Secession in the Disunited States

[Will Williams]

Bombshell! Two Counties vote to secede from California

The secessionist movement is taking off in Northern California. All across the nation, groups of counties are trying to secede from their states. These are usually areas of a state that are dominated, against their will, by a huge urban area. Western Maryland, Northeast Colorado, New York outside of NYC, and Illinois outside of the Chicago metro area all have thriving secessionist movements. There are also very strong movements in Texas and Alaska to secede from the United States and form whole new countries.

Tired of being controlled by one of the most out of control state legislatures in the nation, two County Councils in California have voted in favor of seceding from California.

First proposed in 1941, the proposed State of Jefferson would include counties along the northern border of California and the southwestern border of Washington State [sic, Oregon].

From Redding.com…

The Modoc County Board of Supervisors today voted to join neighboring Siskiyou County in its bid to secede from the State of California.

Board Chairman Geri Byrne said a measure to join the push to form a State of Jefferson was approved by a vote of 4-0, with one supervisor absent.

“I put the measure on the agenda because I heard from a number of people in my district that wanted to do such,” Byrne said. “We’re not saying we’re seceding today, we’re saying let’s look into it.”

Roughly 40 people turned out for the board meeting, Byrne said a standing-room only crowd in the Modoc County chambers. About a dozen spoke in favor of the measure with only two raising objections.

“This is going to have to be something the people bring forward,” Byrne said. “It’s going to have to be from the bottom up, not from the top down.”

The move makes Modoc the second county to join in the fight to form the State of Jefferson in less than a month. Siskiyou County passed a measure to start the secession process at the supervisor’s Sept. 3 meeting.

Mark Baird, a spokesperson for the Jefferson Declaration Committee, said the group hopes to have a dozen counties commit their support before asking California legislators to allow the formation of the new state.

“California is essentially ungovernable in its present size,” Baird said. “We lack the representation to address the problems that affect the North State.”

“We’re looking for 12 counties, though we can certainly do it with less,” he said.
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http://topconservativenews.com/2013/09/ ... alifornia/

[Will Williams]

SUBURBS SECEDE FROM ATLANTA
'Detroit of the South' bludgeoned by troubles
By John T. Bennett

As Detroit – beset by violence, debt and social woes – prepares to undergo a historic takeover by the Michigan state government, the city of Atlanta could be sliding toward a similar fate.

Some are quietly wondering whether Atlanta is in danger of becoming “the Detroit of the South.”

The city has experienced an ongoing succession of government scandals, ranging from a massive cheating racket to corruption, bribery, school-board incompetence and now the potential loss of accreditation for the local DeKalb County school system.

For several years, problems of this sort have fueled political reforms, including the creation of new cities in northern Atlanta suburbs. Due to the intensification of corruption scandals in DeKalb, some state-level reform proposals could become national news very soon.

‘Super-white majority’ cities

As a result of the unsavory politics in urban Atlanta, northern suburban communities acted to distance themselves. Beginning in 2005, many communities began the process of incorporating into cities.

Thus far, Milton, Sandy Springs, Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Chattahoochee Hills and Johns Creek have done so.

These cities, after breaking away politically from urban Atlanta, have become so successful that a libertarian think tank, the Reason Foundation, has featured Sandy Springs as a model of effective government. The Economist has also applauded the northern Atlanta cities for solving the problem of unfunded government pension liability and avoiding the bankruptcy that looms over some urban areas. The new cities may soon be able to create their own school districts, which would free them even further from the issues besetting Atlanta.

While incorporation has been popular with residents of the new cities, not all of Atlanta is as satisfied. The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit in 2011 to dissolve the new cities, claiming they were a “super-white majority” and diluting the voting power of minorities.

A key leader in the black community and a driving force in support of the lawsuit, who wishes to remain anonymous, bemoaned the “disturbing tendency of black electorates to not elect the smartest and brightest, or even the cleverest.”

Nonetheless, he believes that there is a social contract between the northern and southern parts of the county.

“So when you allow powerful groups of citizens to opt out of a social contract, and form their own, it may benefit the group opting out, but it hurts the larger collective,” he said.

The lawsuit would have canceled incorporation and tied the cities back into the very county that they purposefully left.

State Rep. Lynne Riley, a Republican who represents one of the new cities, called the lawsuit “frivilous” and “disrespectful to the citizens of these cities who are most satisfied with their government.”

The federal trial court rejected the lawsuit, and the court of appeals affirmed the dismissal. However, an attorney for the Black Caucus plans to file an amended lawsuit.

