Though not Upstate. Carl Paladino may or may not be a number of things. But he is undeniably the first Upstater in ninety years to be either main party's nominee for Governor. Clearly, in the Empire State, Upstate is the Colonies.
Some Democrats are known to complain that their strongholds have only as many Senators as thinly populated red states. They should be trying to turn those states blue, say I. But a constitutional solution is at hand, namely the creation of new states out of parts of old ones. For example, Upstate New York could become a state in its own right, complete with two Senators. Or have I missed something?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As an actual New Yorker (from the city), you are off base on a number of points.
ReplyDeleteThough I agree that upstate New York should be its own state. If you look at a map, its pretty obvious, upstate is connected to the city and its suburbs by a thin strip of land around the Hudson. Its not the natural hinterland of the city at all, and such ties that exist do so mainly because they have been under the same state government for two hundred years.
However, per capita there is simply more NY state government spending upstate than in the city or even its suburbs, and the discrepancy is greater than you take into account taxes. Its not clear why this is so, because as you point out most of the political leadership is from downstate, as are most of the voters. But its still the case.
So if upstate is a colony, its a Soviet-style colony where the center is taxed to spend disproportionately on the periphery (this was actually how the Soviet bloc was set up). Its not a colony in the sense of being exploited. The city would be much better off keeping tax money raised there in the city, contracting with the new upstate government or upstate companies for services such as water as needed.
But its true that being yoked to New York City, something which no upstater has anything in common with and which they are separate from geographically, and having to share the same name with the city, has harmed upstaters' self image. As has the destruction of much of their economy by New York City based bankers, though this is hardly the fault of most people who live there.
A separate point on the U.S. Senate. The problem is not that one party has trouble getting a majority there. The Senate has switched party control in recent decades more often than the House, and the Blue party, which is supposedly at a disadvantage, currently holds 59 Senate seats.
ReplyDeleteFor every rural Red state, there is a micro-state in the Northeast, or a rural state such as the Dakotas which has a political tradition of voting for the Republican presidential and the Democratic congressional candidates. And for every New York there is a Texas.
The problem is simply that political parties should not be hunting in a few sparsely populated farm states and in New England to get control of a legislature for the entire country. They should be campaigning where the voters live.
Also, the US Senate doesn't even have the justification of the House of Lords in representing a specific interest, as the Lords used to do for the monastaries and later the large landowners. The 17th Amendment stripped the state governments of their representatives in the Senate, meaning it no longer fulfilled its original purpose of protecting the states from federal encroachment. The states now function mainly as unequal legislative districts for a second, smaller House, as shown by the increasing tendency of the Senate to be made up of former House members.
For the Senate to function as you think it does, you have to restore the representation to the state governments, and restrict its functions, similar to the Bundestag, to review and approval of anything that alters the federal-state balance so it could focus on that. They shouldn't be voting on the federal budget, for example.
Interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the Upstaters would really want to secede. The main issue here, I think, is money. I think Upstate actually gets more tax dollars from New York City and Long Island than it puts into the State treasury, New York City and Long Island being generally wealthier than Upstate New York.
In fact, I believe “Blue” Democratic States put more money into Federal coffers than they receive, while the “Red” Republican States actually get more than they put in, which is interesting given the popularity of anti-government, especially anti-Federal government sentiment in those States. The United States military alone acts as a huge stimulus to the economies of the American South and West.
My own opinion is that I don't particularly like most secessionist movements, especially when they are based on the argument that one region is paying for another region in the same jurisdiction.
This is basically the argument made by the Lega Nord, calling the Italian national government "Roma Iadrona" or "Rome the big thief" because of the Italian government's policy of spending money to develop the South. But the Lega Nord forgets that Northern industrialists benefited from unification by opening up Southern markets that had been protected under the Bourbons, which inevitably ruined the small Southern artisans.
In the American context, many rural and industrial areas have been wrecked by the financialization of the economy, so, for example, I don't mind seeing money from Chicago go to help Downstaters as long as Downstaters realize that for Illinois to be prosperous as a whole, they can't forget about Chicago’s needs either.
I don't think we will be seeing many real secessionist movements in the United States because of these money issues. There is too much interdependence.