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

For reference, Baker City, a larger eastern Oregon population center, is approximately 300 miles from Portland and about 140 from Boise. Pendleton may be about equidistant. I’ve got acquaintances and friends that have only been to the western side of the state a few times in their life and they’re more likely to spend their time in Idaho or Nevada than come west.

The way of life out there is completely foreign to most on the western side of the state, and the eastern side thinks the west is full of “crazy liberals”. It’s been that way my whole life, but the last few years have made it seem completely broken.

I spend a lot of time out east, whether it is Idaho or Oregon, I’ll still spend my time out there- but I’d love to find a way to prevent the divorce (that they’ve been talking about since before I was born).

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).

There’s also the question of whether Congress and Oregon would want to support the change, both of which, in addition to the consent of Idaho’s legislature, are required under Article IV Sec. 3 of the US Constitution before a new state can be formed of the existing state of Idaho and parts of the existing state of Oregon.

In an interview with Fox News, Idaho Gov. Brad Little said he understands why some rural Oregonians want to redraw the borders.

"They’re looking at Idaho fondly because of our regulatory atmosphere, our values, Little told Fox News. What they’re interested in is they would like to have a little more autonomy, a little more control, a little more freedom and I can understand that."

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...

The wealth of the nation could flip if heavy import duties were imposed forcing a manufacturing back inhouse.

Things are the way they are because the powerful like it.

As far as cost scaling, I kind of disagree. That calculation doesn't work well in the US, where a large portion of the people who work in the city commute. I come from a rural area and live in the bay area now, and I can say without a doubt I spend much more time on the road here. Same with emergency services, they were waaaayyyy better in my (very small and poor) hometown in terms of response times (or responding at all), and I can't see how that would cost more than running the same services here.

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.

Her house was the only one visible for as far as you could see from that exit. All i could think about was how much better her life was for that exit and how all her total tax income forever could never ever come close to covering the costs society bore to build that exit.

I have always lived in very liberal, expensive, coastal cities and have always heard talking points about waste on welfare to cover poor inner-city americans (typically by rural/suburban conservatives), and all i could think was how backwards this was, and how many families could be fed by the cost of this one exit ramp.

Does this mean that society shouldn't build that ramp? I don't know because rural farmland obviously needs to access the rest of society (to ship food), and everyone sorta deserves to access the road system

You've made up this narrative of what 'the other side' thinks.

I'll recast it for you.

* start narrative *

A lot of people in america seem to believe that their wages have stagnated while witnessing the wages of those living on the coast, who often disagree politically with them, rise stratospherically. To them it seems like the coastal elites do nothing, while they are quite literally breaking their backs to earn a paltry wage, that they then owe to the very coastal elites they feel are doing nothing.

It seems like they take the money, pay it in taxes, subsidize us and tell us we should grovel to them for it, while simultaneously opposing policies we feel would reduce the dependence. For example, they tell us we can't water our farms because of 'global warming', and instead should rely on their benevolence. But we don't want that benevolence.

* end narrative *

When you put it that way, you realize the 'hardworking real Americans' actually have a lot in common with far-left labor activists. And you'd be right. It would behoove everyone to have more compassion and charity towards their countrymen.

Anyway, there is a drastic shift in the Republican party that has gone completely unnoticed. Trump, everything from his personality to his tactics are more reminiscent of the pre-neo-liberal democrat party establishment than anything else. There is a real warming up of the republican base to social programs, government spending, and unions, so long as those institutions prioritize what they believe to be important issues. This is a far cry from the anti-spending, anti-union GOP of old.

The net inflows/outflows from any given state aren't that big on a per capita basis. They're small enough that anyone who either wants to not have to be told what to do by big city liberals or doesn't want to be held back by rural conservatives that would consider it a small price to pay for freedom.

If all of the people at facebook, google, and twitter quit their jobs, however, all that would really happen would be that the country would get a bit more peaceful.

You're talking about how much is taken in taxes. These people are talking about how much is given in life.

By far the most heavily subsidized, most expensive, poorest and least educated people in the United States are the poor living in urban zones. It's not even remotely a close comparison in terms of numbers.

You can see it in the crime statistics, you can see it in the drop-out rates, you can see it in the homelessness rates. And so on.

You can also see it in the cost of incarcerating violent criminals (not drug offenders, which are a shrinking, smaller share of the incarcerated population), which urban zones produce radically more of to go with the extreme poverty found in US cities. The urban zones - which are hyper dangerous in the US - produce the overwhelming share of all murder in the country. Who pays for the very expensive policing necessary to keep terrorist groups from burning Portland to the ground? That isn't going on in rural Oregon. Who pays for the very expensive policing to try to control the extreme murder rates in Baltimore or Chicago? That isn't going on in rural Maryland or Illinois; the per capita murder rates in Baltimore are 50x to 100x higher than in rural Maryland. These things are all subsidized by the urban high income brackets, and it's a huge cost.

