November 8th, voters of California’s San Bernadino County will vote on statehood. Sorta.
The ballot question is: “Do the citizens of San Bernardino County want the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors to study all options to obtain its fair share of state and federal resources, up to and including secession?”
The Fair Share ballot issue is more of a nonbinding vote in favor of flexing muscles for more state revenue.
Republicans will likely have complete domination of state government after Missouri’s November 8th election. St. Louis City will not be in any position to get much of anything good from the pro-death Republican majority in Missouri’s statewide offices and General Assembly.
The Missouri Democratic Party is a dysfunctional, useless, private club.
Republican governors today and for the foreseeable future will reshape the circuit court landscape of Missouri with appointments to courts in the state’s urban areas- St. Louis, Kansas City and Greene County (Springfield).
Missouri will become a state without checks and balances against abuse of power.
St. Louisans do not have the luxury of using the threat of secession as a bargaining chip to getting red flag laws, abortion rights, more public education funding (without first the slight of hands reducing funding first, again), or anything else from Republicans.
The Missouri GOP may agree to throw in some money for mental health services by robbing it from another program. To get that, some Democrats will probably have to vote for something on the Rex Sinquefield agenda. Republicans enjoy watching the selling out part.
Don’t get me wrong. I still want statehood for St. Louis. Two U.S. Senators. Woo Hoo! A streamlined city-county-state government. YES! Tight laws on campaign finance and lobbyists to shut out Rex Sinquefield. Damn skippy! No more wondering what horrible legislation the Republican Party will pass to force its hateful ideas on St. Louis. A gal can dream can’t she?
But maybe there is another option for St. Louis, a way out of Missouri with an ally- Illinois.
In Oregon, what began as the multi-county movement for secession to become the State of Jefferson is now the Greater Idaho movement to have the Idaho border moved to allow Oregon’s more Republican counties to become a part of Idaho. These county votes are nonbinding but the first step toward pressuring both Oregon and Idado state legislatures into voting for the change.
What if, instead of statehood, we lobbied Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker and other Illinois Democrats, Labor leaders, pro-abortion activists, etcetera, to work with St. Louis- St. Louis City, and St. Louis County if they want to come with- to become Illinois 103rd or 103rd and 104th counties.
It’s way less complicated than statehood. Congress creates an interstate compact for boundary changes, both states adopt the compact as a constitutional amendment, as happened in 1958 for Washington and Oregon. St. Louis becomes a part of Illinois, is subject to the Illinois Constitution and statutes, gets representation in Illinois General Assembly, and becomes a part of the Illinois Congressional Delegation.
Think about what it would be like to live in a state that isn’t willfully ignorant about guns.
Who on the Board of Alders will sponsor a nonbinding resolution for the St. Louis ballot to see if voters are interested in being free of Missouri and becoming Illinoisans?
The Great State of St. Louis 