Meanwhile, the same concerns that spurred incorporation continue to mount.

Failing schools

DeKalb County contributed to what the New York Times called “the biggest standardized test cheating scandal in the country’s history” in 2011.

Now, the county is faced with losing its regional accreditation. Losing regional accreditation is, by any objective measure, a devastating indictment of a school board, with severe consequences for students and families within the district.

When nearby Clayton County, Ga., lost its regional accreditation in 2008, it was the first school system in the country to do so in 40 years.

The result in Clayton, according to the Pew Foundation, was that thousands of students left county schools, the district lost millions of dollars and hundreds of teachers were fired.

In response to the Clayton County crisis, after witnessing the fallout and the harm to the state’s reputation, the legislature acted to prevent a repeat. In 2011, the Georgia legislature essentially gave the governor authority to remove board of education members when a district was placed on probation by the accreditation agency.

Last December, DeKalb was placed on probation. Then, in January, the governor of Georgia used his new authority and removed six members of the nine-member DeKalb Board of Education.

This year, well after the accreditation issue broke open, DeKalb school board elections were held. Four of nine board members were up for reelection. Voters in one of the four districts returned their incumbent board member for another term, despite knowing that accreditation was at risk.

This week, a federal judge sided with the governor and agreed that the six suspended board members can be replaced. The decision places the dispute into the Georgia Supreme Court’s purview.

As the issue looms, the mere mention of losing accreditation has impacted the housing market in DeKalb, with at least one potential buyer directing his realtor not to search for homes in the county.

School leadership

Recently, at the helm of the DeKalb school system stood Crawford Lewis. The former superintendent has been indicted on racketeering charges.

Along with several of his associates, Lewis is accused by the DeKalb DA of fraud, theft by a government employee, bribery and a web of racketeering. The charges arose out of Lewis’ practice of steering lucrative government contracts toward favored companies.

According to the indictment, Lewis also used government funds to pay for a hotel room, which he used as the venue for an affair. Lewis had this affair with a person who held the position of “Executive Director of the Office of School Improvement.”

One of the numerous complaints about the DeKalb school board was that it voted to pay for Lewis’ legal defense. There had been a $100,000 cap on the costs allowed for legal defense, but the school board waived it for Lewis’ benefit.

The CEO in charge

At the very top, the head of DeKalb’s government is the position of CEO. The current CEO, Burrell Ellis, is being investigated for a list of concerns, including alleged bid rigging. Police searched Ellis’s home and office recently, and local news outlets report that while no charges have been filed, search warrants are reportedly aimed toward potential extortion, bribery, theft, conspiracy, and wire fraud in connection with private vendors who contract with the county.

Most recently, Ellis sought approval from the county ethics board to establish a legal defense fund to benefit himself. The board rebuffed the request.

A corrupt school board becomes a civil rights issue

Instead of being treated as a story about rampant, inexcusable corruption, the school board fiasco has morphed into a civil rights issue. Atlanta’s NBC affiliate reports that the Georgia NAACP “accused Republican Governor Nathan Deal of being part of an alleged conspiracy to get rid of black office holders and deprive black voters of their rights.”

State Rep. Tyrone Books pointed out that criticism of the governor needed to include a word about black politicians who supported the governor’s removal authority.

“How can we complain about him when we have black folks standing there embracing the removal of black officials?” asked Brooks, D-Atlanta.

The state legislature is trying to prevent public funds from being used in the legal defense of the ousted board members. Because the ousted board members see their positions as a civil rights entitlement, the attorney’s fees required for their defense will quickly rise, unless legislation puts an end to the entitlement.

One of the suspended board members, Eugene Walker, responded to the judge’s ruling with a familiar appeal: “Minorities should not feel secure if contrived allegations from anonymous sources with hidden agendas can go to private agencies and to have their civil rights stolen away.”

