Is it time for cities to join together in networks for the sake of progress?

[Freelancer]

If rural areas want to secede and live in some 'Leave-it-to-Beaver' dream, should they go ahead, while our cities proceed with progressive agendas? We live in an age where contiguous land connection is becoming irrelevant to the delivery of some services. Urban/rural has become the real dichotomy in America -- more so than Democrat/Republican.

Opinions would be appreciated.

[olddots]

1. you are on to something

and it is frightening how it effects us all...ALL. like in world wide effects.

[HereSince1628]

2. What motivated this post? What rural areas want to secede?

[Freelancer]

6. Well... what rural areas don't want to secede?

Cities want to do things to improve infrastructure, to insure that citizens get the housing, heating, and healthcare that they need -- and that takes money and agreement. The rural counties do everything in their power to block the State revenue increases necessary. So, no agreement. New York is probably in agreement with Chicago, though, which is in agreement with Detroit and Cincinnati, and so forth. Maybe they should form a new kind of union -- a consortium of sorts, and then agree on a tax floor that will garner the funds needed, while operating as a hedge against the downward tax ratchet that so many states engage in. State governments are all trying to outdo each other -- to get businesses to locate to within their borders. So they offer tax breaks and sweetheart deals galore in a race to the bottom. If cities band together they can say, in effect, "No. If you want infrastructure, and access to our citizens as your workers, then you have to buy into our vision for the future -- literally"

[HereSince1628]

9. While some of what you say is true,

it also doesn't answer the question.

In all that you did not name one county that wants to secede. Rather what you discuss puts that on its head...you've expressed what is clearly -your- desire to be free of the counties, not the other way around.

I know of rural counties that are democratic, there are a cluster in SE MN, SW WI and NE IA. There is also a clluster in northern MN and into NW WI, and then another cluster in New England.

Some of these counties have political perspectives that have been fighting the 1% since the 1870 and 1880's. These are the descendants of the folks who fought the railroad tycoons and named them robber-barons.

The wise-guys writing white papers for the establishment of the democratic party have turned its focus on cities. But, away from the bright lights there still exist rural dems, and pretty sizable party organizations with names like Democratic Farm League. There are good and loyal dems out in rural areas. The party can grow in rural areas, if it dares to seriously consider common needs that stretch across urban and rural communities.

Those needs really aren't so different except in persons per square mile. The desire to have those needs met is just as earnest and in many way just as desperate in rural areas.

If dems deliver, people will look to dems and choose to elect them. I think as a party we ought to be looking to create policy and governance that cares for people everywhere, not just in places with big numbers of democrats. When dems show they care for everybody, there's a chance to get more people from all over to care for dems. Caste away the rural areas, think only of cities and what now is jealousy based on shallow thinking and ignorance will become hatred based on evidence.

[Freelancer]

12. I probably should live in one of the Democratic cluster counties you mention, but...

I live in a county in rural Illinois that would either like to secede, with other rural counties, from Chicago, or have Chicago secede from us. In my county, the Republican snow plow driver veers 8' away from our mailbox in the winter because Democrats live here. This area (not me) turned out and voted 84% for Governor Bruce Rauner (a billionaire Scott Walker wannabe on steroids), who is dismantling SNAP and LIHEAP benefits that people all over Illinois count on just as fast as he can. It's what the majority of people living downstate want (again, not me), to counter the spending of the Democratically dominated State Legislature that is weighted toward Chicago. That's the way it's always been in Illinois -- either Chicago's democratic influence is calling the shots, and the rest of Illinois might as well not exist, or moneyed downstate Republicans are slashing taxes and programs in order to give Chicago the shaft (while also treating downstate residents like they doesn't exist). There has got to be a better way, where Chicagoland can go it's progressive way, and downstate Illinois can relax next to the fire with a shotgun in its lap, while reading Ted Nugent's latest interview in Bowhunter Magazine. This tug-a-war is killing us.

[HereSince1628]

15. My experience living in Illinois was downstaters orient to St Louis

rather than Chicago. So I wonder where in Illinois you are from and if that old geographic distribution of Chicago hating still holds.

The antipathy you're stating toward Chicago is something I heard while growing up in Kane co in the 50's and 60's and it seems it was a popular notion held in outer ring of suburbs where anti-Chicago voting elected a lot of republicans to the legislature and to Congress. Us vs Them is a common organizing force.

Of course, I've been away a long time. Long enough for Elgin and Aurora to have lost their core industries and to become true suburbs. Long enough for places like McHenry and Crystal Lake to take on characteristics of commuter communities...

But farther south, Chicago becomes a distant mythology, People deep in little Egypt orient to Paducah Ky and Cape Girardeau, Mo...the places their media originate.

Jackson Co where I lived for a while was pretty democratic and pretty progressive (which tends to be true for rural counties with large universities all over the country). But back when I was there, the mines were mostly using union labor and there was a decent democratic representation throughout what is the 12th cgr district. The dems turning away from unions left many of those folks feeling politically disaffected.

The Koch's tea-party is, of course, against social programs because the Kochs hate taxes and public services. All over the country they promote a warped rural vs urban jealousy that argues non urban people are being punished by a mis-distribution of tax money into welfare programs that only serve lazy, often criminally characterized, urban others. That of course is largely phony narrative used to push the Koch's libertarian interests. Rural life-styles aren't urban life-styles and vice versa. Size and concentration of population matter in what's cost-effective and possible. It's a setup easily exploited. In recent decades rightwing radio has done a pretty good job of building on the anxiety that rural -white- communities can't afford the taxes that promote those 'urban' programs for -blacks-. Anxiety and jealousy between people who see one another as 'others' is a common human trait, it can be exploited and it is.

