Thread: 15 States Including Texas Have Filed A Petition To Secede From The United States Sund

Texans going wild with 'secession fever,' bumper stickers everywhere

6 hrs ago
Move over, "Everything is bigger in Texas." The Lone Star state has a new favorite bumper sticker and it's a simple one-worder: "Secede." Yes, it appears that "secession fever," as some columnists are calling it, has taken over the red-leaning state following the post-election petitions — and sales of the stickers are just one sign. Among others, a perennial GOP candidate named Larry Scott Kilgore has announced he's running for governor and will legally change his name to Larry SECEDE Kilgore — yes, with "secede" in all-caps. His web page also declares, "Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later." [Source]

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Texas secession bumper stickers abound after 2012 petitions

With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas

By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: November 23, 2012

HOUSTON — In the weeks since President Obama’s re-election, Republicans around the country have been wondering how to proceed. Some conservatives in Texas have been asking a far more pointed question: how to secede.

LM Otero/Associated Press

Larry Scott Kilgore announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters.

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter.

The official in East Texas, Peter Morrison, the treasurer of the Hardin County Republican Party, said in a statement that he had received overwhelming support from conservative Texans and overwhelming opposition from liberals outside the state in response to his comments in his newsletter. He said that it may take time for “people to appreciate that the fundamental cultural differences between Texas and other parts of the United States may be best addressed by an amicable divorce, a peaceful separation.”

The online petitions — created on the We the People platform at petitions.whitehouse.gov — are required to receive 25,000 signatures in 30 days for the White House to respond. The Texas petition, created Nov. 9 by a man identified as Micah H. of Arlington, had received more than 116,000 signatures by Friday. It asks the Obama administration to “peacefully grant” the withdrawal of Texas, and describes doing so as “practically feasible,” given the state’s large economy.

Residents in other states, including Alabama, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana and Oklahoma, have submitted similar petitions, though none have received as many signatures as the one from Texas.

A White House official said every petition that crossed the signature threshold would be reviewed and would receive a response, though it was unclear precisely when Micah H. would receive his answer.

Gov. Rick Perry, who twice made public remarks in 2009 suggesting that he was sympathetic to the secessionist cause, will not be signing the petition. “Governor Perry believes in the greatness of our union, and nothing should be done to change it,” a spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said in a statement. “But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government.”

The secession movement in Texas is divergent, with differences in goals and tactics. One group, the Republic of Texas, says that secession is unnecessary because, it claims, Texas is an independent nation that was illegally annexed by the United States in 1845.

(The group’s leader and other followers waged a weeklong standoff with the Texas Rangers in 1997 that left one of its members dead.) Mr. Kilgore, the candidate who is changing his middle name, said he had not signed the White House petition because he did not believe that Texans needed to ask Washington for permission to leave.

“Our economy is about 30 percent larger than that of Australia,” said Mr. Kilgore, 48, a telecommunications contractor.

“Australia can survive on their own, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem at all surviving on our own in Texas.”

Few of the public calls for secession have addressed the messy details, like what would happen to the state’s many federal courthouses, prisons, military bases and parklands.

No one has said what would become of Kevin Patteson, the director of the state’s Office of State-Federal Relations, and no one has asked the Texas residents who received tens of millions of dollars in federal aid after destructive wildfires last year for their thoughts on the subject.

But all the secession talk has intrigued liberals as well. Caleb M. of Austin started his own petition on the White House Web site. He asked the federal government to allow Austin to withdraw from Texas and remain part of the United States, “in the event that Texas is successful in the current bid to secede.” It had more than 8,000 signatures as of Friday.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 24, 2012, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas.


With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas - NYTimes.com

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Texas proves everything's bigger there, including the will to secede 11/13/2012

The Cost Of Seceding From The United States

MarketWatch By Brett Arends
Posted: 11/20/2012 12:16 pm EST



Your state wants to secede from the union. What will this mean for your taxes?