And it's also true that the urban zones have far higher incomes, so they pay higher taxes and push more money into the welfare system accordingly. They subsidize both their local urban poor and the rural poor outside the cities.

The bottom 10% in Los Angeles represent a de facto third world standard of living and it's a very large population. Those shocking, unbelievable homeless camps in Los Angeles look like something out of a sci-fi dystopian movie. And that's just a very small fraction, a small visual representation, of the extreme poverty in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago.

What sort of logic supports that American values are those held by a minority of Americans. What possible values suggest they are the normal ones?

> 3. Low Tax

The counties involved have median household incomes of 30-35K, making their tax burden $600-1100 total, a far cry from the average quoted, which is skewed right strongly by outliers (1%), which tend to be outside of the counties in this idea.

> 5. Thriving Economy ... low unemployment

Economy is a second order effect. How does having a low unemployment affect the number of jobs in the actual areas? Cause and effect are reversed in this claim.

> 6. Representation: ... But our reps would be in the ruling party in Idaho

I think the word is "governing", this is a little confused about the difference.

Haha, what? If Oregon is doing stuff, it's definitionally an American value and American Freedom, right? Who gets to decide what an "American *" is?

> > 4. Safety: Idaho allows forests to be managed to prevent destruction of housing from huge wildfires.

They do realize that Idaho and Oregon have different climates and different precipitation amounts, right? The Western Rockies and Eastern Cascades are different biomes.

> > 5. Thriving Economy: Idaho has less regulation than any other state, low unemployment, and would allow our rural industries to revive and employ us again.

Is there any data that backs this up? This feels like a pipe dream to me that's totally unfounded.

If they were really a proponent of freedom then they would support the freedom of adults to smoke/injest/snort/inject anything they want. "Addicts will be attracted to Oregon..." precisely because of that freedom.

If that's true then they'd be better off moving to Idaho, right? Given the vast area involved it's difficult to imagine that in a span of even a decade or more that the forests would be transformed so as to prevent wildfires. Staying where they are would only leave them in harms way for quite some years.

Points 1 and 2 should be combined and addressed as "how civil services protect and better the community".

The issues of homelessness, drug addiction, and dis-enfranchisement of displaced people all relate to failed social safety nets and social planning. My understanding is that decades ago, in the early 80s IIRC, a terrible abuse and system for housing the mentally ill was disbanded. Unfortunately nothing took it's place.

There are also very troubling issues related to lack of housing, lack of jobs, and lack of a proper program to connect displaced individuals with that type of societal re-integration. A New "New Deal", in any form, could enrich the value of society by re-educating and providing jobs which enrich the commons of society thus improving the lives and economic fitness of all. Better those handouts from our taxes trickle up to the rich, as all else currently does, than go directly to their coffers in tax cuts.

Point 3, and probably 5 as well: The report I suggested would be the best way of understanding this issue for everyone. The issue is Taxes VS Benefits; not absolute tax taken. Until the balance of benefits to taxes is understood this is a straw man which needs more data for all sides to understand.

Point 5: Regulation in specific. Ideally regulation prevents more problems than it causes. Regulation should allow assumptions about fitness for use, safety, and fairness to all parties involved to exist. If there is some regulation which does not contribute to this common good, to the preservation of the commons, or if there is a lack of regulation which is resulting in abuse, then said regulations should be revisited by the representatives of the people.

6: "the ruling party" I take this as slang for the currently dominant political party, but it is strikingly 'Us' vs 'Them' and very divisively secessionist. Extremely misguided. Reform of our electoral systems and categorization of representation should be undertaken to finally liberate all citizens from the First Past The Post voting system to ANY kind of instant runoff. We need to have a spectrum of political parties to promote compromise and plans that work for many rather than for few.

I just spent a month in central Oregon and there were proscribed burns going on all over the place. It was the most forest management I've seen in any state.

how unfortunate.

Wait, these rules aren't something that are enacted and enforced at an individual city / town level? These are state-wide zoning(?) rules being applied universally to all jurisdictions in the state? If so, that does seem obnoxious..

(I don't own land so I am very unfamiliar in how zoning regulation plays itself out, so apologies ahead of time.)

Please tell me what part of the country this is so I can avoid it.

You're right, you don't say it would save the government money. You make the argument that it would save everyone money. No one has any incentive to care about the price of healthcare, currently. Not the suppliers, not the providers, not the insurers. And the consumers simply have no choice.

