Secession Obsession
With the reelection of President Barack Obama, folks from mostly Southern states have decided to take their ball of state and go home. But considering the states in question, who's ball is it really?
By Denise Clay
There's about to be a whole range of discussions in Washington on ways that we can avoid going off of a fiscal cliff in terms of the Federal Deficit.
But if President Barack Obama wanted to, he could help the government solve this problem by honoring the request of the residents of a group of states that have been sending petitions to the We The People section of the White House website.
What have the people from these states been asking for?
They've been asking to leave the Union.
You see, because they didn't like the results of last Tuesday's elections, especially the part where President Barack Obama got another four years in the White House, a group of states, most of them below the Mason-Dixon Line, have asked to "peacefully secede" from the United States.
Think of it as the old "I want to take my ball and go home" thing that some of us used to do as kids.
The push to leave began almost as soon as the morning pundits began discussing the aftermath of the Presidential Elections on Nov. 7. Folks hoping that Republican nominee Mitt Romney would be swept into the White House and restore "liberty", which in this case means the liberty to discriminate against gays and lesbians and deny people health care, started to express their disappointment with "Blue State America".
From the woman in Arizona who ran over her husband with a Jeep because he didn't vote, to the man who killed himself and put a special request for President Obama in his will, the people who don't like the President have really been letting themselves go.
This has included a desire to, well, to reenact the Civil War scenes from the movie Lincoln. People from states including Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and believe it or not, New Jersey, have sent their names into the secession pile. It has also led to three other efforts: Atlanta asking to secede from Georgia, a petition from Austin asking to secede from Texas, and a petition from a group of folks tired of the whole process asking that those asking for secession be tried for sedition.
And because all that's needed for the White House to have to respond to these petitions is 25,000 signatures, President Obama has actually had to seriously think about these miniature requests for a legal separation.
(Note to the people from Jersey who cooked up this idea: It ain't gonna happen. As long as Gov. Chris Christie has people along the shore and on the Barrier Islands looking for help to rebuild, he's gonna look at y'all like you have three heads with an eye in the middle of them. You'd have an easier time turning Christie into a vegetarian than you would getting him to apply for New Jersey's secession right now.)
Now as easy as it would be to just write this off as the misguided racism of a section of the country so disturbed by the prospect of spending another four years under the rule of a black guy we probably shouldn't because whether we like it or not, these folks feel a certain way and not addressing it might lead to something worse.
But I personally wouldn't mind President Obama looking into this because it might kill two birds with one stone:
One, you'd get rid of a whole lot of people who seem to delight in saying the kind of things that make all of us folks above the Mason/Dixon line wince because they're so backward.
And two, you'd move us away from the fiscal cliff because we'd lose a whole bunch of deadbeat states that, frankly, didn't realize as they voted for the Romney/Rep. Paul Ryan presidential ticket in droves that when Ryan was talking about "takers" he meant them.
You seem the dirty little secret of our nation is that the Blue States, places like California, New York and the like, are the ones who finance the Red States, like Alabama and Louisiana. For example, for every dollar paid in federal taxes, Alabama gets $1.66, while New Jersey, which pays more in taxes, gets .66, according to the Washington Post.
In other words, with the exception of Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Maryland, Maine and Vermont, most of the states feeding from the Federal troth voted for what my friend Kellie C. Murphy calls the "Tool Ticket", which is funny considering that it's these same states that want to secede due to the "socialist" tendencies of President Obama.
(Can we all agree on one thing? If you don't know what a term means, let's not use it okay? President Obama isn't a socialist. If he were, the Affordable Care Act would be a single-payer system.)
If we didn't have these states grabbing loads and loads of federal dollars, the budget would be nice and balanced and all of the states that want to stay would have great schools, nice new bridges, health care for all, and a higher quality of life.
The other guys? Well, let's just say that it'll be closer to Lincoln than anyone really wants to go. And for that matter, I don't know how you're gonna go anywhere when you don't have the money to move.
And don't get me started on all of the federal stuff that is in your states that you'd have to pay for if y'all decided to leave. A nice chunk of your GDP would end up going back to the government you're trying to leave.
To their credit, the governors of these states know this. So now even Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the dude that originally floated the idea of his state seceding in 2009, has changed his tune.
But my guess is that this issue isn't going to go away if for no other reason Fox News is gonna make sure it continues to gin these people up.
Good luck with that, kids...
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