I have good news and bad news. The good news is really good. But the bad news is really, really bad.

We’ll get to them in a moment.

Talk of secession is in the air. The White House this week confirmed that residents in all fifty states had submitted petitions asking to leave the union. Will the last one left please turn out the lights?

Residents in seven states, all in the former Confederacy, submitted more than 30,000 signatures each — enough that some hapless bureaucrat or intern will now have to take a look at their petitions.

The news comes 150 years after the Civil War, and just in time for Steve Spielberg’s biopic of Abraham Lincoln, the man whom we have to thank — if that’s the word I want — for the continued forcible marriage of the once-independent states.

It’s only a couple of years since Texas governor Rick Perry hoisted a rhetorical secessionist flag in response to Obamacare. In the last few years, anti-federal “10th Amendment” resolutions, emphasizing the primacy of states’ rights versus those of the union, have passed the legislatures of 12 states in the South and West. In five states, the governors signed them, too. (The 10th Amendment to the Constitution says states’ rights come before those of the federal government. The last time anyone in Washington actually paid attention to it, the ink was still wet.)

But what would any of this actually mean for your taxes?

The upside is you will be liberated from the sheer living hell of the federal tax code.

I don’t care where you live, and how badly run your local state government is.

Nothing could be worse than this monstrosity. I once calculated that it was three times as long as the complete works of William Shakespeare. The instruction booklet for citizens, once two pages long, is now pushing 200.

The federal tax code is the kind of punishment victors used to impose on conquered peoples, along with the gouging of eyes and the rack. That was in the days before the Geneva Convention. I still don’t understand why, in this country, people are simultaneously considered so monumentally stupid that everything has to come with idiotic warnings on the side (“Caution: Do not jab fork repeatedly in eye, or injury may result”), and yet are considered so brilliant that they can maneuver through Schedule C, Schedule F, Schedule X, calculate your passive losses, divide by the shoe size of your sixth grade primary school teacher, carry the 7 unless it’s a Thursday, and multiply by the square root of the I.Q. of the guy next to you on the bus, and so on.

It’s not the total amount of federal tax dollars I pay which makes me want to put on a grey uniform, it’s the awful, awful process.

Secede, and you will never have to file a federal tax return again. Bliss. That’s the good news.

Alas, there’s also some bad news.
For most of you in the New Confederacy of the South and West, if you secede you will end up paying more in taxes than you do now, and you will get fewer government services. Forget the so-called “fiscal cliff.” We’re talking about a fiscal Death Star. Your economies will go into recession, and fast.

That’s because your state receives far more back from Uncle Sam in government spending than you pay in federal taxes. If you go it alone, you’ll have to make up the difference yourselves.

Take Alabama. (No jokes, please). It’s among the seven states whose secession petition has landed 30,000 signatures. Its legislature has also passed, and its governor signed a 10th Amendment Resolution. But at the last count, Alabama got back about $1.66 in federal spending for every dollar its citizens paid in federal taxes. The gap — the subsidy the rest of America paid to Alabama — totaled about $3,800 for every person in the state.

Louisiana is also among the seven petitioning for secession. A 10th Amendment resolution has passed both houses of its legislature.

At the last reckoning, Louisiana got back about $1.78 from Uncle Sam for every dollar its citizens pay in. That was about $4,200 per resident.

These figures are admittedly long in the tooth. They date back to 2005. They used to be calculated every year by the Tax Foundation, a conservative-leaning, albeit independent, Washington think tank. Alas, the Foundation says funding dried up for the research. Conservative-leaning donors became reluctant to pony up. You can see why.

While the foundation is no longer doing the math, the general trend has remained the same. The allegedly “low tax,” conservative red states of the South and West are heavily subsidized every year by the federal government. In other words, they are subsidized by the New Union: the states of the Northeast and the West Coast.
The picture was astonishingly consistent year after year as the Tax Foundation did the study.

