I Want to Literally Change the Country

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Friday December 22, 2006 · 10:18 AM PST

2006/12/22 · 10:18

It is a quiet, boring Friday afternoon, and I was just reading about a recent effort in Washington State to create the 51st State of Cascadia. And I thought to myself, this just might be a good diary topic.

For whenever I post those Roll Call diaries and include a poll that divides the country into many different regions, there is always complaints that I lumped one state into a false region. For example, the good citizens of New Jersey. They are torn. The northern residents align themselves with New York. The southern residents align themselves with Philadelphia and Delaware. Philadelphia and Delaware are in the Mid-Atlantic region of this country. New York is in the Northeast. So where do I put New Jersey?

Similarly, the residents of Seattle and the residents of Spokane have little in common except that they share a state. The residents of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia are the same. Pittsburgh has more in common with West Virginia than the urban culture of Philadelphia.

And why do we need two Dakotas? Surely one is enough! The same goes with the Carolinas. Do we really need two redneck states?

Further, the only way you can explain Maryland's boundries is that Lord Baltimore got really drunk.

So I have some modest proposals on reorganizing our respective states so that it makes sense. Here is a map of my New America...

First, in the east, I have made the following changes:

State of Carolina. We don't need two.
State of Columbia. This state is basically the remnants of Maryland, the District of Columbia and Southern Delaware. The Maryland Panhandle, Cecil County, MD, and New Castle County, DE have all left.
State of Appalachia. This is Western PA and West Virginia.
State of Atlantic (or some other name).. This is Eastern and Northeastern PA, Southern New Jersey, Cecil County, MD and New Castle County, Delaware. This region mainly calls itself the Delaware Valley, although there is the Lehigh Valley and the Pocono Mountains regions as well.
State of New York. Northern Jersey, Suburban NY state counties, Long Island, and NYC itself.
State of Catskill. The rest of New York.

Second, in the west...

State of Dakota. We don't need two.
State of Southern California. Los Angeles and San Diego and their surrounding communities and counties.
State of Northern California. San Francisco, Silicon Valley, wine country.
State of Jefferson. Northernmost California counties, southernmost Oregon counties. They have wanted to form their own state for a while now. Let them.
State of Cascadia. The mountainous eastern counties of Oregon, Washington state and the entire state of Idaho.
State of Oregon. The former Oregon territory comprised both Oregon and Washington, as well as Idaho. The Washington state name was just a creation. Time to do away with it. The new state of Oregon is the coastal cities of the former Washington and Oregon states. Seattle, Portland, Olympia, Tacoma, etc.

So, I have too much time on my hands, don't I?

UPDATE:

With all of your suggestions, here is the new map:

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