Joe Biden, President of the United States of America vol. V

Look, we don't necessarily have to scrap the whole idea of local municipalities. If we want to get serious about reform, let's just start by slashing the bloated payrolls within them.
Honestly, though, those local offices aren't even the biggest headache—it's all these manufactured agencies and "specialty centers" popping up everywhere. Even just looking around my own neck of the woods—back where I grew up near a place like Little Rock—you see these ridiculous, made-up entities everywhere. We've got "competency centers," "agricultural clusters," "innovation hubs," you name it. It’s all just jargon. Where are the actual people doing real work? Because from what I see, it's just a bunch of folks sitting on fat salaries and cruising around in government-issued SUVs while doing absolutely nothing at all.

Having five different regions in a small, uniform country like the United States just doesn't make sense. It never will.

A few people pushing for quasi-autonomy might still be chasing that nonsense, but for 99% of the population, it’s a total non-starter.

which is exactly why having 50 states makes sense

I honestly have no clue where he even got that idea, but he’s absolutely hitting the nail on the head.

To anyone out there thinking otherwise: just try sitting down here on this forum and attempting to divide the country into five separate regions. Go ahead, try it! Then come back and tell me we wouldn't see massive civil unrest or perhaps even some pretty serious protests breaking out.

Of course, people are always going to find something to complain about—it’s practically a national pastime, isn't it?
But look, if the current system is broken, inefficient, and just plain dragging us down, then we really don't have much of a choice: we have to change it.

vividraven79 said:which is exactly why having 50 states makes sense

Like, maybe 11 or 12 counties plus Washington, D.C.

Check out how many counties we had back in 1882.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_counties

Richard Wilson4 said:Having five different regions in a small, uniform country like the United States just doesn't make sense. It never will.

A few people pushing for quasi-autonomy might still be chasing that nonsense, but for 99% of the population, it’s a total non-starter.

It doesn't even have to be five massive regions; let's just call them five counties to avoid triggering those hysterics who see the ghost of the Soviet Union lurking in every corner and think they've found a magic solution.

If you ask me, we should probably start at the bottom—consolidating municipalities and cities, teaching them a lesson, and merging any that aren't self-sufficient into their neighbors.

Joe commented on Paul and Hillary regarding the Russians.
I can already see the forum trolls lining up to tell us we just don't "get it"—claiming he’s some kind of Russian sympathizer just trying to deflect from his own mess. 👍

He claimed he’s never had any business ties to the Russians. “My predecessor handed Putin a national team jersey back in 2018. I’ve never said a single nice thing about him. So why is everyone acting shocked about business dealings with Russia now? The people currently in power will never learn as much as I have by forgetting all about this issue,” he said, while adding that he’d only met Paul Vujnovac once.

“Let’s get back to Mr. Vujnovac and his Democratic Party. This was clearly an incredibly lucrative business setup—he stepped in where a German firm would have been, likely with Moscow’s blessing, and he’s raking in massive amounts of money from it, which he does pay taxes on. It’s a huge sum, sure, but it’s not the kind of cash that lets you run the United States,” Milanović remarked.

Once again, he’s shown exactly how shallow and clueless he can be whenever he opens his mouth to comment on anything. Just look at how the United States breaks down its regions here:

https://development.gov.us/about-department/us-nuts-2/150

At the end of the day, people make their own calls on things, whether it's just family business, neighborhood stuff, city matters, state issues, or even big-picture global decisions through the UN.

It all comes down to what actually works at a given level, though sometimes politics just gets in the way of everything else...

What the hell does statistical classification have to do with how we divide up administrative districts? 🤦

If my memory serves me right, this whole regional breakdown was cooked up just to bleed the European Union dry.
The situation in the Mediterranean region is going to be the biggest mess, mostly because there isn't a shred of logical connection between California and Key West.
The Midwest division is equally nonsensical, stretching all the way from St. Louis to the Appalachian Mountains.
And naturally, Washington, D.C. has been isolated from its own surrounding area once again; apparently, Washington, D.C. isn't allowed to have any influence, and instead, they feel the need to punish the city simply for having the audacity to exist.

Richard Wilson4 said:Having five different regions in a small, uniform country like the United States just doesn't make sense. It never will.

