Louisiana petitions Obama for secession.

[RoJoHen]

And I have to wonder how many residents from the newly-formed country would be like, "Um, no, I'm moving back to America." Would Louisiana see a mass exodus?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

There would probably be people who leave the state, although they would do so before the transition officially takes effect since they would otherwise be subject to immigration quotas. Although I'm not sure how easy it would be to guard the border to prevent illegal immigration from Louisiana.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Sorry, they're furrinErs now, like Meskins. We're building a wall around Louisiana to keep out the riffraff.

What's funny is that of all the states that might have a chance to go it on their own, Louisiana has got to be at the bottom of the list or near it, with the likes of Mississippi and Alabama. They are failed states in waiting.

I know Foreign Policy magazine did a story about this once, what realistically would happen if a state seceeded (short answer: they'd be sorry in a hurry) but somebody should do a state by state analysis on what would happen in each case, it would be interesting. I subscribe to FP so if they do a follow up, I'll post a link here.

 

[Hound of UIster]

Texas - Narco Drug State

Alabama/Mississippi/Louisiana - Violent Christian Fundamentalist Theocracies.

Arizona - Apartheid State

Kentucky/Indiana/W. Virginia - Subsistence Level Post-Technological Societies.

 

[Peacemaker]

********************

We petition the Obama administration to:

Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.

*********************
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pe...ca-and-create-its-own-new-government/1wrvtngl

I came across this on the White House website, and frankly don't know what to make of it. We of course have the right to petition our government, but to the best of my knowledge there is no established legal means for a state to withdrawal from the union.

Nothing will likely come of this. Still, do you think a American State, with the support of it's populace, should have the constitutional means of separating from the Untied States?

Or should the federal government have the power to prevent them, if they really want to go? Once you're in, you can never leave.

What say you?

I say let them go. Most red states -- i.e. those in the south -- are poor states. They get more money back from the federal government than they send to Washington. They'll be begging for reinstatement in less than a year.

Yep. It would be hilarious to watch them fall on their faces. Now, if states that contribute to the economy start to talk secession, like California or New York, we might be in trouble, but those states are too smart for such BS.

Be careful when talking about states "that contribute to the economy." NC, to take a good example, may not be the textile and tobacco empire it once was, but Charlotte is a tremendous banking center (second in the US after NYC), Research Triangle Park is located in RDU (pharmaceuticals come to mind), and there is tremendous amount of biotech going on in the Piedmont Triad. Wilmington, NC also is also a productive port city; there's also a great deal of medicine and medical research going on in Durham (Duke) and Winston-Salem (Wake Forest University Physicians - Bowman Gray School of Medicine) and one of the most rigorous boards of Nursing in the country (which has often set standards over, ahead, and above others). We are also home to the UNC System (including the UNC School of the Arts), Duke University, and Wake Forest University. Politically, we tend towards division. Republicans have only recently won the majority in the General Assembly, and they lost the gubanatorial race, in my personal opinion, because the Democrats had a fairly weak candidate in Walter Dalton - and, for the record, Walter is my Dad's first cousin, so I know a thing or two about him. He's a very folksy, nice fellow, and incredibly intelligent - but that was his undoing in the current political climate, insofar as the Republicans have been able to appeal to the lowest common denominator in NC lately by playing on the social issues.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Here's yet another iteration on the theme of "red states take more Federal dollars than they contribute."

North Carolina (which I certainly didn't single out, after all, it was a hair's-bredth swing state and I'm well aware of the economic clout of Research Triangle) is not the worst offender but it still takes more Federal money than it contributes, at least as of this MJ story. There are a lot of other maps like this, all making the same correlation between Republican states and Federal largesse, which bodes very poorly for any secession plans.

 

[Trekker4747]

I love maps that make Alaska look like it's big enough to be its own continent.

 

[Peacemaker]

Here's yet another iteration on the theme of "red states take more Federal dollars than they contribute."

North Carolina (which I certainly didn't single out, after all, it was a hair's-bredth swing state and I'm well aware of the economic clout of Research Triangle) is not the worst offender but it still takes more Federal money than it contributes, at least as of this MJ story. There are a lot of other maps like this, all making the same correlation between Republican states and Federal largesse, which bodes very poorly for any secession plans.

I don't disagree with the statistics about my home state, and I think it's largely made up of a bunch of rubes here, but I would point out that you are now introducing a distinction not in your original - viz a viz $'s distributed / $'s contributed. That's not convertible with "states that contribute to the economy" qua economy. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.