Take the seven states which have gathered 30,000 or more signatures to secede: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

In the last year for which the Tax Foundation ran the numbers, their residents paid about $473 billion in federal taxes and received about $533 billion in federal spending. In other words the seven states which want to secede the most pocketed a $60 billion subsidy from Uncle Sam. That works out at about $700 for every household in the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, most states in the Northeast, around the Great Lakes and on the West Coast paid in more than they got back. Californians paid $1,300 more in taxes than they got back in federal spending at last count, according to the Tax Foundation. New Yorkers paid $2,200. New Jerseyans: $3,200.

The real mystery is why voters in these states continually vote for more federal programs. They’re turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.

Some years ago, over lunch, I put this to a Massachusetts Congressman. He had no response.

Bottom line?
If you live in the New Confederacy, and the local secession movement really gathers momentum, you may want to make two smart financial moves.

The first is to sell your home, and rent.

The second is to withdraw your money from your local bank before it gets forcibly converted into Confederate dollars. Can I recommend Swiss francs?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128810214676692.html?m od=googlenews_wsj

If your state secedes:
FEMA won't be there to help YOU pick up the pieces.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/fema-give-m...ictims-267707/

Texas Secession Petition Movement Fuels Plans To Secede

By: Rob Adams | 11/26/2012 03:44 PM ET

Follow: Lone Star, Secede, Texas, Texas Secession Fever, United States, White House
Texas is experiencing a change, providing fuel to its session fever movement, after collecting the needed 25,000 signatures to petition advocating for the Lone Star to secede from the United States.

It is the first such movement for the state since it joined the union in 1845. The basis is the disagreement with the federal government over its fiscal and security policies, including TSA searches at airports.

Many people look at this movement and wonder, with the difficulty of fiscally managing a nation and its diverse factions of peoples, why anybody would want to set up their own country?

However, the U.S.-Mexico border region, as important as it is economically, is often ignored by White House,, and Mexico City. At a more local level, the border region is often ignored by the powers that be in the state capitals of border states. The El Paso and Southern New Mexico region can be used as an example.

In 1850, El Pasoans opted to become part of Texas, rejecting its historical connection to New Mexico. Referred to as “El Paso del Norte,” the Pass to the North, in colonial times, this city was a major gateway to New Mexico on the Camino Real, the royal highway that stretched from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The pass to the north in this case was the pass to Santa Fe.

The U.S. and Mexico come together physically via the nearly 2,000-mile border between the nations. The region plays a natural role of industrial production and the logistics required to send products to target markets on either side of the border. The logistical superiority of two economic powerhouses being located next to each other, coupled with the economical labor force, make the border region an important place where companies can achieve the advantages necessary to compete in the global market.

The border’s popularity as an industrial and logistical base will continue in the future as industrial and supply chains tighten.

With the global economic crises continuing, wouldn’t it be in the best interest for the people of Texas to stay linked with the United States?

http://www.newsoxy.com/politics/sece...xas-98647.html

Texas secession petition response: White House deadline nears

texas secession
November 26, 2012
By: Devonia Smith

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As of Monday and at the time of this publishing, 117,355 Texans think it is time to "divvy up the china and draft a property settlement," ending what many Texans feel has been a tumultuous marriage between the Lone Star State and the United States of America. Any official response to petitions filed on the White House’s “We the People” website are to be within 30 days of initiation.

The deadline of December 9 is near.

In Texas, one Billy Bob Anonymous, drawled, "If all the liberals who want to change our country into Europe were ants, I'd grind 'em under the heel of my boot. They aren't, and I can't; so secession is one of the options open to stop the wimpy p---ants and their president from ever messing with Texas again."

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Many Texans do feel the government under the Obama administration is guilty of "messing with Texas." 17 lawsuits currently pending against the federal government. The biggest legal battle mounted by Texas, on a variety of issues, including health care reform and environmental standards. Texas argues the 10th Amendment grants state governments more autonomy than many of the laws passed by the federal government allow.

