Growing movement in Idaho to assimilate half of Oregon

[Random]

Does Idaho even want them? Can regions join a US State against the States will?

[Thermal]

Originally Posted by Random

Does Idaho even want them? Can regions join a US State against the States will?

State rape.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by W.D.Clinger

The five pictures I posted above all show parts of Oregon that the "Greater Idaho" people would like to take away from Oregon and add to Idaho. I took those pictures, over a period of many years. They show you where I'm "coming from."

I wasn't asking literally where you're from. You seemed to be rather irritated at my post and I was trying to figure out why because you are quite right that...

"It sounds as though you have been trying to agree with Representative Blumenauer and with me."

Except I wasn't "trying to agree"; I do agree.

[Stacyhs]

Originally Posted by Thermal

State rape.

More like state kidnapping.

[TragicMonkey]

Some counties are physically Oregon but feel like they should be Idaho?

[Mike!]

Originally Posted by TragicMonkey

Some counties are physically Oregon but feel like they should be Idaho?

The logical conclusion would be, they should just self identify as Idaho and leave it at that.

[TragicMonkey]

Originally Posted by Mike!

The logical conclusion would be, they should just self identify as Idaho and leave it at that.

But where will they pee and poop? That's the vital question upon which all human rights depend.

[Jack by the hedge]

Maybe they can persuade Putin to invade and liberate them.

[dudalb]

I expect to hear the eternal routine about the counties in the northeren Quarter of Califoriia talk about seceding;we are overdue for that to revive.

[Jim_MDP]

Originally Posted by gabeygoat

It's an impossibly stupid movement, that's based on right wing racist garbage, one thing they're not thinking about is immediate loss of wages. Oregon minimum wage is based on three tiers (mostly to assuage Eastern Oregon who for whatever reason didn't want living wages).
Currently, it works as such:

$14.75 per hour - Portland metro
Within the urban growth boundary, including parts of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington Counties

$13.50 per hour - Standard
Benton, Clatsop, Columbia, Deschutes, Hood River, Jackson, Josephine, Lane, Lincoln, Linn, Marion, Polk, Tillamook, Wasco, Yamhill, and parts of Clackamas, Multnomah, & Washington outside the urban growth boundary.

$12.50 per hour - Non-urban
Baker, Coos, Crook, Curry, Douglas, Gilliam, Grant, Harney, Jefferson, and other rightwing areas

If they get their wish, they'd get Idaho minimum wage which is still at the embarassing level of Federal MW of $7.25 an hour. These people are wanting to reduce their income by almost half so that they can, I don't know, take over bird refuges or something?

I'm a little concerned about the state's income from agriculture. As in... how much of ours is included in the land grab?

A quick search shows (and I could be wrong here) each runs about a sixth with Idaho a tad more (~ 18% vs ~15%) but ours is almost four times larger (~$40 billion vs ~$11).
That could be a hefty loss.

BTW... I'm on the coast in Coos, and I've seen proposed maps that stretch the swapped area all the way to the Pacific along the Cali border. Including Coos county.

I love taters all to hell, but... thanks but no thanks.

[Jim_MDP]

Originally Posted by dudalb

I expect to hear the eternal routine about the counties in the northeren Quarter of Califoriia talk about seceding;we are overdue for that to revive.

Yeah... that silly crap includes Coos Cty as well.

Taken me over a decade now to finally consider myself an Oregonistanian, I'm too [s]old[/s] stubborn to change again.

[Parsman]

Sorry but this put me in mind of nothing so much as the sketch by Monty Python where Mr Hilter and his friends Bimmler and Ron Vibentrop stand for election in Minehead, stating that Taunton is historically part of Minehead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTLeBybJhSo). Almost as silly anyway

[W.D.Clinger]

Originally Posted by Jim_MDP

BTW... I'm on the coast in Coos, and I've seen proposed maps that stretch the swapped area all the way to the Pacific along the Cali border. Including Coos county.

That was the original fever dream, which endures in the Greater Idaho movement's proposed Phase 2. Following last year's May 17 rejection of the movement by a majority of those voting in Douglas and Josephine counties, the ring-leaders of the Greater Idaho movement proposed a scaled-back Phase 1 that excludes Oregon's coastal counties and the parts of northern California that had been included within the original proposal.

The Greater Idaho movement had suffered a previous setback in November 2020 when Wallowa County rejected the movement by a margin of 46 votes. Not taking no for an answer, the movement has gotten a slightly scaled-back version of that vote back on the Wallowa County ballot for this coming May.