DeKalb has changed from majority white to majority black over the last several decades. As the Atlanta Journal Constitution gingerly put it: “The county’s transition from majority white to majority minority was politically rocky .”
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http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/suburbs-secede-from-atlanta/

[Will Williams]

This article was written around the time there was a flurry of online petitions to the White House asking the President nicely to allow states to peacefully secede from the Union. Of course, the toothless petitions accomplished little beyond raising consciousness of secession as a viable option to violent revolution, but this article contains some essential arguments for White Americans who, as citizens of sovereign states, may wish to constitutionally withdraw their consent to be governed by the anti-White Federal government.
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GOP Governors Distance Themselves From Secession Movement
Joe Wolverton, II, J.D
Nov 16, 2012

Ron Paul “feels the same now” about the right of secession as he did when he addressed the issue in a video message posted to YouTube in 2009. That’s the comment made by Rachel Mills, a spokeswoman for the retiring congressman as quoted in U.S. News.
The number of petitions for secession uploaded to the White House’s “We, the People” website continues to increase, as do the signatures on those already posted.
The “We, the People” program includes a “create a petition” tab on the White House website. The explanation of the site claims that “if a petition gets enough support,” — more than 25,000 signatures within 30 days — the “White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response.”
As we reported earlier in the week, citizens of dozens of states submitted petitions to leave the United States, citing the “long train of abuses” committed by the federal government and the right to “dissolve the political bands that have connected” them to the union as set out in the Declaration of Independence.
At the time of publication of this article, a petition on behalf of each of the 50 states has been added to the website, several of which have exceeded the 25,000 threshold that the White House claims will trigger an official response.
The White House has not commented on the petitions.
Although he argued that such was a possibility in 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry has since renounced secession, announcing through a spokeswoman that he favors keeping the union intact.
In a statement released to the Dallas Morning News, spokeswoman Catherine Frazier wrote:
Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it. But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government. Now more than ever our country needs strong leadership from states like Texas, that are making tough decisions to live within their means, keep taxes low and provide opportunities to job creators so their citizens can provide for their families and prosper. We cannot allow Washington’s tax and spend, one-size-fits-all mindset to jeopardize our children’s future, undermine our personal liberties and drive our nation down a dangerous path to greater dependence of government.
Other Republican governors have followed Perry’s anti-secessionist suit. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal called the petition filed by citizens of the Bayou State “silly.”
As reported by BayouBuzz, Jindal dismissed the petition, telling NOLA.com, “We are proud to be part of the greatest country in the history of the world. Whatever our political differences, we are American first.”
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, also a Republican, commented Tuesday about the secession petition submitted by Tennesseans, saying, “I don’t think that’s a valid option for Tennessee. I don’t think we’ll be seceding.”
Then, fresh off an announcement that his state would not be participating in the state healthcare exchanges required by ObamaCare, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley came out on Tuesday and said through a spokesman, “Governor Bentley believes in one nation under God. While there is frustration with the federal government, Governor Bentley believes that states can be great laboratories of change.”
Finally, the online Huffington Post quotes Nikki Haley, the Republican Governor of South Carolina saying, “Didn’t we try that once before? I love this country. I’m going to fight for this country. I’m going to do everything I can for this country, and this country is going to be great.”
South Carolina did try seceding once before. On Christmas Eve, 1860, the people and the legislature of the Palmetto Stateadopted a resolution filed eight years earlier approving the state’s separation from the union.
In that document, South Carolina pointed to the “frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States” as justification for its departure. Then, citing the Declaration of Independence (as do the recent petitions), the document declares, “Whenever any ‘form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government.’”
The declaration then goes on to rehearse the history of the formation of the union in 1787, arguing that South Carolina retained her sovereign right of self-defense should the federal government ever violate the compact entered into in Philadelphia in 1787. It argued:
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were– separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitutionuntil long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendmentwas added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
Constitutionally speaking, secession is an allowable response to federal overreaching. There is, however, a simpler, less drastic remedy. Nullification.
Simply stated, nullification is a concept of legal statutory construction that endows each state with the right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal measure that a state deems unconstitutional. Nullification is founded on the assertion that the sovereign states formed the union, and as creators of the compact, they hold ultimate authority as to the limits of the power of the central government to enact laws that are applicable to the states and the citizens thereof.
If the people will not allow deviance from the terms of the compact, then legislators at last will be disabused of their commonly perceived illusion that the people can be easily lulled into a lethargic stupor rendering them unwilling and eventually unable to withstand the steady herding of our nation into the corrals of despotism.
Finally, of all the legal verities and moral virtues of nullification, there is one that sits at the pinnacle of them all. Nullification, as defined by Jefferson and Madison and as being proposed and practiced by contemporary Americans, is a fail-safe protection of popular sovereignty and limited government. This is so because the keys to these restraints are held by the people.
A growing number of concerned citizens of this Republic are no longer willing to recur to Congress to repeal unconstitutional laws or to file legal complaints in the hope that the courts will strike down offensive measures. They understand that while perhaps commendable, these tactics are futile and offer no guarantee of the restoration of constitutionally ensured freedom. They refuse to wait on this or that president, this or that congressman, or this or that political party to acknowledge their pleas for relief from federal oppression. Instead, they unashamedly will assume their right and their duty to derail the “long train of abuses and usurpations” and “provide new Guards for their future security” — the states and themselves.
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http://www.infowars.com/gop-governors-d ... -movement/

[Will Williams]

Is Red State America Seceding?
Friday - October 11, 2013 at 12:32 am
By Patrick J. Buchanan

In the last decade of the 20th century, as the Soviet Empire disintegrated so, too, did that prison house of nations, the USSR.

