This is weird:
Weld County commissioners today announced that they want to join other northeastern Colorado counties in forming a new state -- North Colorado.More:
Commissioners said a "collective mass" of issues have cumulated over the past several years that isolate rural Colorado from the rest of the state and put those counties at a disadvantage....
Commissioners said Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties all expressed interest in the idea.
"The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be," said U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a Republican from Yuma. "The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don't blame these people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders of our state."...So what's upsetting them?
The "straws that broke the camel's back" included the signing of SB 252 on Wednesday, which increases renewable energy standards in rural areas in a way that rural energy companies say is too costly.Ahhh -- renewable energy, higher environmental standards for conventional energy developers, and new gun laws. On these subjects, Democrats have succeeded in passing laws Republicans don't like. That's not allowed to happen!
Commissioner Sean Conway told the Tribune oil and gas and agriculture in particular are being targeted....
Gov. John Hickenlooper's spokesman Eric Brown said "background checks on gun sales, increasing renewable energy and supporting responsible development of oil and gas are popular with rural and urban voters. Not everyone agrees, of course, but we keep trying."
Secession is the only possible remedy!
This could be on the ballot by August 1 -- seriously. (Although the rest of Colorado would apparently have to approve.)
If, as we keep hearing, there's a demographic wave that's going to make a lot of red states less and less red in the coming years, is this going to happen again and again? If Texas goes purple in a decade or two, is it going to split into Blue(-ish) Texas and Jesus-and-Guns Texas? And will secessionists start threatening to shut down state governments if they don't get to secede, the way Republicans have effectively shut down the federal government?
In other words, can we look forward to the biggest, whiniest tantrum in the recent history of self-governance?
We'll see.
