Mohawk? Seems like some states would be more popular than others.

I would live in Biscayne. No worse than Florida I suppose.

Bryant

The Bitterroots are a large mountain range in Idaho. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitterroot_Range.

Mohawks were a dominant tribe in that area and have a river named after them. "Algonquian" would have been clumsy, and the confederacy spread further than "Mohawk."

Most names are arbitrary. This is one man's arbitrariness. No worse than a state named after a French king ("Louisiana&quot or a Catholic holiday (Florida)--pascua florida.

referring to Lake Superior, of course.

Interesting that this map slices the eastern part off from the rest of the UP... thus keeping alive within the state of Mackinac jokes about "Yoopers" and "trolls" (people who live under the bridge)...

why not Haudenosaunee or Iriquois?

If that "state" will incorporate more of what is now south Georgia, then call it Apalachee. The Apalachee Indians controlled much of that territory prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Once the Spanish began establishing missions and settlements, they called the North Florida are the Apalachee Province.

I wouldn't mind living in Apalachee. I currently live in Tallahassee, which some say was the Creek or Muskogean name for "old fields" because when they moved in to the area after the Apalachee were killed off or moved out, they found the abandoned farms of the Apalachee. Tallahassee, Apalachee would have a nice ring to it!

Here's my list and other changes if I ruled the US
1. Combine the Dakotas and allow 4 senators for 6 yrs then down to 2.
2. Split California into 2 states @ Kern, San Luis Obispo, San Bernardino counties southward.
3. Create the state of Columbia/Anacostia/Georgetown/etc. that covers the DC, Prince Georges, Montgomery Counties in Maryland, and independent cities of Arlington and Alexandria, counties of Fairfax, Loudon, and Stafford in Virginia.
4. Combine Wyoming and Montana and allow 4 senators for 6 yrs then down to 2.
5. Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Okaloosa Florida counties move to Alabama.
6. El Paso and Hudspeth counties Texas move to New Mexico and Mountain Time Zone.
7. Lake and Porter counties Indiana move to Illinois.
8. Place Alabama and Middle Tennessee in the Eastern Time Zone.
9. Separate New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County from the rest of New York for its own state.
10. Combine Massachusetts and Rhode Island and allow 4 senators for 6 yrs then down to 2.

into one and combining the Dakotas would rebalance the senate very nicely IMNSHO. The Republicans would complain, but they'd complain if we offered them a new rope to hang themselves with.

The office holders from the 12 states that would lose power, funding, representation.... would object just a tad.

Dividing the states up logically like that with major cities at the center would basically spell doom for gerrymandering which would likewise spell doom for the republicans in the House.

They would never let this happen. They would oppose along "patriotic lines" of not breaking up "the great state of whatever"! but it would be the gerrymandering they would be afraid of losing.

but his map doesn't really reflect the goal of evening things up.

Alaska has just over 700k people but gets split in two, San Gabriel already has LA and SD but goes out of its way to include Las Vegas, leaving Bonneville with just Salt Lake city as its population center. Alamo gets three very large cities when Dallas could easily be included in one of its three less populated neighbors. Dakotas/Montana/Idaho remain three low population states but that is hard to fix; not many people live there.

Take one of the least populous states and turn it into two? Imagine 4 Senators out of 76 from the land that gave us Ted Stevens and Sarah Palin...

There might be some logic to it, but it is not viable in the real world. The political fight would drain the country. It would have cost billions to implement in the 1970s. That is chickenfeed compared what it would cost to do today.

if we were designing the country from scratch, without our historical baggage, we'd probably go for federal administrative districts instead of states.

instead of states. I think the FF, got the states rights aspect correct. We could not be the United States of America with federal legislative districts.

while bringing uniformity where it makes sense. marriage & divorce laws is a good example where it doesn't really make much sense to have such things vary from state to state. much of criminal law as well. why should the age of consent vary by state, etc.?

but other things, such as tax structures and public investments and such could vary by district.


as for the founders "getting it right" re: states rights -- arguably (1) they had little choice in the matter as the country was founded from representatives from the 13 colonies whose powers predated the country's founding and (2) states rights has been perhaps the single most damaging aspect of our country's structure, slavery and the civil war being merely one aspect of this.

but slavery was defeated.

The constutution enumerates specific powers to the federal government. The rest is state's rights. I realize it was done that way to get all of the colonies to sign on, but I believe the federal government has enough power the way it is. We don't need to homonogize the states. Celebrate diversity.

Dallas, Houston and San Antonio all remain in the same state; so do Los Angeles and San Diego; New York takes in a lot of New Jersey and Connecticut, so it becomes a really large city.

or new york city, which spills over into new jersey and connecticut.

if you're going to have the same number of cities in a smaller number of states, you're going to be doubling up somewhere.

Maybe not the specifics, but the general idea.
In fact, I think it's time to do this to the entire world.
Most conflicts are because one group of people want to control the resources that another group of people is sitting on top of. We need more self-determination, and chopping the world up into smaller pieces might just do that.

I don't think the idea is very good though. I like the names. I'm going to have to go look at a map now and see what feature some of them were named after.

Will never happen.

I can see with the others, as all are a blend of old state boundaries. But Hawaii would be the only state that didn't have its territory change. So why change the name?

And undo the wrong of 1895.

I wonder what a map based on the same concept would look like now.

Of coarse, this sort of change will never happen. State governments will never be open to the idea of their own dissolution.

24 Senators would lose their jobs if we had 12 fewer states.

Not gonna get many votes for that.

Split each state in half, double the senators.

Split each congressional district in half - double the congress critters.

More representation is always better.

100 states, 970 districts.

Then we Dems get to work on a 100 state plan and get Dems elected in all the poorly populated states so we can control the senate better.

At least we should double the districts. That would be one Rep for every 350,000 people. Wow.

Senators, and it would still be unfair to California.