Coffee House Liberal Excesses Inspires Secession

Is there any way for Washington’s King County to become even kookier? The land of Baghdad Jim McDermitt has managed is rapidly challenging Baghdad by the Bay (as San Francisco is known colloquially) as the looniest jurisdiction in the western United States, if not the western hemisphere. While the rest of the state is inhabited by a fairly level-headed population, King County is a weird, blue aberration. But because of its enormous population and ideological extremism, the rest of the state must endure the humiliation of being represented by Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, and now, Christine Gregoire.
Can King County swing further to the left? Well, yes it can. And it just might happen, if its ballast parts company with its kooks. The normal people who still reside there could vote with their feet and leave. Or those parts of the county where the plague of liberalitis has not reached epidemic proportions could quarantine themselves by seceding from their Seattle brethren. And that latter solution is actually receiving serious consideration.
Secession is not a simple matter. It’s been tried before, but the Washington Supreme Court declared in 1998 that counties were creations of the state and that individual counties could not divide themselves. And therefore the process of creating new counties had to proceed through the legislature.
The Washington State Supreme Court went a step further and issued a dictate requiring that 50% of the proposed new county’s residents sign a petition before the process of creating a new county may begin. What happens after that is not clear. New legislation before the Washington House of Representatives lays out a procedure for dividing counties and would lower that threshold that rebellious residents must overcome to 25%.
The primary beneficiaries of this new right to secession would be the rural nether reaches of King County. There one finds a serious secession movement as rural and unincorporated suburban residents bristle under the onerous land use regulations cooked up in Seattle’s gourmet coffee houses. There, caffeine supercharged socialists on the King County Board of Supervisors have been brewing up plans that would essentially seize control of rural properties.
Recently, Seattle liberals inflicted what they call the “Sensitive Areas Ordinance” on the rest of King County. As it stands now, a King County rural property owner whose land is being overgrown by blackberry bushes has to ask Seattle liberals for permission to pull them out. How would Seattlistas like it if they had to ask for permission to pull up dandelions? They wouldn’t. And, of course, they don’t have to. The rules don’t apply to them.
We actually have a precedent for this sort of thing. Years ago, largely on the strength of Seattle voters, animal traps were banned throughout the state. As a consequence, gophers were suddenly free to set up housekeeping under Seattle area yards. Seattlista politicians petitioned the legislature for permission to trap gophers, while leaving the ban in place for the rest of the state. We were supposed to learn to love our vermin. Seattle knows how the rest of the state should live, but they’d rather not live under their own strictures.
Rural King County understands this very well and is disinclined to take it anymore. A coalition of business and agriculture interests is exploring the possibility of freeing themselves from the tyranny of the coffee house intellectuals.
And there’s some sense in dividing King County anyway. Currently, King County has 1.7 million residents. Meanwhile, Garfield County, just a little west of here has only about 2400 residents. That’s about the same number of imaginary, dead, and illegal voters who cast ballots in King County during the last election.
Needless to say, many of King County’s more fire breathing liberals are fuming over the prospect of secession. After all, in their minds, they’re just trying to preserve the character of rural King County.
King County executive Ron Sims confessed that, “I've always said that all wisdom does not reside in downtown Seattle.''
But he might be the only Seattlista who thinks that way. Seattle has even tried to lecture Eastern Washington about its dams.
Considering that, during the last election, Seattle could not even demonstrate the capacity to count on its fingers, what reason is there to believe that the coffee house liberals know a darned thing about how to manage anybody else’s lives?