I Won’t Live to See it

I have long despised Carville’s 1992 comment about Pennsylvania. If Murrysville to Reading is Alabama then Ohio and Indiana are Alabama too.

I have pointed out earlier that rural Western Pennsylvania is much the same as the counties surrounding Allegheny (Pittsburgh), just not as populated. Fishing, hunting, the Steelers, a Catholic Church in most every town.

Pennsylvania is the City of Philadelphia and it’s suburban counties pretty much against everyone else.

I think one thing which could be done would be the adoption of confederal constitutions which provide for a few spare statewide institution but allow each component of the state to go its own way on all but a few matters of public policy. You could conjoin that to interstate compacts which provide for bi-state municipal corporations functioning under elected councils to exercise state government functions in a given part of the state or which assign state government functions in an area to a neighboring state in return for participation in state elections. In addition, you could erect standing partnerships between states which would allow them to jointly exercise certain functions (occupational licensing, components of higher education, Medicaid, &c). You don’t necessarily have to modify formal and historical state boundaries to have more sensible provincial government. In the northeast, you might have Greater Boston, Greater New York, Greater Philadelphia, and Greater Washington and allow the residue of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts to go their own way. California could be reconstituted as a confederation of Greater Los Angeles, the Bay Area, north, and south.

Eastern Colorado instead of the state being California East at present.

Hi, Pinky. I was using brevity. Some towns still have two Catholic churches. Few have three anymore. My mom’s hometown had four parishes. I am acutely aware of the Ukrainian, Byzantine and Maronite parishes that dot the map of Western Pennsylvania.
Northeast PA has a similar ethnic makeup.

The ethnic and religious makeup of Pennsylvania, especially the rural areas, distinguish PA from many other states. Stating that rural PA is the same as Alabama, a largely Protestant state with a significant African American population in its rural regions, was past ignorant. It was stupid, but Carville’s intelligence never impressed me.

I am all for separating Philly/Chicago/NYC/Portland into their own states.

How about, make Delaware part of Maryland, and combine Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts and rename them ‘New England’.
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Delaware’s population is about 55% greater Philadelphia, 45% Southern lite. Maryland and the District in sum are about 40% greater Washington, 30% greater Baltimore, and 30% Southern-lite. Virginia has a non-contiguous segment which actually is contiguous with Maryland’s Eastern Shore (population about 60,000). About 10% of New Jersey’s population consists of greater Atlantic City, the Pine Barrens, and the exurban, small town, and rural portions of the Shore and the Delaware Valley. You assemble greater Baltimore, the Southern portions of Maryland, the Southern portions of Delaware, and the Shore / Pine Barrens of New Jersey, you have an area of about 5.4 million. About 40% of the population is in greater Baltimore, about 10% in the tract development around six small cities. You can have a co-operative structure wherein the state universities medical centers, forensic pathology laboratories, and occupational licensing boards operate in common and the components otherwise go their own way. A similar architecture can be erected for New England less greater Boston.