for slavery- the Feds had yet to banish that "peculiar institution".

But I'm with hippie on where the new secessionists can go.

[natina]

we won't declare them as an Allie


lets give them a state & watch al-Qaeda declare jihad on them.


http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/al-kaida-torture-methods.jpg

[Stavros]

Stavros, don't let hippiefried mislead you. The idea of states rights is enshrined in the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

"States rights" as a rallying cry of the Civil War was a morally weak but widely held argument for slavery- the Feds had yet to banish that "peculiar institution".

But I'm with hippie on where the new secessionists can go.

Hmmmm...well I recall State's rights from my days as an undergraduate studying American political history, not something we covered in any detail, but have never been sure what its extent was other than local interpretation of the laws on, say, gun control, so I took Hippifried at his word. Presumably there are differences of opinion on what a State does or does not have a right to do, and whether or not a decision can be reversed/endorsed if taken to the Supreme Court...?

[broncofan]

Stavros, don't let hippiefried mislead you. The idea of states rights is enshrined in the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

"States rights" as a rallying cry of the Civil War was a morally weak but widely held argument for slavery- the Feds had yet to banish that "peculiar institution".

But I'm with hippie on where the new secessionists can go.
Powers reserved are not powers created. The 10th amendment has been used by states' rights advocates to claim that states have their own sphere of influence distinct from federal or constitutional sway. The truth is the 10th amendment, read in light of the Supremacy clause, only says that States control their affairs where the Constitution and federal legislation are silent. Federal law trumps state law.

The 10th amendment has been used to claim some sort of zone of deference to states in areas that have traditionally been under state control. But the Constitution literally only allows states to govern when there is no enumerated power in the federal government; sometimes even dormant powers of the federal government, where they have not expressly created a law that trumps state law preclude state action, because the federal government COULD act (see dormant commerce clause). So the reading is, if the federal government cannot act, and the Constitution does not preclude, power falls to the states.

This is not meant as a rebuttal really, but I just wanted to point out that the 10th amendment doesn't grant much of anything by reserving power to the states. States have police power, which is the authority to pass laws that govern the health, safety, and welfare of their constituents, but even these laws are subject to constitutional scrutiny and federal pre-emption.

[MdR Dave]

You have a good grasp of this. There are enumerated rights, and reserved rights (our Constitution is deliberate vague.)

Further amendments serve to further enumerate, and ultimately any arguable position on either type of right could make it to the Supreme Court for refinement of the broad Constitution. It makes for a wonderfully convoluted system, and one that could change- there are constant attempts to bring abortion to the court and overturn Roe v Wade, and various points were argued since the 19th century as we continued to deal with racial issues from slavery to Jim Crow laws, ticking off the points of resistance one by one over the course of generations.

It's not always easy- for instance, the notion of "separate but equal" was upheld by the court in Plessy v Ferguson but struck down in Brown v Board of Education. But then, SC justices are just human, and political appointees. . .

The vagueness of the states' reserved rights lends itself to use by crackpots, and the fact that these rights are "granted" by the 10th Amendment helps said crackpots feel patriotic about their shenanigans. But sometimes, the government agrees.

[Stavros]

I understand the points made by Broncofan and MdR Dave, but if every state had to have exactly the same laws as every other state because they had been passed by Congress, would this deprive the USA of its diversity and the 'freedom to choose' of local voters who believe that the situation in say, Maine, is so different from Texas that their laws -or their application of the laws- should reflect these differences? Take the case of the death penalty which remains on the statute books of more than 30 states, even if they do not in practice execute prisoners. Would the enforcement of 'one size fits all' mark the complete imposition of Federal law on states that did not want it on that issue?

[MdR Dave]

I actually support states rights, just not the misuse of the idea.

But i feel some issues (human rights, environment, etc.) are too important to let regionalism color.

I find the balance satisfactory.

[hippifried]

Stavros, don't let hippiefried mislead you. The idea of states rights is enshrined in the 10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

"States rights" as a rallying cry of the Civil War was a morally weak but widely held argument for slavery- the Feds had yet to banish that "peculiar institution".

But I'm with hippie on where the new secessionists can go.

The Constitution talks about the rights of people, the privileges & immunities of citizens, & the powers of government. No "State's Rights" anywhere. The 10th Amendment merely sets jurisdictional boundaries on power. The idea/rallying cry isn't about rights at all, but autonomy. We originally had 13 autonomous States, in a confederacy much like the EU today. It was too unwieldily & didn't work. So we held a convention, where we tossed the Articles of Confederation in the round file, & wrote the Constitution that created a single nation with the States as jurisdictional subordinates. States are not autonomous.

[broncofan]

I understand the points made by Broncofan and MdR Dave, but if every state had to have exactly the same laws as every other state because they had been passed by Congress, would this deprive the USA of its diversity and the 'freedom to choose' of local voters who believe that the situation in say, Maine, is so different from Texas that their laws -or their application of the laws- should reflect these differences? Take the case of the death penalty which remains on the statute books of more than 30 states, even if they do not in practice execute prisoners. Would the enforcement of 'one size fits all' mark the complete imposition of Federal law on states that did not want it on that issue?
This is a great point and a lot has been written about federalism, or as I understand it the proper balance between local and national governance. Even those who believe in a strong federal government understand the ability of states to better serve their constituents' needs in some areas, and to reflect their local cultures within certain constraints.

So, even though the federal government has pre-emptive power over state laws it cannot act outside the scope of a broadly enumerated power (in practical terms a type of power). As a result those who advocate states' rights in practice are really arguing that the federal government is acting outside its enumerated power. This is in my opinion a more legitimate argument than saying something is supposed to be left to the states.

I am not exactly sure where execution fits in. I did simplify the Constitutional analysis when I said the Constitution trumps State Laws. States cannot pass laws that violate a right present in the bill of rights (or any fundamental right however defined) unless the law they pass is narrowly tailored to meet a compelling need of the state. These compelling needs would be those that enable the state to serve the health, welfare, and safety of citizens. So, while the federal government and the Constitution have supremacy over state laws, states are given authority to act on matters of compelling need in contravention of Constitutional rights but the Supreme Courts applies "strict scrutiny" to these laws.

But there are also areas that have typically been within the purview of state legislation simply because the federal government has not been empowered to act in those areas. And although these are default powers I assume they were not enumerated to the federal government by design, or because it would not serve any special purpose to have uniformity on such laws. Or perhaps it would even be better to have local rule. Unfortunately, I am much longer on theory than practice and so I cannot give good examples, but perhaps Mr.Dave can.

I say none of this as a normative matter really. I agree that there are legitimate reasons that certain matters can be legislated better at the local level. On the other hand, there are also good reasons to have constraints and review for that ability. I think your post sort of brings up the cautionary point, as does Mr. Dave's that just because something has been abused does not mean it does not have a legitimate purpose. States should be able to legislate in certain areas and have their own vision of local governance, subject to the review of the Supreme Court to ensure conformity with the law of the land. I agree with you.