Stereotyping rural people as not having central heating and sitting around with shotguns on their laps is just another type of stereotyping. And that stereotyping is just as damaging as stereotyping urban people as lazy minorites, dilettantes who don't know the meaning of hard work and corrupt politicians who serve them.

The stereotypes are in your head and mine. We do well if we are careful to see that they don't come to crowd out everything in our hearts.

[Freelancer]

17. Sounds like you have a firm grasp of the dynamic

In regard to the stereotyping/heart thing...

I was awakened Sunday morning to the sound of my neighbor across the road shooting targets in his back yard with what I assume is a glock. Right now there is the distant thud of shotguns going off -- probably somebody killing coyotes down by the tracks. My own father has a framed magazine on his basement wall that was signed for him by Ted Nugent at a gun show. My next door neighbor keeps a shotgun propped up next to his door. I am surrounded.

Likening the rhetoric in my post to "stereotyping urban people as lazy minorities" Just wasn't necessary, or appropriate. What I said about the people of my area is not a belittling stereotype, it's what the majority aspire-to. I guarantee you that if most of them read my generalizations, they wouldn't be offended in the least. It's me that is fed-up and offended. And if people like me choose to muse, vent and attempt to commiserate from time to time on a semi-anonymous Democratic message board, maybe you ought to have our backs.

[KamaAina]

3. It's been done before

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

The Hanseatic League (also known as the Hanse or Hansa; Low German: Hanse, Dudesche Hanse, Latin: Hansa, Hansa Teutonica or Liga Hanseatica) was a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and their market towns. It dominated Baltic maritime trade (c. 1400-1800) along the coast of Northern Europe. It stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea and inland during the Late Middle Ages and early modern period (c. 13th to 17th centuries).

The League was created to protect economic interests and diplomatic privileges in the cities and countries and along the trade routes the merchants visited. The Hanseatic cities had their own legal system and furnished their own armies for mutual protection and aid. Despite this, the organization was not a city-state, nor can it be called a confederation of city-states; only a very small number of the cities within the league enjoyed autonomy and liberties comparable to those of a free imperial city.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports

The Confederation of Cinque Ports (/sɪŋk pɔərts/) is a historic series of coastal towns in Kent and Sussex. It was originally formed for military and trade purposes, but is now entirely ceremonial. It lies at the eastern end of the English Channel, where the crossing to the continent is narrowest. The name originates in Norman French, meaning "five ports".

[madville]

4. Cities generally have to follow state laws

They can't do much besides elect state representatives that reflect their views and pass city ordinances that comply with their state's laws and are within the authority granted to them by the state government. Just as the states typically have to work within Federal laws unless the DOJ specifically ignores a law Within that state, like legalized Marijuana.

Also for example, many states don't allow cities to pass gun control more strict than the existing state law, it's called preemption.

[Freelancer]

7. They have to follow state law, but they have ways of getting their own taxes.

The thing stopping cities from doing progressive projects with municipal taxes is competition with other cities. If enough cities agreed upon a tax floor below which they would not go in order to compete with one another for business retention and relocation, then business would have to pony-up.

Even if business would like to do the right thing -- pay a living wage, taxes for infrastructure, philanthropic projects -- they have a fiduciary responsibility to be bad corporate citizens and do the wrong thing -- if they can. So, in effect, taking choice away from business is a favor to them, if it holds across the board. Since they've achieved person-hood now, it could even save their soul.

[LWolf]

5. My rural opinion

is that we don't need to widen that divide.

What is causing the divide? How to bridge it?

Those are better questions.

[Freelancer]

8. The relationship of cities to the rural towns is broken, IMO

Country used to send raw materials and foodstuffs to cities, and cities send power and manufactured goods back to the rural areas. There was a reflexive relationship. They always existed in tension, but historically, they buttressed each other. Things have changed, though. They've been divorced for quite a while now. If you live in Bloomington, IL, your television may have come out of a distribution point in Chicago, but it also may have come from Huston or L.A.. You don't know. Likewise, if you're a farmer, your stock may board a truck and be bound for Chicago, but it might be going to Kansas, or Seattle. The only thing left holding Chicago and Bloomington together is that the land they sit on is surrounded by the same imaginary line, and a state government inside that line that's trying to satisfy some very disparate needs.

[LWolf]

10. And this means

that rural people want to "secede," or that cities ought to want them to?

I'm not making any sense of this.

[Freelancer]

11. Secede means to withdraw or break away from

Rural people, or a sizable number of them, don't like centralized planning, gun control, government health plans, gay pride parades, what schools teach their kids, tax increases, family planning, or anything 'secular' that cities are generally in favor of. One would be hard pressed, in fact to find anything that the cities want to move toward that small town America would not resist completely. You can phrase it as the cities seceding from the countryside if you want, but the effect is still the same -- urban and rural are going in opposite directions fast -- breaking apart.

Do you disagree?

[Fumesucker]

14. Food?

From what I have seen most city people like to eat..

[Freelancer]

18. Well, you've got me there. nt

[Fumesucker]

13. They already did that for Occupy Wall Street

Or have you forgotten the talking point that the crackdown on OWS was in no way coordinated by the Feds, the cities were talking directly with each other?

[dembotoz]

16. All the future projections have the southern part of lake Michigan becoming 1 giant megacity

From like Gary ind. Up thru Milwaukee.

Reasons are obvious
Benefits would be obvious

Will take some time..moron walker in Wisconsin sees no need for urban transportation

[LanternWaste]

19. I think the concerns and the consequences of those concerns in both rural and urban areas...

I think the concerns and the consequences of those concerns in both rural and urban areas have a tendency to permeate well beyond the immediate borders of any one specific community into the surrounding region, thus rendering any extrajudicial notion of local secession dubious and doubtful unless/until we're provided with objective evidence (relevant to contemporary civil planning) of cause, method, and consequence.