Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Long Island: Oh Yes There Is

The Daily Show has some amiable good fun with the idea of turning Long Island into the 51st State. AboveTheLaw says there is no good argument against it.
Oh yes there is, and the funny lady from the Daily Show puts her finger on it: more jobs for the boys. Once some tinhorn zoning commissioner from Lower Fuddlestead gets it into his noggin that he might actually have a shot at being a senator someday (and get to wear a toga?) then it's off to the races.

The Europeans have seen this phenomenon a lot over the last generation, at both ends of the telescope. One the one hand we have the vast bloatware of the European Union, aka "Brussels"--that great nameless, faceless nobody that seems to do so little besides providing makework employment for the otherwise unemployeable. At the other, we have "devolution," which seems to me that (say) a Scot now has to cope with both Edinburgh and London instead of taking on just one alone.

We have this horseplay in the United States at recurrent intervals: the Long Island spasm seems to be just an aftershock from some loose talk in Texas. Here in California, ever few years somebody resurrects the chestnut about splitting LA from San Francisco (though these days they would do better to split east and west--the jewelled coast from Californie Profonde). Me, I think we'd do fasr better to start joining some states together. I mean, Senator Dorgan, what earthly purpose is there for North Dakota anyway?

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