this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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politics

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago

This again? Hate to tell these rednecks but plenty of States have the urban/rural dichotomy. They ain't special.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago

Boy would they be shocked with the tollroad that would be built on the Cascades charging a toll on all their farm trucks to get to port.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

The greater Idaho movement is a meme and is just conservatives trying to cheat democracy further. There's no real depth or nuance to it.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Idaho residents will see an increase in taxes due to supporting all the new public schools, services and infrastructure. The newly acquired Oregon county residents will now have to pay income taxes. They will also bring a portion of the Oregon state debt that Idaho will now have to pay because Idaho's constitution won't allow state debt. Meanwhile the new smaller Oregon won't have near as many welfare counties to support and will be able to lower the remaining residents taxes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How many electoral college votes shift to Idaho along with the meth and Jesus counties? Because that's always the reason these movements are really funded.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

One. It's basically all of the counties in Oregon's second district.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

Seems like a worthy trade, let’s do it.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 6 months ago

They yearn for the "good 'ol days" of when Oregon Territory was a whites-only ethnostate.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The folks in Jackson and Josephine county, who want to join Idaho, are so anti-tax, they had to reduce police and fire services because they wouldn't vote for local funding bonds.

These folks are going to be DRAMATICALLY surprised to learn, as Idahoans, they now have a 6% sales tax.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

I wouldn’t say Jackson or Josephine county “want” to join Idaho. There has not really been political talk or any votes for such a thing. The counties that want to join Idaho are east of Jackson county and have much smaller population. Anecdotally, everyone I know in both counties are proud Oregonians and would never vote for such a thing, even if they do hate Portland. The anti-tax sentiment is a separate issue all together.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

These are people who can't follow simple health recommendations. Critical thinking isn't going on upstairs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Democracy works well when people have similar general goals and just disagree about how to accomplish them. It doesn't work well when people have opposing goals. Thus I have a lot of sympathy for these people even though I disagree with their politics. Why should they have to follow the rules set by culturally dissimilar coastal cities far away rather than the rules set by much more similar and much closer Idaho?

If I could remake the US government from scratch, I think I might create something like the self-governing cities of medieval Europe. The Democratic/Republican divide is largely an urban/rural one, and this way both the urban and the rural areas would have the local governments and the representatives that the majority wanted. Real-world state lines do a poor job of demarcating regions where most of the people have similar values. A better system is possible, but in practice there's too much inertia to make such large changes.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

What happens to queer people who happen to be born in rural areas, in your model?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

They die, of course.

So do the poor and anyone who has the misfortune of not being born a rich landowner.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 6 months ago (4 children)

We don’t have a democracy, we are a constitutional republic

This is the new battle cry of American fascism.

The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

These people support the electoral college because it benefits them almost exclusively. They don't care about democracy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

The US is both a constitutional Republic and a democracy . In fact, the democratic part is included in the constitution.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

I asked him what he meant by that distinction.

“We have a constitution that lays down the laws for us. As a republic, the individual is protected. So the minority can be protected. It’s not just majority rules.”

Agreed, so we let homosexual couples get married, pregnant women make their own health care decisions, treat transgendered people with respect, and take measures to prevent at-risk individuals from getting a deadly virus.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The opening of the American Declaration of Independence literally states that the country is going to establish a government that derives “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

To play devil's advocate, you could argue that's why the Eastern Oregonian fascists should be allowed to join Idaho- because they don't consent to be governed by the state legislature.

(Of course, the real problem is that these assholes are increasingly rejecting the concept of government altogether.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don’t understand this argument. The Declaration of Independence is not part of the constitution so it’s not part of a valid legal argument. as I understand it the Constitution does not give individual citizens the right to elect the State that governs them ( beyond by moving obviously).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You're right, which is why the argument made is a moral one, not a legal one. If you want a more clear-cut example, think about the American South during the US Civil War. They no longer consented to being governed by Washington, so an argument could be made that the North was morally wrong to force the South to remain in the Union. However, as established in Texas v. White in 1869 there was no (and still isn't) a legal mechanism for a state to leave the Union, therefore the South couldn't legally secede.

The same legal precedent applies in this case as well. There isn't any way (currently, anyhow) for states to redraw their boundaries, so even if allowing the eastern Oregon fascists to join Idaho is the morally-correct action (which is not a position I endorse, just presenting the reasoning) they don't have a legal method of doing so.

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