Seattle to Secede? "The City and County of Seattle"

Over lunch this last Thursday, Mayor Greg Nickels proposes Seattle secede from the Union, because he's unhappy he's not getting a large enough ration of boondoggles and nannyism from a state government with both houses of the legislature and the Governors chair all held by tax and spend Democrats, and the Fed's aren't making up the difference. Not satisfied with ruling merely Seattle, though, he proposes taking the entire region (probably King/Pierce/Snohomish counties) into his little nanny-state fiefdom of ecotopic bliss.

Goodness.

From the Union might be a bit much, and a regional gambit a bit overzealous, but...in a more limited sense, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Perhaps Seattle needs precisely what Nickels proposes - to be isolated in its' own little economic and ecological paradise where they can't bother the rest of us with their odd notions. I'd suggest stealing a somewhat modified page from San Francisco's handbook and re-chartering the City and County of Seattle as a wholly self-contained administrative district that within the bounds of the Federal and State Constitutions elects its own officials, taxes itself, and receives neither funds nor a voice at the state level, its' former state legislatures relegated to City Council membership.

Granted, I do favor a rather broad definition of civil rights and Seattle has, in fact, been the ramrod for that across the state. However, Seattle has also grown a positively strange liberal cult that seems to operate on "mother knows best" with a hearty helping of contemptuous paternalism towards both its' own citizens generally, and the poor benighted souls outside of city limits with especial vigor.

Let Seattle set its own course as a trade off for butting out of the rest of the state. For once, Nickels may not be entirely clueless. Good riddance.