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Urban-Rural Interface for State Boundaries?

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Would government be effective if urban areas and those areas in the urban sphere of influence such as the suburbs where separate from truly rural areas, where residents rarely go to city? By definition, the urban-rural interface is the border between the lands within a practical commuting distance for the productive non-farming rural resident and the rural resident who rarely interacts with the city.

As I’ve written many times in the past, urban policies being applied to rural areas rarely make sense, as do rural policies applied to urban areas. The conflict between the rural and the urban is best mitigated by creating and having two separate and sovereign governments, while allowing them to come together for questions of national and international policy, for things like nation defense, transportation infrastructure, and large-source emitters’ pollution control.

Political districts currently are based on haphazards of history or attempts at gaming the political system and not geographic reality. Large regional governments in urbanized areas and their spheres of influence would be far more effective at addressing the large problems of day from transportation to materials recovery or disposal. Moreover, the linkages between two urban regions of similar size (such as Syracuse Urbanized-area and Albany Urbanized-area), are far closer in many ways then a single county (Albany County’s Urban Sphere of Influence versus those areas in extreme western-portion of Albany County outside of Urban Sphere of Influence).

Urban areas really like their new found power since the awful 1964 ruling in Reynolds vs Simms, that mandated both houses of a legislature be equally proportioned, and banned the upper house (ie. Senate) from being based on geography, giving rural areas limited voice in the process. Urban and more liberal constituencies are unlikely to give up their dominance in the process, or allow more rural areas to have sovereignty, because it’s fun to boss around people you disagree with.

While maybe politically impractical, giving urban and rural areas complete sovereignty in their own matters would solve a lot of problems, and create policies more appropriate for their constituencies.

They probably are out to get you. 🚔

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One of my friends was posting Facebook about their relatives who lives on a farm with lots of guns in Oregon worried that the Joe Biden administration was out to get him. Ask the anti-war protestors, immigrants or people of the Islamic faith, and they are likely share their fate in a recent era of the previous administrations — targets of political oppression.

Power can be devious thing. Very few politicians go around, rounding up their enemies, putting them in jail in mass. Instead, they use existing powers to punish those of the other party or ideology through what they claim is a campaign to make society safer, more moral or just. Politicians seek to enact new laws and aggressively use police powers against people who they don’t like. Who gets investigated and punished? Those out of power!

The central truth of political power, is that people seek political power to bully and harm others – namely minorities of all types that are out of power. While wrapped in the flag, patriotism, and doing the moral and just cause, most legislation is about praying on others for political gain. We must defeat the enemy, cheers the politician! While others have a more a positive view of politics, often wrapped in ideology, politics is mostly zero-sum game, where any political gain on one side is a loss for the other side. And usually, the looser aren’t the political class.

What is the solution? Competitive elections and a denouncing of politicians who engage in bullying by defending civil rights. The former President Trump was clearly labeled as a bully and evil, but many on the left engage and embrace many of his tactics. While President Biden hasn’t been as much as a bully so far, we should be watching him, and the Republicans should hold him accountable, denying them votes when he hurts the conservative communities they represent. Likewise, when Republicans take back the White House in future years, Democrats must be a guardians of our freedom. Grid lock is often best for protecting the minority rights, especially it means not taking steps backwards.

Thematic Map: US 9 Suffixes

The Iran War Is Taking the Color Out of Japan’s Best-Known Snack Bags – The New York Times

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The Iran War Is Taking the Color Out of Japan’s Best-Known Snack Bags – The New York Times

The Iran war has wreaked havoc on global supply chains, caused a spike in oil prices and scrambled international trade.

Now it is coming for potato chips.

The Japanese food giant Calbee said on Tuesday that it would temporarily abandon its brightly colored plastic snack bags in favor of black-and-white wrapping because of “instability affecting certain raw materials amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East.”

The company said in a statement that the measure was meant to “help maintain a stable supply of products,” adding that it would not affect the quality of the snacks.

Calbee is making the change because it is having trouble securing naphtha, a crude-oil derivative used in printing inks, a spokeswoman for the company confirmed by telephone.