Uninsured, underinsured, or people with high deductibles are much, much more likely to let a health issue linger for much longer than someone who gets free (to them) healthcare. If an issue lingers, getting worse and worse, it may eventually reach the point where it forces them out of the workforce; they stop paying taxes, they stop purchasing commercial goods which drive the economy, they stop buying new cars, etc. (on an individual basis, this is rare, but compounded by 40 million or so people it adds up to a lot of people not performing economic activity who would otherwise be making and spending money)

Free-for-me healthcare is better at providing preventative medicine than out-of-pocket healthcare. Preventative medicine is cheaper in absolute terms over the long term that remedial medicine, even if preventative medicine is much more common that remedial medicine. If remedial medicine removes a person from the work force, that costs the entire GDP a worker.

It is better for all of us -- in purely economic terms -- to have a worker wearing a government issued back brace, taking government issued anti-inflammatory drugs, and participating in government sponsored physical therapy than having a non-worker have back surgery on an insurance plan that spreads the cost among all of that insurer's other customers instead of producing widgets in the factory.

I might not speak for that many people on the left, but I personally support anti-poverty programs as a general rule not because I care about the plight of humanity or whatever, (fuck 'em) but because taxing people and spending those tax dollars on anti-poverty programs improve my overall quality of life more than just letting us keep the money. Every poor person, every homeless person, needs to have tax dollars devoted to them in terms of police and emergency services. Two years ago someone smashed my car's window, stole a $20 backpack with $40 worth of gym clothes, costing me a $500 deductible to replace the window and fix the e-brake. Pretty sure if that asshole had a better education, was given free tradeschool or college they wouldn't have smashed my window.

We, as a society, have decided that we'd rather have a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention. In a dozen ways. And that's fucking stupid.

Ask Bismarck. The first quasi-universal healthcare system wasn’t introduced because Bismarck was so nice; it was to increase productivity and discourage people from voting for the socialists.

I would have more respect for the right if they just admitted they are ok with people dying in the streets since they just ignore the economic effects of EMTALA.

What individuals believe seems _so_obviously_correct_ and what other people believe is _so_completely_ridiculous_ that we make up reasons for them being so... so... different than ourselves.

I wish more people recognized that it is a tempting and lazy logical fallacy. It is fundamentally disrespectful to assume that people who don’t agree with you are too emotional. If you make this argument, you are killing your own argument, unless you support it with facts. OP demonstrates this uncharitability by asserting a lack of data, and then assuming emotions explain it. Go hang out with a more diverse crowd, OP. You are robbing yourself of life’s tapestry.

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.

"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]

That's a large erosion of political and economic power in those rural areas as more people moved out of agriculture into other industries that tend to be located in population centers. Not sure how that changes unless we move away from large corporate farms back to smaller family farms (See various Wendall Berry essays and novels where he lays out what's happened to rural areas over the last century as family farms have dwindled), however, that seems very unlikely.

[1] http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2016/6/26/the-evolution-of-americ...

Just Devil's Advocate, but wouldn't that be the best outcome? If it showed to which company every tax dollar went. Who the principals are in those companies. And the connections those principals have to politicians allocating the dollars?

Especially if it showed this for every dollar, I'm finding it hard to see a downside. Am I missing something?

Wouldn't we call that a success? You can't fix something that isn't measured. If nobody knows anything concrete then all people have to go on is vague feelings.

https://anchor.fm/lostmass/episodes/The-Lost-Corner-AKA-Hell...

Yes, Western/urban/blue Oregon is against this. I don't think there's a simple self-interest-based reason like "we would lose X if they left," but it is considered an unserious idea, would involve large-but-not-well-understood costs, and there's no reason to do it.

There's also the thought that decentralization is seen as a threat by centralized players, therefore, even if it could be more effective, it may be prevented or delayed from taking hold.

Obviously, it hasn't been historically.

But an interesting long-term trend (across the last few centuries) is that "conquest by force" is becoming less and less effective. In the ancient world, "conquest by force" meant you got to take their land, take their food, take their livestock, and just in general take all their stuff that they worked for without you having to work for it, and this is clearly an advantageous move. If you destroyed their infrastructure, meh. It was easily replaced.

As our world becomes more and more technological, though, an increasing amount of our wealth is in people, infrastructure, and relationships. It is effectively impossible today to "conquer" a country in the conventional sense and enjoy their wealth as a result. You can force a slave to harvest wheat, but you can't force them to participate at full capacity in a software engineering role with a hundred other people. (Part of why as many people have observed, slavery was on its way out in the South whether the civil war happened or not, albeit perhaps decades later.) Militaries remain an important component of how countries relate to each other, as a chess understanding would suggest, even the threat of mass destruction is (whether we like it or not) a very big and important stick, but today the threat is military destruction... not conquest.

If we continue even farther into this direction, well... what would the effects be?

