Loopydude, I actually think it’s a great idea, though I agree it’s unlikely to fly. The only problem is I’m from Maryland and I’m not sure where we’d fit in: technically the south, but fought with the north during the Civil War; politically liberal (well, until recently anyway) but damned if I didn’t know an awful lot of rednecks growing up.
Eh, hell with it. If I ever decided to leave Ireland I could settle happily in a post-NE independence Vermont.
That’s pretty awesome. That one country in South Dakota stands out like a beacon of liberalism in a sea of conservatism.
That’s Shannon County, SD. Population (2000):12,466.
Where Wounded Knee is.
Some facts on NE:
MA exports - $17.5 billion worth of commodities (including food, electric machinery etc.) In fact, it’s the tenth largest exporter in the country.
CT exports - $8.6 billion. 27th.
Vermont - $2.8 billion. 38th
Maine exports - 1.8 billion. 42nd
New Hampshire exports - 2.4 billion. 45th
Rhode Island - $1.3 billion. 47th
Total - $34.4 billion
MA’s biggest customer is Canada. Ditto for New Hampshire and Maine. CT’s is France! Hmm… another reason why CT might want to jump ship thanks to all the francophobia.
MA’s farming stats: http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/MA.htm. Biggest (edible) farming exports are cranberries, dairy, corn, apples, wheat and meat.
Here is info on renewable energy potential in NE U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Plus there are nuclear plants in MA, NH, CT (2), and VT. There has been talk of windfarms recently.
Wow, this has been pretty darn enlightening research!
Sources:
http://www.mass.gov/export/pdf/massexports_commodity03.pdf
http://www.mass.gov/export/pdf/us_exports03.pdf
http://www.mass.gov/export/pdf/massexports_country03.pdf
http://www.ustr.gov/outreach/states/newhamps.pdf
I think NE is largely a middle-of-the-road to liberal region, with the leftie “lunatic fringe” (of which I am apparently a member) concentrated quite densely in MA, the nexus being Harvard Square (or maybe Davis Square, now that it’s the hippest). NH is kind of the oddball, but they finding, up in tax-free Nooo Hampshah, that “Liv’ free aw duy!” is killing their state budget and leaving their schools bankrupt. In NH, they’re mostly of libertarian mindset, I think (you know, stuff like they don’t want the gubmint telling them to wear motorcycle helmets, etc.). The place is so white, racial issues really don’t exist, so I think their (rather ambivalent, by the light-blue look of the map most wonderfully provide above by Dugrik) politics is largely anti-tax, anti-big-government; hence the Bush votes. As I already mentioned, that philosophy is coming under major scrutiny of late, due to the fiscal realities in NH.
NY might well want to join in, and perhaps NJ, too. I dunno about PA. In a state that barely reelected Arlen Specter for a more conservative pubbie, they’d probably demure. Dunno about MD. Having lived in DC for quite some time, I met my fair share of really quite whacko conservatives. I’m not kidding. These guys weren’t “rednecks”, they were usually very middle-to-upper-class folks with a high GS number, commuters into DC govt. They HATED Clinton (who was pres. while I was there). One dude, who was middle mgt. for Dept. of State, a relative of my then-g.f., would love to regale us jokes about our “Shadow Senator” for DC, which to him seemed such an appropriate title, given her “jungle-bunny” status (again, I insist, I’m NOT making this up). Unless the individual was Jewish (many Jews in Montgomery County, Silver Spring, and “Baldimer”; I worked with a good number of them!), from what I saw, you could pretty much rank a person’s politics from right to left on a spectrum that would correlate quite well with skin shade. I’m not really talking about transplants, of which DC had many (myself included). I’m talking the more old-school Old Dominion and MD suburbanites. My g.f. at the time was a Mt. Holyoke student taking some time off. Hooo-boy dog, didn’t that afford the whole family with hours of entertainment, an all girls school in the midst of MA. You’d think we’d have queers and dykes suckin’ dick and munchin’ rug right out in the open quads for what they knew of it.