Though only .46 percent of the population of Texas has added their John Henry to the White House citizen petition requesting peaceful secession, following the reelection of Barack Obama to a second term as president, emotionally, it may be more. According to the New York Times, Romney won Texas by about 1.3 million votes.

Currently, all 50 states have active secession petitions on the White House’s “We the People” website. Of that 50, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Florida, Missouri, Tennessee, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio have the required 25,000 signatures needed to prompt a possible official response to their petitions, within 30 days of initiation. Signatures have been very quietly added as media reports get louder and louder in their support or mockery of these citizen's notion of secession. A citizen petition should not be confused with an official state or Texas Ordinance of Secession.

From the FACs of a Houston site selling bumper stickers promoting Texas secession, in answer to the question, "Didn’t the outcome of the Civil War prove that secession is not an option for any state," the response was:

"No. It only proved that, when allowed to act outside his lawfully limited authority, a U.S. president is capable of unleashing horrendous violence against the lives, liberty, and property of those whom he pretends to serve. The Confederate States (including Texas) withdrew from the Union lawfully, civilly, and peacefully, after enduring several years of excessive and inequitable federal tariffs (taxes) heavily prejudiced against Southern commerce.

Refusing to recognize the Confederate secession, Lincoln called it a "rebellion" and a "threat" to "the government" (without ever explaining exactly how "the government" was "threatened" by a lawful, civil, and peaceful secession) and acted outside the lawfully defined scope of either the office of president or the U.S. government in general, to coerce the South back into subjugation to Northern control.

The South's rejoining the Union at the point of a bayonet in the late 1860s didn't prove secession is "not an option" or unlawful. It only affirmed that violent coercion can be used, even by governments (if unrestrained), to rob men of their very lives, liberty, and property."

The question most asked is whether Texas could survive as a republic, apart from but next to the United States. Many think that economically Texas could succeed quite easily.

“Our economy is about 30 percent larger than that of Australia,” boasts Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate who hails from Arlington, a Dallas suburb.

Kilgore has plans to legally change the Scott in his name to "SECEED," in capital letters.

“Australia can survive on their own, and I don’t think we’ll have any problem at all surviving on our own in Texas," added Kilgore.

Some of the organizations supporting Texas secession, many formed prior to Obama's first election, are:

• TexasSecession (www.TexasSecession.com) 817-453-5744
• Texas Nationalist Movement (www.texasnationalist.com) is dedicated to keeping Texas free of abuse by the federal government, in existence since 1994
• Republic of Texas (www.texasrepublic.info) documents the annexation of Texas as a U.S. state as having been a fraud in the first place, and reclaims the Republic's sovereignty. Contact:trep777@dctexas.net
• Free Texas Constitution (freetexasconstitution.wordpress.com) aims to provide an outline for concepts to be incorporated in the new Constitution for the independent Republic of Texas.

Whether or not secession is successful, it's true that Texans are loading up on guns, according to a recent report of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. Though many say their reason to stockpile weapons has nothing to do with politics, other Texans point to Obama's anti-gun policies as reason to buy now. One weapon manufacturer notes national firearm sales have grown ten percent each year since Obama was first elected.

Finally, as also noted in the Star, "The point is, we have a federal government that's designed to give unhappy people a chance to come back and change things in the next election." As Billy Bob Anonymous noted, many Texans believe there is more than one way to get rid of "p---ants," who "mess with Texas."

Texas secession petition response: White House deadline nears - National Political Transcripts | Examiner.com

What would happen if Texas actually seceded?

By The Week's Editorial Staff | The Week – 12 hrs ago

• Enlarge Photo

Secession fever has struck much of red America after President Obama's re-election. And that's got a lot of people asking "what if...?""Talk of secession is in the air," says Brett Arends at MarketWatch. At least a small number of people in each of the 50 states have filed petitions on the White House website "We The People" asking that their state be allowed to leave the Union.

