From the article I linked upthread, a far back as 1997 members of the Navajo people in that county wanted to split and have their independence, but thought the financial hurdles would be too burdensome.
Your article ends with it being considered a bad idea, though. So what has changed to make it a good idea now, if not the fact that Navajo people are now in power?
I don’t know where you think you’re hearing that the Utah issue is “just” about taxes from. I said I thought it was “the chief concern” from (at least) one side of the debate, but I certainly don’t claim it’s the only factor.
Yeah, I thought that the article was sort of neither here nor there, other than secession being bad for the Navajos (which is surely a big part of the calculation for the conservatives who want to deny them input on whether secession should move forward).
You know, you’re in a position to inform us greatly about the context of the issue, and you’ve chosen to limit yourself to potshots at liberals. If this is your sole contribution, how am I to know that it isn’t “just” about takes, as opposed to taxes being the “chief concern?”
And are there any other hairs you wish to split in this thread? I suggest that you get them all out of the way early. Perhaps you could weigh in on whether we should consider that part of the state “barren,” “arid,” or “somewhat desolate.” I mean, I am just dying to know which one is most appropriate.
The very next paragraph in the SL Trib article says this:
What I took from the older article was that there was interest on both sides to split the county to get better representation of each others’ different interests, however the financials didn’t pan out because of the disparity in funding.
In the present time, the disparity is less and therefore the idea may be more viable. That doesn’t really speak to the proposed change to make the split a unilateral decision though. Perhaps the northern part of the county was ok with supporting the southern part economically as long as they had a greater say in the county governance, but after the election when faced with the prospect of both paying for the majority of services while not having the greater voice was a bridge too far.
I felt that #33 was an attempt to inform Dopers of some of the complexities facing San Juan County. Go back and re-read it please, with an attempt to set aside the usual vitriol that happens here, and tell me honestly if you feel like it was just a potshot at liberals. #36 was a sincere attempt to engage in some meaningful discussion about when secession might be appropriate, and it was called “JAQing” a few posts later.
Think about Africa for a moment. Do we generally think that colonial powers drawing arbitrary boundaries that lumped people of different tribes together, and divided people of the same tribe, was good for them? Or is it generally understood to have been one of the causes of conflict on that continent since then.
Similarly, San Juan County has two fairly distinctive populations. The Census Bureau estimates that it’s 47.4% “white alone” and 49.4% “American Indian”. There’s obviously some intermixing, but these two different “tribes” (literally, in this case) are fairly geographically separated. No matter which group is “in power”, there’s always going to be some resentment by the group that’s out of power. Does it really make sense to keep these two groups stuck together in the same county? If so, why? Because ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ doesn’t make any more sense for San Juan County than it does for Africa IMHO.
Except that white people in Utah aren’t analogous to one of the tribes that got split up. They’re analogous to the white people who came in from elsewhere and split up the tribes. Because, you know, that’s exactly what they are. The closer analogy for what the white folks are trying to do here is the “bantustans” that the white government of South Africa created, so that they could say that non-white people weren’t their problem.
I found it enlightening in terms of real estate, and unfulfilling in terms of an explanation of the substantive issues at stake.
And I followed up with #40, asking for some more substance from you.
Yet we have thousands of counties in the U.S. that seem to get along pretty well without creating new counties based on racial lines. So why do these multitudes of counties manage well enough, but you compare this county to decolonization?
Yes that’s a bit silly, but ok.
I don’t have one. I’m not sure why I should.
I don’t have a position on any of those. I don’t see any of them as directly analogous to the U.S., and I lack sufficient understanding of Quebec’s relation to and situation in Canada, and similarly Scotland’s in the UK, to have a position, and quite honestly I don’t care enough about either one to learn.
Now if by bringing up the UK*, you mean ought the UK be free to leave the EU - well, sure, they can and have invoked the rule that allows them decide on their own to Brexit. So that one’s cut and dried.
And as best as I can tell, there IS a rule that applies to a potential seccesion from San Juan County, but the folks that want to secede want to change that rule. So the analogy to Brexit kinda fails.
Once again: No, I don’t. Why on earth should I?
*ETA: On first reading, I thought you meant the UK as what Scotland might secede from. Still not sure, but it doesn’t matter.
BTW, Ravenman, you’ve called San Juan County’s elections “crooked”, said it was “apartheid”, and a result of “gerrymandering”, and generally taken shots at the non-native population of San Juan County insinuating that they’re basically racist assholes.
It’s true that the native population of San Juan County is very slightly larger than the white population, but that’s not the way voting patterns shake out. The county is overwhelmingly Republican. Looking at some recent election results:
in Utah’s 2018 Senate race, in San Juan County, Republican Mitt Romney got 2,934 votes vs Democrat Jenny Wilson’s 2,096. That’s 58% of the two-party vote going Republican, during a Democrat “wave” year.
In the races for County Commissioner, Republicans got 2,513 votes vs 1,863 for the Democrats.
Going back to the 2016 election, President Donald Trump got 2,645 votes vs 2,042 for Hillary. In the Senate race that year, Republican Mike Lee got 3,243 vs 1,947 for the Democrat. The Republican Governor Herbert got 3,188 votes vs 1,975 votes for the Democrat running for Governor.
You get the basic idea: the county is strongly Republican. If there were no gerrymandering, you might reasonably expect that the 3-seat county commission would have two Republicans and one Democrat. That’s the way it had been. Now, thanks to the judge’s gerrymandered district maps, we have a situation where Democrats won a majority of the two seats with a distinct minority of the votes. And then you come along and claim it was the Republicans that were gerrymandering.
Taking your ball and leaving is a choice, but if you make that choice immediately after you begin losing the game, I’m going to view that as an inherently childish decision, and it’s going to be on you to explain why it isn’t.
Are the districts gerrymandered towards Democrats? I have no idea, but if they are, the Democrats in that county are just winning that the game we’ve all been playing for decades. Is that really the response to losing an election, taking your ball and going home?
So if the main divide isn’t Ds versus Rs, does that mean that the main divide is American Indians versus Anglos?
There are lots of “divides” in San Juan County. A major one is certainly Navajo vs white. I’m uncertain how you’d choose to define “the main divide”. There are also the usual divisions of wealth, gender, politics, age, etc that are found in virtually every other county.
Do you agree or disagree that the old commission districts were racially gerrymandered?
So, in other words, the old gerrymandering wasn’t for political reasons, just pure racism. I’m somehow not convinced that that makes it any better.
+1
I think one of us is misunderstanding something. Who do you think you’re paraphrasing here with your “So, in other words, …”? Me?