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

Petition seeks 25,000 to back secession of El Paso from Texas

By Adriana M. Chávez \ EL PASO TIMESelpasotimes.com
Posted: 11/16/2012 08:10:19 AM MST

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An El Pasoan started a petition on Tuesday to have El Paso secede from Texas. (Screenshot courtesy whitehouse.gov)

›› View the petition asking for El Paso to secede from Texas at whitehouse.gov
›› Tales from the Morgue blog: 1935: Gov. Tingley Suggests El Paso Be Included In New Mexico

A movement for El Paso to secede from Texas has begun.
Apparently

Petition to secede

Would you sign a petition to allow El Paso to secede from Texas? Read story

Yes, that's a great idea. No, I like being a Texan. No, that's ridiculous.

in response to a petition posted on whitehouse.gov calling for the secession of Texas from the United States, an El Pasoan identified only as Raymond K. started a petition on Tuesday to have El Paso secede from Texas.For the petition to be reviewed by the White House staff, it needs 25,000 signatures by Dec. 13. As of Thursday, it had only 800.

A statewide petition started on Tuesday by the Texas Nationalist Movement, which apparently began after President Barack Obama was re-elected last week, attracted more than 80,000 signatures, qualifying it for White House review.

The White House website allows anyone to create a petition. According to the website, once a petition reaches 25,000 signatures, it is passed on to staffers for review and then is sent to policy experts. Staff members will then issue an official response.
The petition about El Paso asks that the city be allowed to secede from Texas because "El Paso is tired of being a second class city within Texas."

The petition continues, "El Paso has little in common with the rest of Texas. Its demographics are more similar to New Mexico. El Paso is also proud to be part of the United States and wants no part of a state whom publicly contemplates secession from our great nation."
El Paso County Judge Veronica Escobar said Thursday that she had heard about the petition and called it "tongue-in-cheek and it's funny," but she added there may be some legitimacy to the motivation behind the petition.

"They (the state) don't necessarily see us as a second-class city, but I see that the state historically has not been effective at adequately funding El Paso compared to other communities," Escobar said.

A good example of that is the state's distribution of federal funding for health care, she said.

"The state of Texas is considered one of the poorest states because of border communities like El Paso," Escobar said. "They (the state) use our poverty to pull down more funds, then turn around and give the money to wealthier counties like Bexar County, Travis County and Harris County. I have had my own frustrations with being in a state that in some ways many times can harm us."

El Paso Mayor John Cook said, "Now is not a good time to be talking about why we would want to leave the state." Instead, he said, there should be more collaboration among governments to improve cities.

"In the past," Cook said, "there was talk that maybe we should become the 51st state in the nation and the poorest so we could get more federal aid, but I don't think it's constructive at this time."

He said that to help improve El Paso, the city should continue collaborating with other border cities in Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico -- the reason the U.S.-Mexico Border Mayors Association was created last year.

"Collaboration is important," Cook said. "The feasibility (of secession) is probably slim to none, so why even bother talking about it if it's never going to happen? We're not going to become the Republic of Texas again."

Adriana M. Chávez may be reached at achavez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6117. Follow her on Twitter @AChavezEPTimes.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_22007868/petition-seeks-25-000-back-secession-ep-from

Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 11/19/12: If a People Cannot Secede, They Are Not Free

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...;v=PseezrhlWfk


Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk 11/19/12: If a People Cannot Secede, They Are Not Free - YouTube

USA: Dissolving the Union

An indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states?

http://www.roitov.com/articles/7thCentury.jpg
7th Century World Map

The recently reelected President was laughing hard at his lame aide; the latter didn't know where to hide the report he had just shown. It summarized the online secession petitions from all American states. Texas led it with over 100,000 thousand signatures; yet, this state has over 25 million inhabitants. Still laughing, the President said "Impossible, the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1869 regarding the secession of Texas that the US is 'an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states,'" he lectured among mirth tears and summarized, "The petition didn't achieve even 1% of the votes!" The aide left in shame.

Standing next to the President, but invisible to him, was Madame History, Satan's whore. She also was laughing but for a different reason. Next to the President were reports on the recent election results, the military budget, and the country's international trade trends. The President was a smart person, yet he was unable to integrate the data. It showed the USA couldn't survive in its actual form for much longer.

http://www.roitov.com/articles/2011USBudgetProp.jpg

US 2012 Proposed Budget

Money, Money, Money

Ignoring the Madame, the President looked at the trading trends report; it wasn't a disaster. The Congressional Research Service had published "U.S. International Trade: Trends and Forecasts" in September 2011. Oddly enough, it showed that the financial crisis the country had experienced in recent years had delayed the end. The crisis caused U.S. imports to drop faster than U.S. exports, diminishing the deficit. However, that had reversed once the crisis ended in August 2009.

The bottom line was a bit worrying, in 2010, the country's trade deficit in goods reached $645.9 billion on a balance of payments (BoP) basis, more than the $505.9 billion in 2009, but less than the $830.1 billion in 2008. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, in 2012, the U.S. government will run a budget deficit of $1.1 trillion, or 7.3% of gross domestic product. There was no chance to solve the issue; yet, countries along history had survived tougher situations. Compare Germany in the aftermath of WWII to its actual condition as the European Union largest economy.