When I asked to not go to these family gatherings any more, she wasn’t happy. I think that had a lot to do with our breakup later, but that’s a whole other issue. It was many years ago, I’d like to add, and I’m quite over it, so my secessionist leanings aren’t related to personal axe-grinding over lost luv. Just my $0.02 on my sampling of Southern Comfort.
[QUOTE=TitoBenito]
Have you actually been to the South? Ever? Or does everything you know about it come from old episodes of the Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas. If I wasn’t laughing so much at the absurdly exaggerated stereotypes you painted for all people south of the Mason-Dixon line, I’d probably be insulted.
[QUOTE]
I’ve lived in Georgia most of my adult life and both sides of my family come from Georgia, and Loopydude has a point. Ask me about the recent attempt to instill creationism into our textbooks. Ask me about the idiot ad that got decorated war veteran tossed out by linking him to Osama bin Laden. Yeah, there’s liberals like me down here, but God the place is basically swarming with fundies and conservatives.
Oi. I’m a pasty white girl, Catholic, and well on the left side of that spectrum. Same or similar for the rest of my Maryland suburbanite family and most of my adulthood friends. Plenty of white liberal/lefties in MD, I assure you.
sigh Even if we discount the fact that they are exporting commodities because they are currently part of the union (where do you suppose the raw materials or parts come from to manufacture all those nice items? You think that its all just laying about in New England?), you are talking about a grand total of…$34.4 billion dollars. Just a bit more than NASA’s anual budget. And with that you hope to do…what exactly?
Where will you buy your farm EQUIPMENT from, and what will you pay for it with. Where will you buy your cars, TV’s, CD players…oil? When you aren’t part of the Union anymore you’ll have to trade with the US (if it will still trade with you of course) for all the raw materials and parts you currently get to manufacture all that vast trade surplus you are talking about (snort). Or you will have to trade with Europe or Canada…with your vast $34 billion.
And even assuming you get to keep that trade surplus of $34+ billion (which I doubt)…its kind of a paltry summ, wouldn’t you say? Out of that surplus you’ll have to run your govenment…and if you implement the OP’s socialist plans, its gona cost you quite a bit.
As for the Nuke plants, assuming you get to keep em after the great socialist take over, how will you maintain them? What will you do with the waste? How will you build new ones, when even in our current environment they cost 10’s of billions of dollars (when we can get them built at all). Where will you get more nuclear material to run them, and how will you pay for it? God knows what they’d cost if the tree hugging types totally took over. Even $10 billion would be quite a chunk out of your projected anual surplus, no?
All well and good, but what about food stuffs that are currently brought in from other parts of the country? Or are you saying that New England doesn’t bring in food from other parts of the nation but only exports food TOO other parts of the nation? And if (as I suspect) they don’t in fact grow all the food they would need, that means you have to trade for it, not simply bring it in from other parts of the country as you presently do, no? Or bring it in from Canada I suppose.
Still, I’m not one to get in your way. Please, by all means, break from the Union and form your small utopia. Do a population swap with all folks wanting a small socialist type mini-republic to go to New England and the rest of us can repopulate California and the other areas left vacant. I think it will work out well for you, and I eagerly anticipate your success. 
-XT
If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.
Good God, did Al Gore give every single person in Pine Ridge, SD oral sex or $100 or what?
Personally, I’d take the $100. No offense, Al, but ewwwwww!
I will read the whole thread before I reply.
I will read the whole thread before I reply.
I will read the whole thread before I reply.
I will read the whole thread before I reply.
I will read the whole thread before I reply.
Thanks scotandrsn.
From overseas…
just like now. 
Exactamundo. Well, probably not JUST like now, as the new mini-Republic of New England won’t exactly get the same trade benifits or status (they will be a significantly smaller market for one thing), nor will its ‘dollar’ be as strong as the ‘old’ US was.
