Statehood Dreams in D.C. and Northern Colorado

How fares the dream of a free North Colorado? “Colorado’s rural
counties were split on the secession movement,” The Huffington
Post‘s Matt Ferner
reports:

Washington, Phillips, Yuma, Kit Carson and
Cheyenne counties voted in favor of secession, while Weld, Logan,
Sedgewick, Elbert, Lincoln and Carson counties rejected the 51st
state question. Voters in Moffat County, the sole northwestern
county involved in secession threats, also rejected secession,
halting the possibility of it becoming a new panhandle to
Wyoming.

The question to voters reads: “Shall the Board of County
Commissioners of ______ County, in concert with the county
commissioners of other Colorado counties, pursue becoming the 51st
state of the United States of America?”

The counties whose voters approved of secession plans cannot
automatically break free from Colorado now; it simply allows
officials in those counties to pursue the idea of secession
further.

One big roadblock for the counties who want to
secede — and for relatively conservative rural counties elsewhere
who want to fly their own banners, from the would-be
State of Jefferson in northern California to the breakaway
bubbling in
western Maryland — is convincing congressional Democrats to
admit a state that is certain to send more Republicans to
Washington. A wise move for the secessionists would be to forge an
alliance with the D.C. statehood movement, which has the opposite
problem: Their new state is sure to vote in Democrats.

The government shutdown put D.C.’s municipal officials in the
ludicrous position of
begging Congress for permission to draw on their own budget.
Everyone involved would obviously be better off if the feds
finished the job of devolving authority to the people of D.C. —
everyone, that is, except Republicans concerned about the balance
of power in Congress. But if you admit the State of Columbia at the
same time that you admit the State of North Colorado, or whichever
rural secessionist movement manages to get its act together first,
you can give people more power over their own lives in two places
at once without disrupting gridlock. A win all around.