These county votes are basically PR for the movement. Whether anything comes of the Greater Idaho movement will be entirely up to the states of Oregon and Idaho and the US government, all of which will have to approve any changes. In Wallowa County, for example, the question on May's ballot concerns whether Wallowa County commisioners would be required to meet twice a year to consider the pros and cons of moving Wallowa County from Oregon to Idaho. The ballot question that was rejected in 2020 would have required them to meet three times a year for that purpose.

Wallowa County, at the extreme northeast corner of Oregon, occupies a strategic position. The Greater Idaho movement's PR says the movement is about self-determination based on values, not politics. If Wallowa County continues to self-determine that it doesn't want to be part of Idaho, the advocates of Greater Idaho will be pushing for an outcome that either (1) forces Wallowa County to become part of Idaho against its residents' expressed wishes or (2) leaves Wallowa County geographically isolated from the rest of what would remain of Oregon.

The movement's proposed Phase 1 already implies several problems of that sort. For one thing, the Phase 1 proposal envisions division of several Oregon counties (Wasco, Jefferson, Deschutes, and Klamath), which makes it harder to interpret advisory votes in those counties as PR for the movement. Jefferson and Klamath have already voted in favor of starting to think about the possibility of joining Greater Idaho, but Wasco and Deschutes have not voted on the question, and it is (in my opinion) highly unlikely that Deschutes County would look kindly upon Greater Idaho. Bend, in Deschutes County, is the largest Oregon city east of the Cascades, and is the economic hub for an area that includes smaller cities such as Sisters, Redmond, Prineville (in Crook County, which also has not voted on the question), and Sunriver. Phase 1, however, proposes a split that would move Redmond and Prineville to Idaho.

I suspect that split is motivated in part by desire to include an economically important stretch of the Deschutes River within Greater Idaho, because farmers in that drought-stricken area would otherwise have a hard time convincing the state of Oregon to help them out by diverting water from the Deschutes to farms in Greater Idaho. But I very much doubt whether the state of Oregon will ever be willing to cede any part of the Deschutes River to Idaho.

Here are a couple of good articles that describe the history of the Greater Idaho movement:

• Greater Idaho and the ugly history of Northwest secession movements
• Commentary: Lesser Oregon and Greater Idaho

From the second of those articles:

Originally Posted by Robert Leo Heilman

For most of the past 40-something years, this has all been just a silly bit of fun, useful perhaps for promoting a sense of regional identity and as a tourist come-on, but in recent years this yearning has taken on a darker, more mean-spirited nature....

While the secessionist movements of the 1970s and 1980s were grounded in hippie-dippy environmentalism, today’s movements are often fueled by strident anti-government ideology....It is also a movement that is related, in part, to the American Redoubt’s attempt to establish a White Christian survivalist stronghold centered in Idaho but which wants to ultimately include eastern Oregon and eastern Washington and portions of Montana as well.

....

The obstacles to ever-shifting any state lines are virtually insurmountable....Should the great state of Idaho wish to acquire that land, it would need to pay an estimated $10-$15 billion for Oregon’s state lands and buildings located in a large but sparsely populated region that currently generates less state tax revenue than it receives.

....Given the difficulties involved, much of the support for the proposal is likely less a matter of any genuine desire to actually secede than it is a way to brandish an up-thrust middle finger aimed at the rest of the state.

[Gulliver Foyle]

Originally Posted by Donal

That was never the purpose, though. Less than 3% of the country lived in an urban area per the 1790 census. Every state was a rural state. The Senate was meant to protect less populated states from getting steam rolled by the heavily populated ones.

It was meant to protect the slave states from abolitionists, every deviation from democracy in the constitution has that as its root.

[JoeMorgue]

Originally Posted by Gulliver Foyle

It was meant to protect the slave states from abolitionists.

This was the one and only reason. Anytime you hear "small states" or "rural areas" the person is either mistaken or is lying.

[Norman Alexander]

This could be a great movie in the making!

Greater Fascistisch Idaho wants to assimilate Naziville County from Oregon because they are both fascists. But Naziville County doesn't want to be assimilated because Greater Fascistisch Idaho is not their kind of fascist, and the good burghers of Naziville County completely dislike anyone who is not their kind of fascist. They are splitter fascisti!

So who will win? Nobody knows, because, in the end, both Greater Fascistisch Idaho and Naziville County build huge walls around themselves to keep out "The Others", a huge, amorphous and mysterious race of non-fascist animals from the south, east, north and west. The walls are so high that no information can get out...or in.

Hilarity ensues.