ID gonna have seacoast (Cascade: houses, buying, income)

[oregonwoodsmoke]

The Oregonians don't really want to leave Oregon. They are just really tired of having their culture and lifestyle trampled into the mud by the overwhelming number of voters in Portland who were not raised in Oregon and who have no idea what is means to live in the country, or raise food (farming), or how the lumber industry should work. And who, incidentally, refuse to find out or to care what their legislation does to other parts of the state.

[DJKirkland]

This idea seems to pop up frequently by Eastern OR and WA residents. Here’s an idea besides floating a proposition that’s so unlikely to happen: move to Idaho! It’s already there and everything they want in a state. No legislation needed!

[Mister Torgue]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

They are just really tired of having their culture and lifestyle trampled into the mud by the overwhelming number of voters in Portland who were not raised in Oregon and who have no idea what is means to live in the country, or raise food (farming), or how the lumber industry should work. And who, incidentally, refuse to find out or to care what their legislation does to other parts of the state.

This is quite true not only for Oregon but the majority of the states (mostly our west) that seem to be in a similar situation. It is a crock to have a whole state ran by one city or metro area‘s ideology and lifestyle.

[NW Crow]

83% of the country lives in an urban area or one size of another. And it continues to increase.

Majorities will elect the majority of state and local government officials (except where gerrymandering or voter suppression is active.).

It is unrealistic to expect state governments to closely mirror the views of rural residents except in a few states. Idaho is closer to rural resident views than most states.

[NW Crow]

I am watching this border shift movement but I don't expect it to become reality, at least not in next 10 years.

In addition to losing legal marijuana (important to some) and getting a 40% lower minimum wage and maybe less access or less certain access to Medicaid, Oregon residents would probably be required to assume some share of Oregon's public debt and government worker retiree benefit obligations. Could be many billions. And then they'd also assume their full share of Idaho's. When the details come out, I expect the idea to be far less popular. Or will Idaho volunteer to assume across all new and old Idahoans the exit obligations of the departing Oregonians?

I started with the assumption that the departing Oregonians could take their infrastructure (schools, roads, prisons, dams, etc.) at no new charge but Oregon might not agree to that and try to charge Idaho some possibly very large amount for those assets.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

The Oregonians don't really want to leave Oregon. They are just really tired of having their culture and lifestyle trampled into the mud by the overwhelming number of voters in Portland who were not raised in Oregon and who have no idea what is means to live in the country, or raise food (farming), or how the lumber industry should work. And who, incidentally, refuse to find out or to care what their legislation does to other parts of the state.

I can certainly understand the emotions, but self-sorting isn't a very good way of feeling better. There's no guarantee at all that Idaho is going to understand all that country stuff any better that Oregon. The problem might be worse on the Oregon side of the border right now, but it's not unique to just one side.

Here in Idaho, we are beginning to have exactly the same things happen that you mentioned. It isn't as advanced here yet only because Oregon was the hot state to move to first. Orgon's cities began exploding in growth quite a while ago, but Idaho's turn has now come. We are beginning to experience the same attitudes here as you mentioned.

Creating a Greater Idaho would not be a fast process. It could take many years.
And we haven't seen the end of our migration flood here yet. Far from it, but all indications.

By the time Greater Idaho would be in effect, who knows? There may not be a whisker's worth of difference for rural folks on either side of the border.

All that effort to try to preserve their way of life isn't ever going to work by self-sorting and leaving their native state behind, I believe.
A much better way to accomplish it is to put their minds to work, find ways to bring the urban newcomers out into E. Oregon and get acquainted with them. And vice versa. Those folks need to do some mingling with the city folks too. If Oregon's citizens would begin to introduce themselves to each other, I think the problems would diminish greatly.

I also believe Idaho is headed for similar problems, possibly very quickly, and possibly even worse. The panhandle and the south have never mingled very much here, as access north to south is more difficult.

I think our really a lot of our newcomers have very little knowledge of the Idaho that lies 200 miles away from Boise or Coeur d'Alene or from Idaho Falls. How's a newcomer here ever going to know what living in the country is like if all they know is big city?

If they settle down in the country, they will still think and act like they did living in the city. City folks think they'll naturally adjust to country life. They won't. And country people may not be willing to be their teachers. Newcomers are more often seen with suspicion than with welcome. They don't know us, and we don't know them.
That's the root of Oregon's problems. Idaho's too, eventually.

