A step toward economic sovereignity in the Intermountain West
Regional federalism: this is one important example of how it happens.
Western states, and even areas within these states, are developing their own relationships with each other and with other regions. As Governor Huntsman implied, trade agreement between western states and China is perhaps less desirable than one with the Guangdong province.
The more immediate and explicit innovation is that the Intermountain West states are working together to develop such relationships and agreements in the first place; they are 1) moving faster and more efficiently than the federal government, and 2) as a bloc of states, have a much greater economic clout than as individual states:
The Western Governors' Association says that if the West were a separate country, its economy would be the third largest in the world, behind the United States and Japan. The combined value of the West's merchandise trade exports in 2004 was approximately $320 billion.
The federal government has its place, but it's becoming more evident every day that one economic policy does not work for the whole country. Regional initiatives are the evolution of our economic reality. It may very well begin to translate to a political reality as well.
3 Comments:
That's cute and all, but if the West were a separate country then the East would also be a separate country and the 3rd largest economy.
Plus, the WGA incorporates Kansas, Guam and Alaska. I hope to God that San Francisco has more in common with the East than it does with some of those places.
Plus, unless you crazy flyover fools are really going to secede, don't forget there is that whole messy Constitution thing.
Simon
Article I
Section 8
The Congress shall have power…To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations
Article I
Section 10
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with…a foreign Power
Historically speaking, constitutions come and go. I refer you to the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Okay, secession, well, I think that's been tried before, but I bet the rest of the world like it.
Are you ready for a Utah without the force of the US Constitution? Without the 1890 Manifesto?
Simon
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