Thoughts on the president’s home state:
Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.
But other than that, it’s great. And California’s pretty much in the same boat.
Let’s be clear – Illinois politicians (like Barack Obama) were elected by Illinois voters. Sure, the game was rigged, but it wasn’t THAT rigged. If there wasn’t a modicum of support for these disastrous policies, they’d never have gotten into office.
Well, actually, it’s mostly Chicago voters (both living and dead). The rest of the state just has to suffer (as does California with the politics being dominated by the coast).
I lived in Chicago for a few years for school. It’s Chicago, not Illinois, that’s the problem. The rest of the state is victimized by the corruption from the north.
The only way they can keep support is by raiding those that would oppose them.
I wonder if Illinois has ever given thought to seceding from Chicago?
If that were Constitutionally possible, Northern and/or Central California would seem to ripe for that sort of thing. As does Florida – the north end of the State is essentially “Southern Georgia/Alabama”, while the Miami area is very Northeasty.
West Virginia was carved out of Virginia so it has been done at least once.
For the record, much of the Florida panhandle is known as LA – Lower Alabama.
I’m not sure a North/South split in California makes much sense–I expect the rest of the state would be happy if the Bay Area and the LA area could be split off into their own city-states.
People keep proposing that California should be spilt in 2, occasionally 3, pieces. I propose the Grand Scism: Split up so that individual counties, excepting a few tiny ones, become their own states. Sounds like Illinois could benefit from something similar. Do it nation wide and the concentrated urban centers will never again control the fate of the Senate.
The dems would never allow any to take other peoples money away from them.
Probably like the Missouri Compromise, we’d have to keep the new states pretty much party-neutral–if a state has roughly 50/50 D/R representation in the senate it could be split into two states, one reliably D, the other reliably R. If, like CA, it is 100% D in the senate, it could be split into three states–2 D and 1 R. So CA could be split into Bay Area, LA Basin, and the rest.
Splitting CA into counties gives an overwhelming senate advantage to the Rs.