The President took a deep breath; there was no reason for alarm. The Madame laughed harder.

Following a century of dollar-based world economy, most Americans couldn't understand the real picture anymore. There is a simple, but excellent, way of describing the problematic of the statistics presented by the US Government. Bolivia is a producer of coffee. A pound of average coffee costs there around $1. In the US, a coffee of similar quality costs around $4. Let’s say that both economies sell just one pound of coffee per year. If measuring the production of each economy in dollars, then the US economy could be claimed to be four times larger than the Bolivian one. However, if measuring by weight, both economies would be the same size. The world’s economy is measured in US dollars and thus it is highly biased toward the American economy, presenting it as much larger than it is. In order to keep this illusion of economic size, a key goal of the US government is to keep its currency as the global monetary measurement unit. However, this won’t last. It makes no sense calculating the trade between China and India in US dollars; the distortions in such a case are multiple. In the case of Thai products reaching Nepal via India, measuring the events in American dollars is ridiculous. The solution is adopting a basket of carefully balanced measurements methods; this would probably happen in the next decades. Measuring under a more accurate system, the US would probably rate as the third largest economy in the world. If measuring the EU as one economic unit, then the US would be just fourth. In 2012, the largest Asian economies had begun trading among them in local currencies; the percentage of international trade calculated in dollars will drop sharply in following years.

At first sight, this seems of no consequence. Let China buy Russian timber while paying in yuans and rubles. There is no way of blocking that. The point is that in the last century, the USA practically stopped producing goods. Items marked "made in the USA" have become a rarity. That is the reason for the large trade deficit abovementioned. Once the international producers of goods begin trading in foreign currencies, the US government loses its capability to manipulate the cost of the goods it purchases by fiscal methods. This means that the price of the goods purchased by the USA will increase in following years; the deficit problem won't be solved.


http://www.roitov.com/articles/USSecession1861.jpg

US Secession Map 1861 | US Supreme Court, 1869 "an indestructible Union, composed of Indestructible states"

"Let's Nuke Them!"

Calmly, the President dropped the financial reports and looked at the military papers. One of them caught his attention; it was the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2012, which included a list on the world's top 15 military spenders in 2011. It showed the USA at the top of the list. Not only that, the country spent 41% of the world's expenses in military, despite the country having less than 4.5% of the world's population. The following country in the list, China, had just 8% of the total expense, despite its population being more than four times larger than the American one. This was wildly unbalanced. Could he cut the expense, lower the deficit, and become the Abraham Lincoln of this century?

http://www.roitov.com/articles/firepower.jpg US Army Ordnance Dept. Poster

It took him less than a second to dismiss the idea. The little of what was left of American industries was closely related to the military.

Even an innocent-looking computer company as Hewlett-Packard was listed as 20^th largest defense contractor of the US government.

The company is the creator of the Navy Marine Corps Intranet; a network second in size only to the Internet itself. Cutting the military expense would cause an irreversible damage to the domestic industry. Moreover, as China, the USA was thirsty for raw materials. China was a civilized country; it just kept peacefully buying Australian ores.

In contrast, America gained access to cheap raw materials, especially oil, by war. Much of the military industry depended these days on rare earth minerals; recently, the USA had gained access in Afghanistan to one of their largest deposits on earth. The President couldn't stop the attack on that country right now. It would hit his country's military and corporations. Regardless his wishes, in the following years, the military will continue to grow, together with the deficit.

"Viva Mexico!"

At this point, the President began thinking badly of his aides. Both economy and military seemed to have joined forces against the USA; yet, they brought him non-operational papers. What was he supposed to do with them? At least he could rejoice in his recent victory. Birth certificate or not, Bibi’s support or not, he had hit them all! He looked briefly at their statistics, smiled smugly, and went out for a coffee. There was nothing to do in the Oval Office.


http://www.roitov.com/articles/TheUnionisDissolved.jpg The Union is Dissolved

The Madame stayed behind, still laughing hard. Deeply indoctrinated by American bipartisan politics, the President had entirely missed the point. A paper by the Center for Immigration Studies claimed that in November 2012 Hispanics comprise 17.2% of the total U.S. population, 15% of adults, 11.2% of adult citizens, and 8.9% of actual voters. Moreover, projections show that their relative increase in the population and the number of their voters will continue growing.

Yet, both Democrats and Republicans promoted negative policies towards them. Over 70% of them voted for the President because he was the lesser of two evils.

By the end of 2012, the American army was little more than an army of Mexican mercenaries fighting for their citizenship. By the end of 2006, on of the supplements of The New Mexican, New Mexico's leading English newspaper, was titled "Reconquista," ("Reconquest" in Spanish), making allusion to the fact that over 30% of that state's population is, in fact, Mexican.