Now that the quarantine's ending seems to be eminent just as summer is coming, I think a lot of new folks need to go meet their neighbors in road trips all over their new home state this summer.

A little light introduction in a nice little weekend getaway, or a day in the country would go far in helping us all get to know each other better. That's what both Oregon and Idaho really need.

[MrDee12345]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

Oregon can solve their problem, not by leaving the state of Oregon, but by merely moving the Oregon/ Washington border south by a few miles just enough to move Portland into Washington state.


That moves most of the Progressive Angelenos into Washington where they fit better. It leaves a couple of "progressive" cities but they won't have enough votes to overwhelm everyone else in the state and they won't be able to impose their beliefs on people who don't want them by the process of overwhelming numbers of voters.

So wouldn't you be just doing the opposite? Imposing more conservative views on a minority of liberals?

[nm9stheham]

IMHO... the problem would be much better addressed in how the Oregon senate is elected. Follow along:

Right now, each OR senate seat area covers the area of 2 house seats and so the popular election of the state senate does not provide the necessary counterbalance of geographic area versus popular vote. In other words, the state senate seats are all focused in the urban areas, just like the house seats. So Oregon, in reality, does NOT have a true bicameral legislature, where the 2 chambers' power is from 2 different sources. Washington state has the same setup, and the same problem of the state law all being controlled out of Seattle.

That setup defeats the whole point of having a bicameral legislature, and produces the problem seen in OR:
- One house should reflect popular voting, where the population is divided up into districts with equal numbers of people in each district
- The other house (the senate in this case) ought to be divided up along geographical lines, regardless of the population in each senate district

The above bicameral design is intended to prevent one highly populous area from controlling the whole enchilda, and gives the necessary power spilt between urban and rural interests. This type of design was put in the original US Constitution for exactly that reason. During the constitutional convention, the biggest barrier to acceptance of the new Constitution and the new Federal gov't was the knowledge that together NY and VA alone could control the whole federal gov't.

The solution was to assign equal number is US Senate seats to each state, regardless of size and population. That achieved the necessary power balance between small and large states, and eventually between rural and urban areas.

And I hate to point this out, but Idaho has the same flawed state senate districting plan as OR and WA. Long term, it is has the potential to be based on the overall values of the larger urban areas and the rural areas may lose out. This can only be prevent by limiting the minimize and maximize geographical size of each district and letting there be some significant variation in population density in urban vs rural districts, or by changing the the senate re-districting process.

[Seacove]

Originally Posted by Mister Torgue

I dig it. Eastern WA should do the same.

Eastern Washington should join Idaho, they are costing Seattle a fortune. Check out page 3 of this report showing some counties in Eastern Washington spending twice as much as they take in, leaving Seattle to pay the rest. We send $3 billion a year to 33 other counties in the state. Idaho can take over and pay for them.

https://ofm.wa.gov/sites/default/fil...s_revenues.pdf

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...eattles-money/

The Oregon counties are likely similar.

These counties in both Oregon and Washington want to have equal power to the highly populated areas of the states but they want to have billions of dollars in handouts too.

Originally Posted by DJKirkland

This idea seems to pop up frequently by Eastern OR and WA residents. Here’s an idea besides floating a proposition that’s so unlikely to happen: move to Idaho! It’s already there and everything they want in a state. No legislation needed!

Exactly. But - if Idaho taxpayers want to pay for those Eastern counties, it's a win for all.

[NW Crow]

In a number of states, legislative districts that might have been fair pre-urbanization were intentionally kept and increasingly biased toward rural areas for a long time but eventually were changed, sometimes by court order for unequal representation concerns. Going back to that is so extremely unlikely that I'd say never going to happen.

It was necessary to form Union of States but that precedent is not protected or used today to my knowledge at state level. At least not super brazenly.


If you want rural voters to rule a state (fairly) or have a major say, pick one of the very few states that have a relatively very high rural population percentage, though almost never an absolute majority. Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, Mississippi, Nort Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia.

https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/...ban-pct-states

Not Idaho (pushing close to 75% urban now). Not Wyoming really either if you go by where people actually live (65% classified as urban).

Some suburbanites and folks with acreage but pretty close to a city might consider themselves "rural" but not all definitions of rural / urban would agree. Small towns / cities might have a lot people who consider themselves rural but some datasets might not.