A few people pushing for quasi-autonomy might still be chasing that nonsense, but for 99% of the population, it’s a total non-starter.

Decentralization in the sense of giving local government more power? No thanks.

Cutting down their numbers—and I mean using an axe rather than a scalpel if necessary—now we're talking.

P.S. The United States of America is one of the few countries in Middle Europe that actually ended up with more local government units after socialism than during the socialist era. That’s the kind of "class struggle" the Republican Party handed us.

Ronald Chavez2 said:It doesn't even have to be five massive regions; let's just call them five counties to avoid triggering those hysterics who see the ghost of the Soviet Union lurking in every corner and think they've found a magic solution.

If you ask me, we should probably start at the bottom—consolidating municipalities and cities, teaching them a lesson, and merging any that aren't self-sufficient into their neighbors.

We're talking about chunks of land about 4,000 square miles each.

That's not a region, that's an entire state.

No thanks. Not now, not ever.

Good God, what kind of nations are we dealing with here?

And this is happening in one of the most ethnically uniform countries in Europe, where separatist issues were supposedly settled back in the nineties.

Richard Wilson4 said:We're talking about chunks of land about 4,000 square miles each.

That's not a region, that's an entire state.

No thanks. Not now, not ever.

Look at Poland—a textbook unitary state. They have ten times the population of the United States of America, yet they only have 16 voivodeships, which is actually fewer than our own counties.

The United States of America has this absolutely insane system of local government units that honestly reminds me of the USSR—where every single tiny hamlet was its own autonomous district, province, or whatever you want to call it, all just to serve as a tool for the party to get its way.

Timothy Stewart4 said:Look at Poland—a textbook unitary state. They have ten times the population of the United States of America, yet they only have 16 voivodeships, which is actually fewer than our own counties.

The United States of America has this absolutely insane system of local government units that honestly reminds me of the USSR—where every single tiny hamlet was its own autonomous district, province, or whatever you want to call it, all just to serve as a tool for the party to get its way.

Just consolidate all those cities and towns down to about 100 total then.

But having five republics in a country that only managed to pull its territory together back in 1998? Yeah, not gonna happen. Not in a million years.

Richard Wilson4 said:Just consolidate all those cities and towns down to about 100 total then.

But having five republics in a country that only managed to pull its territory together back in 1998? Yeah, not gonna happen. Not in a million years.

What do you mean, "republics"? The United States of America isn't a federal state—and even if it were, just look at Austria—what exactly is the problem there?

Even five of them would be overkill. Honestly, let them slash the number—no mercy needed—and as far as I'm concerned, whatever's left can call itself counties.

Of course we need to cut down the number of municipalities and cities—it's common sense. And let's be real, the final count should definitely be lower than what we had back in 1990, not larger like it is now.

We could just set the number of counties to zero if we wanted to. All we really need are the municipalities and cities.

fadedgull6 said:I honestly have no clue where he even got that idea, but he’s absolutely hitting the nail on the head.

To anyone out there thinking otherwise: just try sitting down here on this forum and attempting to divide the country into five separate regions. Go ahead, try it! Then come back and tell me we wouldn't see massive civil unrest or perhaps even some pretty serious protests breaking out.

Would there be an uproar? Oh, absolutely. He’s right about that—anyone who gets targeted would start screaming.
But that doesn't mean we should just accept things staying exactly as they are.
Dealing with the agitators is actually pretty simple—if you don't want to deal with them, you don't have to. From now on, there’s no more government assistance; you fund yourselves, and then we can see how long you actually last.
Problem solved.

Even Emmanuel Macron faced pushback, and people are still up in arms over pension reforms, but it's stuff that simply has to happen if we want the system to stay sustainable.
That’s what real, high-quality politicians do—they make those unpopular calls because they’re necessary for the long-term health of the country and its systems.

It seems unlikely that California would ever agree to be grouped with Cleveland, much like how San Diego and Charleston wouldn't dream of being placed under Miami's jurisdiction.
Key West would find that even more difficult to swallow.

If we are talking about restructuring today's Orange County into a full-fledged region, then I suppose Iowa deserves that same kind of consideration.

In my humble opinion, Biden is actually making a fair point regarding these changes.