A week after the 2012 presidential election I stumbled across this story: ‘We the People’ Petitions Filed in Nineteen States Seeking Permission to Secede from the Union.

Neetzan Zimmerman, who reported the story for the Gawker website, counted “at least nineteen” secession petitions that have been filed. There are actually petitions from people in 28 states (as of this moment, it changes) requesting the Obama Administration to “Peacefully grant the State of [fill in the blank] to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government” that are currently posted on the official White House petition website. All of the secession petitions were filed or posted after Election Day, November 6, 2012, with Louisiana first off the mark on November 7. Most were filed Saturday, November 10, 2012, with a few a day later.

Some of the states – Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Missouri (which has two competing petitions, as do Georgia and South Carolina), Arizona, Tennessee, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Mississippi – you could pick off either the Red-Romney-Ryan (RRR) state electoral map (minus blue Florida), or a map of the late Southern Confederacy. (Although Virginia once led the seceding states in the late War of Northern Aggression, it was a blue state last week and had no petition for secession filed as of Monday night).

But Michigan? Well, Michigan (a blue state in the election), with its state-imposed corporate control of towns and cities ruled bankrupt by those who wish to buy, sell, or otherwise convert municipal assets to their own corporate uses and/or abrogate union contracts, might be considered a special case, seeking to keep the fascist* power structure it has built.

(*”Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” ~ Benito Mussolini, who, after all, would have known. See also the rest of the article here, and of course Wikipedia.)

After the jump, the rest of the new secessionist states, and petitioning to secede.

Then there are the other wannabe-runaway residents of states not associated with the last major (not so peaceful) attempt at secession: Delaware (blue), Pennsylvania (blue), New Jersey (blue), New York (blue) and Ohio (blue); California, Oregon, and Colorado (all blue); North Dakota (red), Montana (red), Indiana (red), and Nevada (blue).

The petition website is based on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Any petition (and other issues are represented, such as legalizing and taxing marijuana, signing an executive order along the lines of ENDA, and establishing a nationwide standard for Congressional redistricting, among others), filed on this official whitehouse.gov website, that attains 25,000 signatures within 30 days will get an official response from the Obama Administration. Texas is already there with over 48,000 signatures. Louisiana may get there before the end of the week (23,118 signatures as of Monday night).

Wow. This movement suggests a major tantrum by the disappointed RRRs. They didn’t win, so they’re going to try to run away, taking their states with them.

So, the question is: Shall we selectively encourage the red-beat, deadbeat states by adding our signatures to their petitions? Or take a moral stand for the 50 state union (or 51 if Puerto Rico makes it in, 52 if DC could get the vote)?

Or imagine what the President’s answer might be;

Dear Mostly Red States,

First, you all know that many of you tried this secession thing before, and it wasn’t very successful: a lot of people died, it set back economic development in the seceding states for generations, and, some might say, the hard feelings even now haven’t been resolved.

Second, it is not in the power of the President to grant or deny membership in the United States of America. If it were, we might someday become the Untied States of America. If we ran the country like a business, we would have had to let you go a long time ago as an economic drag on USA, Inc.

Third, I campaigned on the idea that we’re all in this together, red state, blue state, purple state, rainbow states, all states. Without you, we wouldn’t have any place to dispose of our unexpended tax revenues. Without us, you wouldn’t have any tax revenues to dispense. We are all in this together.

Now, I’m a parent of two spirited and sometimes rambunctious children. Aaannd I understand that you all need a little time-out to think this through. So, you may go to your rooms and think about our connections as a people, a nation, together. You can c’mon out on January 21, 2013 if you’re ready to behave yourselves and get along with your brother and sister states.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

President of the United States of America