THE MORNING RANT: When States & Municipalities Fail, Let’s Break Them Up

Milwaukee is a failed city that cannot pay its bills. Regrettably, the Republican-controlled legislature in Wisconsin is simply going to bail the city out, rather than letting it actually go bankrupt. Any bailout that keeps municipal services operating should also terminate the city as it is currently incorporated, because Milwaukee has proved it is not capable of self-governance.

Bipartisan Deal Reached to Save Milwaukee From Bankruptcy [AP – 06/08/2023]

Wisconsin has handed cash-strapped Milwaukee a lifeline to stave off bankruptcy, allowing the city to raise sales taxes without voter approval as part of a larger local government and K-12 schools funding plan, according to a bipartisan deal announced Thursday by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers.

Evers called it a “transformative” deal that will rescue Milwaukee from the threat of bankruptcy, “something that would have devastating consequences for communities in every corner of our state and our state economy as a whole.”

As part of the deal, the GOP-controlled Legislature agreed to spending an additional $1 billion on K-12 schools, along with increasing payments to families whose children attend taxpayer-funded private voucher schools.

While it’s true that Wisconsin has a Democrat Governor, the GOP legislature had the option of doing nothing and simply letting Milwaukee fail. There will apparently be no consequences for the Democrat power structure in Milwaukee that spent money the city didn’t have.

Coincidentally, Yale Law Professor David Schleicher has a new book out that is receiving a lot of promotion, “In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises.” Daniel DiSalvo reviews the book at City Journal, and when discussing the inevitable bankruptcy of both Chicago and the state of Illinois, I notice that there is one significant option not discussed…

When Your Local Government Goes Broke [City Journal – 6/13/2023]

Imagine, sometime in the next decade, that the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago hold a joint press conference to declare that the state and city can’t pay their bills. Schools close, crime spikes, garbage goes uncollected, and public employees protest proposed job and pension cuts. It’s a mess. What, if anything, should the federal government do?

Here is an idea that is not originally mine, but it’s a good one. How about dissolving the failed state of Illinois and making it a territory? Or perhaps putting Chicago in federal receivership, making it similar to Guam as an unincorporated territory of the United States, and allowing the downstate counties to be annexed by neighboring states?

Unfortunately, that is not discussed in this piece. It pretty much accepts the premise that a bailout will happen, and the only question is will Chicago and Illinois face any repercussions through “austerity.”

Circling back to Milwaukee, I don’t know if it has neighborhoods that wish they could de-annex, but my experience is that in most any city, there are neighborhoods that were annexed against their will which wish to be free of the taxes and pathologies of the leftist municipal government that now holds control over them.

Austin and Atlanta are just two cities I’m familiar with that are imposing crime, high taxes, and a lack of policing on neighborhoods that wish to be liberated from those cities. They’ve not been successful so far.

Bill to Allow Lost Creek Neighborhood to Leave Austin Dies in Texas House

Georgia Gov. Kemp Deals Blow to Buckhead Suburb Trying to Secede From Atlanta Over Violent Crime [Fox News – 3/02/2023]

Of note, the Texas legislature is controlled by Republicans, and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is (nominally) a Republican. Those “conservatives” are protecting the pro-crime Democrats who run Austin and Atlanta from the law-abiding residents who seek to escape the taxes and dysfunction of those cities.

There are a couple of widely accepted notions about political boundaries that need to change:

First, the notion that when cities annex new land, the annexation has created a permanent and irreversible map change. This needs to change.

Second, the notion that state boundaries are permanently fixed. This also needs to change.

Take a look at this evolving map of the United States. The idea that the political boundaries as of 1912 (when Arizona became a state) are the final and permanent state boundaries of the United States is preposterous.

The state of Virginia alone has seen its borders adjusted many times throughout our nation’s history. The counties of Arlington and Alexandria were once part of Washington DC, and the governance of Virginia would improve remarkably if it could give those counties back to DC.

Maps are going to change. They always have. When and how they change is not yet known, but the course of human history is that political boundaries are always in flux.

There are rural counties in far-left states that are already agitating to secede and join neighboring states, or possibly create all new states.

Oregon’s Rural-Urban Divide Sparks Talk of Secession [NY Times – 3/18/2023]

The broad sense of estrangement felt across rural Oregon has led conservatives in recent years to pursue a scrupulous strategy to open a theoretical escape hatch, gathering thousands of signatures for a series of ballot measures that have now passed in 11 counties. Those measures require regular meetings to discuss the idea of secession. In those places, including Union County, Ms. Cook’s new home, county commissioners in rooms adorned by Oregon flags and maps are now obligated to talk about whether it would one day make sense to be part of Idaho.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has written about this too, specifically, how many in the rural parts of California are seeking to secede and form a new state so as to gain freedom from the big city leftists in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

West Virginia was carved out of Virginia and Tennessee was carved out of North Carolina. There’s no reason a new state can’t be carved out of California.

Leftism has taken an aggressively destructive form, with Pol Pot mayors and Maoist Governors using crime and failed schools to destroy the vestiges of civilization in areas they control.

The inevitable collapse of those municipalities is an opportunity to liberate the freedom loving people who are stuck within their borders. It’s also an opportunity to eliminate the concentrated power that those left-wing governments employed.

When a business goes bankrupt and can no longer operate, its assets are surrendered and its liabilities disposed of. Let’s seize the opportunity when liberal municipalities fail and do the same. Let’s break them up.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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