Of course, with its vast $34 billion in trade surplus I’m sure they will have no trouble buying all the necessities they need, as well as the essential raw materials, parts and other equipment they will need to have at once a thriving agricultural sector as well as a booming industrial and services economy. I think its a great idea! Hopefully the OP will get this rolling soon. I’m sure there will be a groundswell of support in New England to break from the nation, and people of a certain bent will flock to the light from the darkness of this evil nation. I’ll be sad to see my sister and her husband leave, but I’m sure the new republic could use all the Accupuncture/Oriental Medicine and homeopathy speciallists it can lay its hands on…
-XT
Oh no you don’t! Y’all aren’t going anywhere.
I think we established (six score and 19 years ago) that a region doesn’t get to pick up and leave just because things aren’t going its way.
(Sauce for the goose and all…)
Don’t make us come up there.
Ah, spoke-, let them go, let them go. Don’t be a party pooper. In fact, you might actually want to consider moving up to the new republic…might be your kind of thing. Personally I’d rather live in Georga than New England (I spent 3 years in Boston while working a job…shudder), but you might like it once you get used to it.
-XT
I agree that Loopydude has point when he says the south is generally more conservative than the north. You will get no argument from me there. But he is completely off his rocker when he states that the difference is so great as to warrant succession. His thread is basically just a new version of a thread awhile back where some Midwesterner gave some speech about how Midwesterners are God’s gift to mankind and how they deserved their own country apart from the US. Basically it’s just people patting themselves on the back for living in a certain region. They’re no different than the morons we seem to produce in Texas that go on and on about how Texas is superior to all other places and how it should really be its own country too.
Well, in Canada, the Quebec secession movement is running out of steam. Nearly three decades since René Levesque was elected, and my adoptive province is still, thankfully, a part of this country.
It wasn’t all bad. It encouraged a cultural independence that has, in the long run, enriched the cultural life of the nation.
But it really made a mess of politics. You see, in Quebec, for the longest time, we only had two political parties of any note – one in favour of separation, one against. Later, we added another who seemed to be running on the “we-don’t-want-to-talk-about-separation” platform.
What was really happening, though, was these three parties were using secession as a smokescreen for their other shenanigans – cronyism, corruption, the dismantling of the wonderful welfare state which was René Levesque’s other legacy. Everyone in the province knew about the bad policies, almost no one was in favour of them, but separation had become the only issue, more powerful a distraction than, say, Clinton’s blowjob was in the US.
Finally, this whole province sighed, pretended the issue never came up. Now we’re rolling up our sleeves and working on other things, like trying to take back our government from corporate lobbyists and other right-wing interests.
Maybe the situation isn’t applicable to New England. But it’s something to consider.
Assume for the moment that the secession happened, and there were two countries:
one a left-wing haven (socialized medicine, secular government, removal of references to God in money, Pledge & courts, respect for international law and treaties, gay marriage, anti-gun laws, no death penalty, …)
and one a right-wing haven (low taxes, absolute capitalism, god-fearing, gun-toting citizens, creationism replaces evolution in schools, a screw-international-law-and-treaties attitude, constitutional amendment against gay marriage, anti-abortion laws, death penalty, …)
Also assume that the two countries started out with the same amount of land and natural resources, and that people were given the choice to stay where they are (which may be in the country with opposing views to theirs), or move to the country of their choice.
Which of these two countries would you rather live in?
Although I agree with conservatives on some issues, and disagree with liberals on some issues, I would definitely not want to live in right-wing-land. If I were living there, I would move.
Again, it’s not because I disagree with all the things going on there (I like lower taxes and I’m not sure about abortion for example), but a few things about the place would give me the creeps.
(Of course the above descriptions of the two countries are highly simplified, but finding a “true” definition of left-wing-land and right-wing-land is futile anyway)
Yea right, I guess. And WW2 wouldn’t be your war either? Let me grab you by the short hairs and let you in on a little secret nommally reserved only for skull and crossbones members, if you are attacked by an enemy they are at war with you, if they violate a treaty you have the right to resume hostilities, If they fire at your planes you have the right to respond.
I disliked Clinton but NEVER said he was not my president, I think you are un-American and more dangerious in many ways then the bastards who sawed off the head of Nick Berg.
Get over your hatred of Bush before we loose this country that will allow you to say what yoru are saying!