It won't take long until this large segment of the population, at least in certain states, drops the bipartisan approach. The parties ignore their needs; once they finish their military and get citizenship, they realize they cannot advance in the anglo-oriented society. It had made them no good. The military and industrial analysis performed above shows the Federal Government will luck the funds to fix the situation, even if it wanted to do so. A social-bomb is ticking.

The President had returned to his sumptuous seat. He disliked people preparing his coffee, they never got it right. He took a sip and relaxed. "Mr. President, Mr. President," somebody was shouting while running in his direction. It was the annoying aide he had dismissed before. "Mr. President, the court resolution also added that it recognized the possibility of the divisibility 'through revolution, or through consent of the States,'" the aide said. Obtuse to reality, the President took a second sip and smiled.

Roi Tov – USA: Dissolving the Union

The Lonestar Weekly
	November 18, 2012 SERVING TEXANS IN THE SENATE SINCE 2002

Texas Solutions to National Challenges Last Wednesday, I was selected by Republican Senators to serve as Assistant Leader of the Senate Republican Conference – a position often referred to as the "Whip." I'm honored to be given this opportunity, and I'm humbled by the support I've received from my colleagues. Much more importantly, however, this means that Texas will have a prominent seat at the table in the important debates to come. Washington, D.C., can learn a lot from Texas. While the national economy was shedding jobs, our state was creating them. Without raising taxes or growing government, Texas has weathered the recession better than most states. This isn't a coincidence. It's the result of the small government and business-friendly environment we've worked to create. It's also a testament to the power of hard work and individual liberty. Where possible, I'd like to export these Texas values to the national level. As Texans, we're forever optimistic. Where others see problems, we recognize opportunities for creative solutions. The work ahead of us could not be more important, nor could it be more urgent. The American people have chosen divided government, and I'm optimistic that the urgency of the moment will bring Republicans and Democrats together to do what's right for the country. For my part, I'll keep working to make Washington, D.C., a little bit more like Texas. Senator John Cornyn Lonestar Weekly: Texas Solutions to National Challenges

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f9/secession-pe...stions-267573/

Secession: Are We Free To Go?

By Congressman Ron Paul
theintelhub.com
November 21, 2012
9 Comments

Is all the recent talk of secession mere sour grapes over the election, or perhaps something deeper?

Currently there are active petitions in support of secession for all 50 states, with Texas taking the lead in number of signatures.

Texas has well over the number of signatures needed to generate a response from the administration, and while I wouldn’t hold my breath on Texas actually seceding, I believe these petitions raise a lot of worthwhile questions about the nature of our union.

Is it treasonous to want to secede from the United States? Many think the question of secession was settled by our Civil War.

On the contrary; the principles of self-governance and voluntary association are at the core of our founding. Clearly, Thomas Jefferson believed secession was proper, albeit as a last resort.

Writing to William Giles in 1825, he concluded that states: “should separate from our companions only when the sole alternatives left, are the dissolution of our Union with them, or submission to a government without limitation of powers.”

Keep in mind that the first and third paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence expressly contemplate the dissolution of a political union when the underlying government becomes tyrannical.

Do we have a “government without limitation of powers” yet? The Federal government kept the Union together through violence and force in the Civil War, but did might really make right?

Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. Some felt it was treasonous to secede from England but those “traitors” became our country’s greatest patriots.

There is nothing treasonous or unpatriotic about wanting a federal government that is more responsive to the people it represents.

That is what our Revolutionary War was all about and today our own federal government is vastly overstepping its constitutional bounds with no signs of reform.

In fact, the recent election only further entrenched the status quo. If the possibility of secession is completely off the table there is nothing to stop the federal government from continuing to encroach on our liberties and no recourse for those who are sick and tired of it.

Consider the ballot measures that passed in Colorado and Washington state regarding marijuana laws.

The people in those states have clearly indicated that they are ready to try something different where drug policy is concerned, yet they will still face a tremendous threat from the federal government.

In California, the Feds have been arresting peaceful medical marijuana users and raiding dispensaries that state and local governments have sanctioned. This shouldn’t happen in a free country.

It remains to be seen what will happen in states that are refusing to comply with the deeply unpopular mandates of Obamacare by not setting up healthcare exchanges. It appears the federal government will not respect those decisions, either.

In a free country, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

When the people have very clearly withdrawn their consent for a law, the discussion should be over.

If the Feds refuse to accept that and continue to run roughshod over the people, at what point do we acknowledge that that is not freedom anymore?

At what point should the people dissolve the political bands which have connected them with an increasingly tyrannical and oppressive federal government? And if people or states are not free to leave the United States as a last resort, can they really think of themselves as free?

If a people cannot secede from an oppressive government, they cannot truly be considered free.

Secession: Are We Free To Go? :

http://blu.stb.s-msn.com/i/2D/7861C3..._cuKRADfRo.jpg 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]

Click to see more on msnNOW.com, updated 24 hours a day.

Read more:

Alabama secession petition-starter mad about losing topless car wash

New viral petition requests all the secessionists be deported


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.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...icleInline.jpg 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

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/871005/thu...large570.jpg?4

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