It’s not about gerrymandering state boundaries to give your party more power. You could just as easily split LA County in 3 states that all vote blue and have a bigger population than those rural areas listed above.

It’s about giving representation to US Citizens who are not represented. Why does a US citizen who lives in DC or Puerto Rico not have representation in the senate? If another district or territory the US that was conservative desired statehood (and wasn’t already represented), I would be all for it.

But then again, that’s maybe why I left the GOP about 10 years ago. Hypocrisy is not in my vocabulary.

If you want hypocrisy, just look at the leader of the left, Pelosi. On one hand she says, "nobody is above the law" in reference to the right, but then says, "people will do what they do" when it comes to the left. Or how about going to - what should be a closed hair salon, without a mask, in her own state! Then claims it was a setup and she was unaware of the laws. Ha!

Enough politics, I don't like any of them for the most part, right or left (with a few exceptions).




For those who have been there and done that, how long did mainline keep CJOs in the past before getting rid of them?

Can you sit there and type with a straight face that the Dems would be pushing the idea of statehood for PR and DC if they thought it would hurt them? They arrogantly presume they are shoo-ins for their party. If the shoe was on the other foot, they would be screaming bloody murder to stop it.

Face it, there’s plenty of hypocrisy to go around.

if pr and dc are added, expect referendums to pop up in red states to leave the union a la Quebec and Scotland. Not saying that any of that will pass, but one overtly political statement will be met with another.

didn’t some states try that once?

Yep. And but for a certain First Lieutenant Alonzo Cushing, posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for defeating Pickett’s charge, they probably would have been successful. It was a too near thing for any rational person to want to take such a risk again.

Some of what you wrote above is patently false.
1940 legislation gave jus soli to puerto ricans overriding and amending the Jones Act
Puerto Rico remains unicorporated. Their people enjoy the benefits of jus soli, but not the federal tax burden. Most residents of PR don't pay the personal federal income tax.

Congress, that means both the house and senate have to confer statehood.

People of PR have a choice. they can become their own nation, remain a territory, or they can become the 51st state (assuming it passes both house and senate) - I'm thinking they don't want that. they like the fact they get instant US cit from jus soli, and not have to share the preponderance of the federal tax burden like the rest of us. For example puerto ricans enjoy no capital gains and dividend taxes. The tax filing is nuanced in PR, but most puerto ricans enjoy the benefits of holding blue passport without all the federal tax burden like the rest of us do in the 50.

Just a point of fact, quite a few people in a surprising number of states have petitioned for secession just in the last decade. Various Texas movements and petition attempts have probably been the most aggressive and numerous in recent years (here's one: https://www.texastribune.org/2013/01...sion-petition/). No state legislature has seriously attempted secession since the early 1860's, and when that happened, 2% of the US population died, more than any other war in US history. To secede, a state legislature or a group of citizens can't just decide they're independent. They have to ask Congress and the White House and a constitutional amendment would need to be passed since there literally is no mechanism to leave once a state. Everyone from Congress to POTUS to the courts would have to agree to this.

Once you're in, you're in. With respect, this is why comparing anything with regard to a US state seceding with Scotland or Quebec is a false analogy. The UK and Canada do not have the case precedence or the legal framework to prevent secession if a Canadian province or Scotland/NI vote by referendum to secede. That isn't the case in the US, and so the only way out besides voluntary, absolute multilateral agreement is by violence, and I'm pretty sure that no matter how red a state is, the majority of the population in every single state in the union would prefer not to lose their social security, US citizenship/passport, etc., so even doing it as a political statement is worthless and mostly a PR stunt by the half a dozen or so organized movements that have petitioned the US government to allow their states to secede.

So you are right. My thing is this thread is absolutely the most pilot thing ever. Started about how long we thought we would be on furlough. That morphed into we are going to liquidate from our resident expert. To a political poo flinging Olympics. Ending with we are on the verge of civil war 2.0. Simply amazing.

what do you want, Shakespeare instead?