(An interesting test case for the point of view I am propounding here is China's attempts to militarily conquer Taiwan. If they do undertake it, it would be one of the most interesting such conquest attempts in a long time, because unlike the Ukraine/Crimea where I think Russia wanted the land rights more than anything else, China wants the people of Taiwan. Will the people of Taiwan just acquiesce and continue generating wealth for China to take? Or will China discover that the jewel is much less desirable than they thought? Stay tuned.)

I'll end with, please note the difference between "less and less effective" and "ineffective". Military conquest isn't necessarily ineffective. But it used to get you a much higher percentage of the "good stuff" of the conquered territory. Today, if you "conquer" a nation, but had to wipe out its entire industrial infrastructure in order to finally convince it to stop resisting you, percentage wise you've won a lot less of what there was before you started to conquer them. It's not hard to get to the point where you won less than you would have had you just taken what you put into your military effort and used it to build locally instead of destroy.

It may look that way should “one side” or the other control an official political body, but at least for now, we still abide election laws insuring the “rule of law” bit.

West California would still be one of the most populous states in the union, coming in just behind Ohio in 7th place and South California would be nipping on its heels. Silicon Valley would be ranked near Tennessee. As crazy as this proposal sounds, it's probably less crazy than having almost 40 million people be represented by just 2 senators when Wyoming has the same number of senators for barely half a million people.

Also have you ever been to Marin? A lot of people there are fairly "conservative".

I suspect that if you asked in Malheur, Sherman, Grant, Baker, Lake, Jefferson and Union counties, they'd agree that we can afford to ignore carbon dioxide production.

There is no political back and forth like there used to be where you'd have republicans controlling things for a time and then democrats. It's been mostly Portland democrats controlling the state for over 20 years now. The needs of most of the state, by geography but which has a lower population, are not the same as those in the 1 big city the state has, so a lot of people are interested in changing that with democratic votes.

Since Portland pays the lionshare of taxes for the state, you'd think they'd be happy getting rid of the poorer parts of the states that they have to currently subsidize. Seems like it would be a win-win for everybody involved. What are the downsides?

If you look at the state senate map, there is a lot more red land mass than blue. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oregon_Senate_map.pn...

If you introduce a new state that leans blue, that's two more blue senators and N more electoral college votes for a blue president. Republicans will staunchly oppose this. And vice versa.

If the senate were proportional to population, and if the electoral college were likewise apportioned via popular vote, then maybe you could be more flexible with state boundaries.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/8/e1600451

> No free negro or mulatto not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside or be within this state or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such negroes and mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbor them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_black_exclusion_laws

So it's not surprising so much of the state is like this. People give the south crap but the Pacific Northwest was literally founded on these ideals and it still very much persists to this day.

only if you have forgotten, as you say, the great satanic panic(s) of the 70s and 80s. And, every few decades, going back to about Carthage...

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-pa...

You know that's how the US was formed, right?

Why isn't "if you don't like it leave" a productive suggestion in pretty much any case?

Per the guidelines of this site, we are recommended to take the most charitable interpretation of the other commenter's post. Similarly, you could pay more heed to the more nuanced arguments of the other political side, and just ignore the non-productive arguments like "if you don't like it leave." Throwing that suggestion back over the wall, isn't going to lead to a productive conversation.

"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 plurality.

And yes, frequently, "population centers" are going to be where the majority of people live, which means in any state, you're going to have the same problem. Which means this complaint is essentially about the idea that certain minorities get that they should have the right to impose their values on the majority.

> Idahoans are very concerned about keeping their state as conservative as possible. They had 2.46 conservative votes per liberal vote in the 2016 presidential election, but eastern Washington only had 1.43.

> Moreover, eastern Washington has a population of 1.6 million in 2017, as compared to Idaho’s population of 1.7 million. Idahoans don’t want to be outvoted by others in their own state, so they’re not likely to want to include such a large population into their own state. If Republican-voting southern Washington state is included, that’s an additional 0.8 million.

> When we created the modern Greater Idaho proposal in 2019, we searched diligently for any possible combination of Washington State counties that would be both as prosperous and as conservative as Idaho. We only find this group of three counties: Columbia, Garfield, and Asotin counties. We are including these counties in our proposal.

> Here is a plan for rural WA liberty that is more likely to get approvals than joining Idaho is: https://redstatesecession.org/washington-state-should-become...

https://www.greateridaho.org/faq/

The very minority party now can just leave and stop anything from happening. That's effectively what the republican did.

You can call it a fair democracy because it's "following the rules" but it's pretty fucked IMO.

Moving counties from one state to another doesn't require Congress be involved as no state is created or destroyed. I assume that legislatures of both states would need to agree to the border change but it isn't something that is addressed.

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 all of it's priorities right. The big screen is a mistake, like delicate work truck type, but maybe the great package overall is not impacted.

I will be curious to see that play out.