Out of the decomposing carcass came Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova, all in Europe; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

Transnistria then broke free of Moldova, and Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought free of Georgia.

Yugoslavia dissolved far more violently into the nations of Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Kosovo.

The Slovaks seceded from Czechoslovakia. Yet a Europe that plunged straight to war after the last breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939 this time only yawned. Let them go, all agreed.

The spirit of secession, the desire of peoples to sever ties to nations to which they have belonged for generations, sometimes for centuries, and to seek out their own kind, is a spreading phenomenon.

Scotland is moving toward a referendum on independence from England, three centuries after the Acts of Union. Catalonia pushes to be free of Madrid. Milanese and Venetians see themselves as a European people apart from Sicilians, Neapolitans and Romans.

Dutch-speaking Flanders wants to cut loose of French-speaking Wallonia in Belgium. Francophone Quebec, with immigrants from Asia and the Third World tilting the balance in favor of union, appears to have lost its historic moment to secede from Canada.

What are the forces pulling nations apart? Ethnicity, culture, history and language — but now also economics. And separatist and secessionist movements are cropping up here in the United States.

While many Red State Americans are moving away from Blue State America, seeking kindred souls among whom to live, those who love where they live but not those who rule them are seeking to secede.

The five counties of Western Maryland — Garrett, Allegheny, Washington, Frederick and Carroll, which have more in common with West Virginia and wish to be rid of Baltimore and free of Annapolis, are talking secession.

The issues driving secession in Maryland are gun control, high taxes, energy policy, homosexual marriage and immigration.

Scott Strzelczyk, who lives in the town of Windsor in Carroll County and leads the Western Maryland Initiative, argues: “If you have a long list of grievances, and it’s been going on for decades, and you can’t get it resolved, ultimately [secession] is what you have to do.”

And there is precedent.

Four of our 50 states — Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, West Virginia — were born out of other states.

Ten northern counties of Colorado are this November holding non-binding referenda to prepare a future secession from Denver and the creation of America’s 51st state.

Nine of the 10 Colorado counties talking secession and a new state, writes Reid Wilson of the Washington Post — Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld and Yuma — all gave more than 62 percent of their votes to Mitt Romney. Five of these 10 counties gave Romney more than 75 percent of their vote.

Their issues with the Denver legislature: A new gun control law that triggered a voter recall of two Democratic state senators, state restrictions on oil exploration, and the Colorado legislature’s party-line vote in support of gay marriage.

In California, which many have long believed should be split in two, the northern counties of Modoc and Siskyou on the Oregon border are talking succession — and then union in a new state called Jefferson.

“California is essentially ungovernable in its present size,” says Mark Baird of the Jefferson Declaration Committee. Baird hopes to attract a dozen counties to join together before petitioning the state to secede.

Like the western Maryland and northern Colorado counties, the northern California counties are conservative, small town, rural, and have little in common with San Francisco or Los Angeles, or Sacramento, where Republicans hold not one statewide office and are outnumbered better than 2-1 in both houses of the state legislature.

Folks on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, bordered by Wisconsin and the Great Lakes, which is connected to lower Michigan by a bridge, have long dreamed of a separate state called Superior. The UP has little in common with Lansing and nothing with Detroit.

While the folks in western Maryland, northern Colorado, northern California and on the Upper Peninsula might be described as Red State secessionists, in Vermont the secessionists seem of the populist left. The Montpelier Manifesto of the Second Vermont Republic concludes:

“Citizens, lend your names to this manifesto and join in the honorable task of rejecting the immoral, corrupt, decaying, dying, failing American Empire and seeking its rapid and peaceful dissolution before it takes us all down with it.”

This sort of intemperate language may be found in Thomas Jefferson’s indictment of George III. If America does not get its fiscal house in order, and another Great Recession hits or our elites dragoon us into another imperial war, we will likely hear more of such talk.
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http://buchanan.org/blog/red-state-amer ... +Update%29