What might be the pluses and minuses to splitting New York State in two?
“Let’s look at it, get definitive figures,” says a first-term state senator, Daphne Jordan.
Sen. Jordan serves a region in the eastern part of the state. Her proposal for an official study, as yet unsponsored in the Assembly, focuses on splitting the downstate region (all five New York City boroughs, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties) from the 53 upstate counties.
The U.S. Congress would have to approve the creation of a new state, of course, and a split would almost certainly be tricky, requiring the geographically larger portion to reconfigure governance completely.
Which is the point.
Downstate politicians and voters have placed a lot of alien and debilitating rules, taxes and (worse yet) subsidies upon the increasingly malfunctional upstate, rural region. Sen. Jordan responded to a charge from a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo that her proposal is “the Godzilla of Pandering” in horror-movie form: the governor’s policies are, she says, “the curse of Dr. Cuomostein.”
In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, New York urban analyst Jane Jacobs noted a historical pattern: cities together with their regions constitute the salient macro-economic entities, not “nations.” Trouble is, big cities like New York no longer treat their rural areas as partners — in today’s globalist environment, the whole world serves as a major city’s “region.”
Rural areas have become mere playthings, whipping boys and dumping grounds for out-of-control urban nightmare politics.
Hence the divorce talk.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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4 replies on “New York, Pre Scission”
Great idea. Too bad we can’t get the support we need to put this into effect. One of the outcomes of this proposal is Upstate NY gets 2 additional Senators and a new Governor who undoubtedly would correctly represent their constituency as Conservatives. In addition, the rest of the State will no longer have to contribute to the largess of NY City. Here’s an interesting thought, if it’s just the 5 boroughs would the mayor be the Governor? That could mean the end of the tyrannical reign of the Cuomo Regime and the start of a new one with DeBlasio at the helm.
I had the opportunity to spend a long winter at Ft. Drum, NY (Back when it was Camp Drum). The people were as friendly and warm as the weather was cold. The area contained many honest hard-working folks, and many — gasp — were gun owners.
I’ve had many years to pity the fact that they’re at the mercy of big city liberals down-state who continue to run roughshod over their rights.
I live in Eastern Washington and we want to split King County (where Seattle is) into another state because their politics and ideas are totally socialist (that is why they have a socialist leading the city counsel). They just can’t related to EW which is largely rural farm land.
This has very type of proposal has been tried in CA & it didn’t fly. Just like in New York, the liberal loons are located in the cities of San Francisco / Los Angeles / Sacramento. Due to the deep voter concentration in these areas, only the leftists seem to become elected. Californians like New Yorkers are living with unsustainable taxation, pensions and subsidy programs.
I hope for the sake of the great State of New York, they are able to form a new union.