Mike McCarter, president of the Greater Idaho movement, has said, “We tried voting those legislators out but rural Oregon is outnumbered and our voices are now ignored. This is our last resort.”
McCarter provides the reader with a suscinct and perfectly tone-deaf example of toxic white privilige.
Rural Oregonians will never acknowledge the fact that they benefit enormously from the current political & fiscal arrangement. As it is, rural Oregonian communities receive ~$1.30 in services for every dollar in tax revenue collected. The simple truth is that Idahoans will refuse to subsidize rural Oregonians to the extent that “liberal” Oregonians do.
There was also a very good recent analysis of the timber industry in Oregon that showed…drum roll…that timber jobs over the past 20 years haven’t decreased due to regulations (in all but 3 of those years, timber companies have harvested less than they were allowed) but rather because people don’t want to work those jobs. The industry can’t find enough people who will risk their lives for a (barely) living wage.
Eastern Oregon’s a huge beneficiary of state largesse to the tune of ~$1.30 in state spending & services for every dollar of revenue collected - a huge subsidy Idahoans will never, ever match.
The irony is that eastern OR, from just east of Bend to the Idaho border, is one House district. Were that population to be integrated into Idaho’s, its not a given ID would gain a House seat.
The Greater Idaho people want more than just all of eastern and souther Oregon (which is way more than the seven counties cited here). They also want much of northern California and eastern Washington.
Nah. Actually Jefferson was a proposal for a new state of southern Oregon and northern California before WW2. The war basically ended any momentum that had. This Greater Idaho thing is different, being more of an eastern Oregon thing. And like Jefferson it won’t go anywhere.
I vote we take a bunch of these counties, from some of the places where lots of red states come together, form the new state of ‘third world shitholistan’, and encourage all the magats to move there. Then build a fence around it. Let them make their own laws, run the state into the ground in fine republican/libertarian fashion. They’ll get their two senators and a few reps, and once they leave, lots of formerly red states will turn blue, plus we can add Puerto Rico, Columbia, split a few of the more prosperous states in two, etc.
There has never been a time in history where this sort of reactionary conservatism and nationalism ended up on the winning side.
Yep, before the remote secession in Oregon Polity, this whole region here used to be euclidean-mappable. It’s all space elevators around now, and you cain’t. There’s deer that migrate to orbit safely and deer that don’t, and the others besides, wolf and bear and all. Damnedest salmon ladder you ever saw. Intermodal hydrogen ways and rails pass through, but you need your own light if your load falls to the side, so I hear.
? “not great” in what way? “Shithole”? I mean we know it’s not progressive but you just trashed a whole (quite varied) state with nothing specific. It’s a beautiful place whose people deserve the same consideration other states get here when people roll out the usual stereotypes. There’s good things and bad things about it, people who do more bad than good and people who do more good than bad, like anywhere.
And there is traditionally a cultural difference. Even within “lesser” Idaho, there was always something of a split between northern loggers/miners and southern mormon farmers (I always thought it made more sense for southern ID to split off to join Utah). Adding chunks of OR and NorCal would just exacerbate and add more internal divisions.
