Secession Explosion: Goodbye, U.S.
Less than a week after a New Orleans suburbanite petitioned the White House to allow Louisiana to secede from the United States, petitions from seven states have collected enough signatures to trigger a promised review from the Obama administration.
By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.
A petition from Vermont, where talk of secession is a regular feature of political life, was the final entry.
Petitions from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas residents have accrued at least 25,000 signatures, the number the Obama administration says it will reward with a staff review of online proposals.
The Texas petition leads all others by a wide margin. Shortly before 9:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, it had attracted 94,700 signatures. But a spokesperson for Gov. Rick Perry said Tuesday afternoon that he does not support the idea of his state striking out on its own.
“Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it. But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.
A backlash Monday night saw requests filed with the White House to strip citizenship rights from Americans who signed petitions to help states secede.
And in a similar nose-thumbing aimed at Texas’ conservative majority, progressives from the liberal state capital of Austin responded Monday with a petition to secede from their state if Texas as a whole should decide to leave the Union.
Late Tuesday a second group of Texans, this one from Houston, lodged their own White House petition. Secession-minded Texans, they wrote, “are mentally deficient and [we] do not want them representing us. We would like more education in our state to eradicate their disease.”
Houstonian “Kimberly F” — The White House does not provide last names — submitted the petition. She told TheDC in an email that ”[w]e need both sides presented, or we all look like a bunch of fools.”
A group from El Paso, too, wants no part of an independent Texas. “Allow the city of El Paso to secede from the state of Texas,” their petition reads. “El Paso is tired of being a second class city within Texas.”
But smaller petitions like theirs are a political side show of a political side show. One effort, aimed at Missourians, called for a nationwide catered pizza party to celebrate when the Show Me State left the U.S.
States whose active petitions have not yet reached the 25,000 signature threshold include Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.
Other states with multiple efforts include Alaska, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
The White House provides a 30-day window of time for petitions to reach 25,000 signatures.
Web surfers must register their names online with the White House before launching or signing a petition, but it’s not clear if the 675,000 signatures represent the same number of individuals, since the website permits signers to add their names to multiple petitions.
Individual petition signers, however, may only add their names once to any proposal.
The Daily Caller emailed White House deputy press secretary Joshua Earnest for comment, asking if the Obama administration was taking the grassroots effort seriously.
“Does the President see this as a bunch of Gov. Romney’s supporters blowing off steam after the election?” TheDC asked. “As an earnest show of disaffection with the direction of the country? As something else?”
Earnest did not respond.
The most recent petition to attract at least 150 signatures — the threshold required before the White House adds a petition to its searchable database — suggests a way out, even if a state or two were to take the secession talk seriously.
A Darlington, South Carolina man proposed Tuesday that the Obama administration ”allow the states that have asked to secede to do so and form their own NEW nation together.”
That effort only has 24,000 more signatures to collect before it could find its way into the West Wing.
By David Martosko
This article originally appeared in the Daily Caller.
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Dear Texas,
Please leave.
Thx.
Sincerely,
Frank
People , what were all saying is the federal government has too much power over us. Its the federal government vrs states rights. The federal government was set up to protect individul rights not control our lives. Washinngton is way too much like moscow and peking. The constitution and the bill of rights were set up to protect indivual rights. Its called freedom of choise and in the persuit of happiness and the general welfare of its citizens.( That does not mean welfare as we know it.]
They were set up to protect our boarders, international trade, disputes between the states.State by state area by area have the right to have what there citizens want. NY, california, Texas, Az , etc all have different wants. If NY and Califoria want illegals then by god they can have them. If Az. doesnt by god they should it. That goes from all the social programs there are. State by state should be able to chose what is important to them, not the federal government.
I want that freedom to be anything I want to be , for me to make my life happy. If my choise was to be on drugs , or be lazy ,that’s up to me. That doesnt mean because I chose that and now Im homless. You have to pay for it. If you want to go to college and be a doctor , you should not have to be punished ,by taxation for doing so but I should have right not to pay for it or subsidise it either. America was the land of dreamers and doers . anybody from anywhere could be anything they wanted to work for. Not the land of a free ride. The federal government was there to protect those rights not to control those rights. Im a smoker should I pay higher insurance cost? yes. Does the government have the right to stop me from killing myself by doing so? no. Laws are there to protect me from you and you from me. There not there to be my daddy and mommy. Where in the constitution does the federal government have anything to do with education? It doesnt. where does it say it has control over my choise for health care? It doesnt. People get government out of our lives, let all of us be responsible for our destinty. Good or bad its up to us.
Beware, or they’ll exercise their treaty right to divide into five states — eight new senators! — instead.
Where is this all going? This is a dangerous world; many enemies that hate Americans. Consider this; unless we hang together, we may hang separately!!
One thing’s for sure. If Texas Seceeds, the BS factor for the entire country will be cut in half.
Perhaps its time for a secession. We texans were once a republic, and reserved the right to secede or to divide into five states,(which would give us ten senators).There is a collectivist minority amongst us, and we will allow them to leave in peace, as did the apache, comanche, karankawa and the armies of El Benemerito de Mexico. We prepared reservations for the fascist/communist types, in CA and NY; but the Court ruled that to be “cruel and unusual punishment”, hence unconstitutional.Then we tried to assist them into emigrating to Mexico. They were refused on the grounds that they were of the wrong race, overeducated, too affluent and could not speak spanish. Desperate, we then contacted the Moslem Brotherhood and learned they would not consider any jews, christians,hindus, buddhists, taoists, or anyone who does not practice a religion. China claimed overpopulation, and the only openings in the USSR were in Siberia or the gulags. So we ended up offering them Detroit, Chicago or DC. You may recall that they then fled to antarctica and selected penguin consorts, proving that their social perspectives are just as perverted as their political views. Even so, they have given us a contact number for something they call “the mothership”, and begged us to arrange for them to be, we think they said, “beamed up.” So far we have not made contact. Ah, well…
do you think Washington hears this?? I hope so.tells them what this country is now ..we have a gov. to self serving and totally out of sinc with their people..things like this years ago started a civil war .it wasn’t slavery it was secession.in all my yrs 63 now,I’ve never seen such divide..we just don’t take the action when men where men..