People's Republic of Multnomah? Let's Secede from Oregon, USA

Great Idea, but you best have a coupla Nukes, ala North Korea, or Vera Alwen for that matter.

Without addressing the corruption in local government secession from US and Oregon would be a leap from the frying pan to the fire. Would you really want Vera Katz to wield power over her own nation. Would you want to see the PPD officially become an army. If the secession were accompanied by workers' revolution, I'd be into it, but otherwise it would result in a corporate fiefdom.

Yes, you would need to be concerned about who would be in control. However, something needs to be done about support for education in this county and city. Our money is being diverted in levels, out of proportion, to the rest of the state. Portland has much more to deal with and gets less in return. This is reminiscent of NYC's situation in which they were paying an unfair burden of taxes to NY state and getting less in return, and in a larger context pays more to GW Bush than they receive. There was attempt to secede and create a 51st state. However, this city needs a bad economic boost, and I understand that it needs to be done in a manner that benefits not only the wealthy. That's why I'm all in favor of an Indian Casino that can pay for baseball (jobs) and education.

Some states already tried this (in the 1860s; maybe you heard about it?), and they had a preexisting majority for it in their populations prior to the act. Even if you could get a decision passed and make something of it, the history of attempts to assert localized autonomy in the United States is more or less exclusively marked by failure, from the Whiskey Rebellion up through the stand taken a few years ago on behalf of the free Republic of Texas. It's a good idea, but the federal system is specifically designed to prevent localities within the U.S. from asserting their own sovereignty. It's a really good concept, (theoretically local sovereignty was the principal foundation of the Continental Congresses and Articles of Confederation; since then it's been slowly scaled back by means of Federalism and then, naturally, the 20th-century attacks on even those protections for local sovereignty that the Constitution left, as illustrated by the fate of California's medical-cannabis initiatives) but success depends on a workable plan to defend autonomy against the forcs of Federalism once it's declared, which no one has as of yet successfully done. Until you can provide tht crucial link in the chain, the most appropriate NW/Cascadia secession program will remain that outlined at www.greenpanthers.org (which also sounds like a really great idea to me, but same objections as above apply.)

my $00.02