The answer here to me is Rhode Island. The state is incredibly corrupt. Without anyone to hold them accountable it’d become a mob-run entity.
Living in RI, I have to agree. Shag has it down pat. If this was a political forum, we could go on for days…
Do you remember that Twilight Zone episode where the town was lifted off the planet so the Aliens could test how to get humans to surrender…I always wondered if anyone would notice if Kansas were taken off the planet. The same about leaving the Union. Only during March Madness does any one even know the state exists. Even the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals are in Missouri. On their own though? It might revert back to 1890 but it would probably continue to exist OK.
More corrupt than Louisiana, you think? That’s the first state that leaps to mind for me. I’ve always thought of that place as hanging on by a thread.
They could dam up an uninhabited canyon and divert the river. I don’t think that people realize just how much water flows out of Colorado. In addition to the Colorado, which is the only reason cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles can exist in their current sizes, you have the Platte Rivers which irrigate most of Nebraska, and the Arkansas River, which provides water to all of Southern Kansas.
Uh what? I know this board like to hate all things Texas, but how in the world do you get the idea that Texas is some sort of police state? If anything, Texas would trend toward the opposite with it’s push for less regulations and somewhat libertarian bent. Obviously there’s a social conservative element, but there’s also a very strong individual rights element.
Anyone that’s not being biased is going to consider Texas to be at least one of the top three best off states to be independent countries.
They’ve been one before. =)
I am from Louisiana originally and Illinois, Rhode Island, and Louisiana are the unholy trinity when it comes to corruption. However, I wouldn’t vote for Louisiana especially over other choices. It has already been part of several different countries and been semi-independent at times and done just fine. It has vast amounts of natural resources from natural gas to oil to seafood and it is also an agricultural state. Most importantly, it has New Orleans and control of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
That last point is perhaps the most important and why it was considered such a valuable area early in European colonization. Louisiana could exist successfully as something like a prosperous Central American country today if it had to make it on its own. Charging tariffs for everything going up and down the Mississippi River back and forth from the heartland could support a great deal of it on its own just like Panama and the Panama Canal. The recent natural gas boom just adds to that.
Colorado would have to build a minimum of 5 dams to effectively slow the Colorado River. And all they could do is slow it, not block it. The Platte River is problematical, since Colorado can only hope to interfere with the South Platte, which is by far the smaller of the two. The Arkansas is a better target, but then, what do you do with the water? It has to flow or it will just overflow. Water war won’t keep Colorado in being for long.
Nah, Colorado would be better served keeping their neighbors happy with cheap grass. 
They’d sell it to downriver states. It’s not as if Arizona could say “Let’s just wait until their dams overflow.” Phoenix would be a ghost town by then.
Arizona would Sheriff Joe after your water-hogging asses. Besides. it would take years to get those dams built, and if the down-river states play their cards right, Colorado could never get the necessary materials to build them. It isn’t like there are steel mills outside Golden. No, Colorado would have to play nice to survive as an independent country. Hell, any state would.
Dammit! The only time I get to use what I learned in junior high school geography class about natural resources in Arkanas and it’s completely useless. THANKS OBAMA.
They teach about Arkansas in the British public school system?
:dubious:
Well, everything I learned in the British school system was about Arkansas. I recognise that is only one data point. Still!
I’m American, born and raised in Pennsylvania. I moved to the UK almost 20 years ago, long after I graduated from high school.
They teach about Arkansas in the Pennsylvania school system?
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:rolleyes:
They do, yes. Or they did. In my day 8th-grade geography was a mishmash of factoids about natural resources around the world, with no real explanation about why this was important information.
The bit about Arkansas having the only diamond mines in the US stuck with me. I dunno why I remember the bauxite thing, except maybe that “bauxite” is a funny word.
I think recycling caused Reynolds not to make enough money mining Bauxite. My Father in Law was a geologist, and inspected drill cores for them. I believe there were looking for various clays. That is most of what they sent him, anyway.
I vaguely remember in grade school learning the capitol, state bird and major product of the various states. An true to the lessons of childhood, when I drove through Pennsylvania there seemed to be nothing but corn and hex signs.
:dubious:
Corn, hex signs, anthracite and Penn State fans.