Move Along, Folks, Nothing To See Here

Last week Nick commented on a web site brought to his attention by a Facebook post from The Spovangelist. The site, entitled "East Washington; the 51st State of the Union", promotes the idea of Eastern Washington separating itself from the state and creating a 51st state.

As evidenced by the other postings this is an easily mocked idea. But I was curious. The site claims to have a plan supported "by our District Reps, and Senator" but doesn't name any names. It claims to speak for all rural residents, but names no names. It makes all kinds of statements in support of the idea.

Whereas the west side has become so liberal and so extreme in the past couple years that they are completely out of touch with eastern WA rural residents. The eastern WA residents feel happy to be alienated from such foreign values, as seen on the west side. However, while we are happy that many of those issues are far from us, we also don’t want to have those issues forced upon our more conservative way of life in the rural areas, especially through our education system for younger children and teens, with emphasis of disapproval added to the liberal agenda of educating children/teens about homosexual issues/values.

Whereas Governor Gregoire has gone off the deep end into extremism with circumventing our own legislature on the issues of Cap and Trade, and rubbing elbows with the top tiers involved with the Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty, we eastern WA residents would like to have nothing else to do with her or her “over the edge” and some State Reps are saying “dictatorship” actions.

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Because the west side is primarily Democrat, and the east side is primarily Republican, the two sides cannot fairly assume to represent the minority of the east side and their republican related conservative ag/mining/logging views.

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Because eastern WA residents have tired of the west side’s extremist policies and circumventing of the Legislature on the issue of Cap and Trade, we are going to bring the plan of splitting the state into motion.

Because the advantages for eastern WA residents greatly increase by splitting the state, we are going to bring the plan of splitting the state into motion.

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IN SUMMARY:

Splitting the state of WA into 2 separate states of the east side and west side will ultimately benefit the east side residents and their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Through closer, more personalized representation and government, our area, rich in natural resources and agriculture, will once again thrive without the west’s illogical, liberal urban policies dominating and prohibiting our means of income.

We would like to see the split occur at the east side of the Cascade mountain range, where the mountains hit the valleys, and follow that line both north and south to the respective borders. We also are not necessarily asking if we can do this, we are actually planning to do this.

So I was curious as to who "we" are. Who is in what appears to be a group of nameless people wanting to create a 51st state for political, ideological and economic reasons. I looked up the domain registration for the site:

Domain Name: eastwa51ststate.com
Created On: 25-Jan-2010 00:00:00
Registrant Name: Rene Holaday
Registrant Organization: Private Registration US
Registrant Street1: PO Box 61359
Registrant City: Sunnyvale
Registrant State/Province: CA
Registrant Postal Code: 94088
Registrant Country: US
Registrant Phone: +1.5105952002

I thought it odd that someone with a California address would register this web site name so I did a search for the phone number. That turned out to be associated with a lot of web sites, many of which had complaints of being associated with scams and ripoff products. This site doesn't have the characteristics of a scam site so I figured that Rene Holaday, if that was a real person, did not enter any more than a name during the registration process and the remainder was filled in automatically just to meet the requirements.

Then I searched for Rene Holaday and found there is a Rene' Holaday in the Chewelah area and she's involved in politics. She also breeds and sells horses. I tried calling and emailing her, asking if I could talk to her about this idea and hear more about how the plan would be implemented. I received an email response. Here's the complete reply:

I had to put this site in my name, but it is not my idea, nor am I the only person involved/ or the leader of any group. Actually I am not really even that involved with it, other than facilitating the website portion of it. I am politically active, as I am running for public office this year. This idea is actually a pretty old idea that Senator Bob Morton participated in many years ago. The subject came up as an alternate route to Gregoire's circumventing of the WA State Legislature, as described in the article printed on the articles page.

Will it ever come to fruition- who knows? It didn't get too far last time Morton pushed for it. Basically, it will have to come from a major input of effort from the people of this side of the state. As it stands right now, the people are interested in the idea, as it provides hope. Whether it will actually ever come to fruition certainly depends upon the people. I am all for an idea that moves the people in a positive direction, which is why I was willing to help the effort with the website help. Right now, I'd have to say that it isn't going to go anywhere with the limited amount of support we are looking at right now. Petition efforts would have to have gung-ho county leaders, and so far there is only one person willing to do that, out of the 18 counties needed, so the grass roots part is looking fairly unimpressive when it comes to people actually being willing to participate. If it goes nowhere, then so be it. It was tossed out as a possibility to a bad situation in Eastern WA, and left as something available if the people really decided they would want to make an effort in the future. The problem is that unless ALOT of people really get involved, it won't get going since it will have to go all the way through Congress before it can be approved. Are the people capable of that much time investment- hard to say, other than I've not seen that type of energy toward any idea to date.

I am not interested in any interviews- my part in this is rather insignificant, but thanks for the inquirey [sic] into a positive option for the people of Eastern Washington.

On to something else....