Under rules laid out by President Obama, any petition that gets 25,000 "signatures" in 30 days earns an official response: At least seven states have more than 30,000 signatures, and the Texas petition had more than 117,000 as of Nov. 26. All of this secession fever "comes 150 years after the Civil War, and just in time for Steve Spielberg's biopic of Abraham Lincoln, the man whom we have to thank — if that’s the word I want — for the continued forcible marriage of the once-independent states." Of course, nobody really expects any state to openly revolt and agitate for independence, but what would happen if they did?

Here's what you should know:
First off: Do states have the right to secede?
No. Like "nullification" — the idea that states can unilaterally ignore a federal law they don't like — secession "is one of those extra-legal concepts that was hotly debated during the decades leading up to the Civil War," says Richard Dunham in the Houston Chronicle. Nullification and secession threats have popped up in the 150 year since, but the question was mostly settled at the Battle of Appomattox Court House. "The bottom line is that any state — or confederation of states — can illegally secede from the Union. But the result, as we discovered in 1861, is Civil War."
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Are there any exceptions?
No — although lots of Texans believe their state has a special "opt-out" clause (31 percent, according to a 2009 Rasmussen poll). Part of that may be due to Gov. Rick Perry (R), who told a crowd that year that when the former Republic of Texas "came in the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave, if we decided to do that." But he was wrong, says Jeff Turrentine at Slate. "Texas' so-called 'right' to secede is no more than a politically emboldening myth, the boastful residue of the decade it spent as a sovereign nation before joining America." Still, the Lone Star State does have "an unusual ace up its sleeve" — its annexation papers do allow Texas to unilaterally split in to as many as five states. Some Texas Republicans posit that faced with the threat of eight new Republicans tilting the balance of the Senate, Washington would let the Texas offshoots leave without a fight.

What would happen if the feds let states go peacefully?
First of all, "it would be excellent financial news for those of us left behind if Obama were to grant a number of the rebel states their wish," says Dana Milbank at The Washington Post. That's because most states threatening to secede are part of the old Confederacy, and "low tax" southern red states typically get "far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes." Each California and New Jersey taxpayer, for example, pays thousands each year to subsidize residents of Louisiana and Alabama — the lone exception is Texas, which, thanks to oil revenue, comes out about even, tax-wise.
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And what about residents of unshackled red states?
If you're in a state intent on bolting the Union, there is good tax news, says MarketWatch's Arends: "You will be liberated from the sheer living hell of the federal tax code." Of course, you'll also "get fewer government services." Also, your newly independent nation "will go into recession, and fast."

The feds would take back their highway, airport, and university research funding, and maybe even demand a refund, says the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in an editorial. Obama would close down or repossess federal courthouses, prisons, national parks, and military bases that pump tens of billions each into local economies.

Plus, Texas and other newly minted nations would have to pay for their own militaries, says Jack Simmons at the UT-Arlington Shorthorn. "We would also need some form of health care, some sort of disaster relief, a postal service, welfare, social security, FDA, CIA, FBI — the list goes on," totaling well over a trillion dollars. "And that's just start-up costs."

So why is secession so popular?
It's not, really. Even in Texas, the hotbed of the secession movement, support for breaking free is limited to "a loud but small minority," says the Houston Chronicle's Dunham. Rasmussen clocked it at 18 percent. In other words, "more Texans believe in UFOs than in secession." Mostly, secession talk is just a silly way to register disappointment in the election results, says Glenn Harlan Reynolds at USA Today. Remember "in 2004, when disappointed Democrats were talking about secession, and circulating maps of America divided into 'The United States of Canada' and 'Jesusland'"? But there are serious reasons, too: Some states "feel that the central government doesn't respect them, forces them to live under laws they find repugnant, and takes their money away to pay off its own supporters."

The way to fix that is giving states more power — in other words, returning to the federalism the U.S. was founded under. "It's a nice plan. Beats secession."

http://news.yahoo.com/happen-texas-actually-seceded-114000495.html