California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing health care, economic and environmental policies independently of the federal government -- precisely because the state is big enough to go it alone. Should Cascadia band together to do similar?
A New York Times piece argues the U.S. is too big and needs to be decentralized:
Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.
When the U.S. was founded, the most populous colony was several times larger than the smallest. Now California has something like 70 times the population of Wyoming, yet the smaller state has influence far beyond its size. Gov. Chris Gregoire already is fond of referring to Washington as "like a small nation" when discussing trade issues, and has made steps to coordinate policy more closely with British Columbia and Oregon. It's time to extend this effort to all policies that transcend the political boundaries of Cascadia.