The big cities in many states, like MN and IL, influence the rural areas by dominating the politics of the whole state. Folks around here are pretty conservative. The laws of the state are way more liberal than they want. At least we haven't gone gun control crazy but I expect that's coming.

The land prices here are inflated because city people are buying it up for hunting land or places to retire. Then you have to watch out that they don't try to turn the country into some version of the city.

I live within a tank of gas of the big city. When TSHTF I expect to be inundated by unprepared city people.I keep the guns loaded.

 

On first blush I was going to say No, but I live in a resort area. All the flatlanders come to the cool country for the summer. Lots of summer homes. I only go into town on Tuesdays and if I have to again the latest is Thursday night. Hate to food shop as we only have Safeway (the first stop going into town) & Walmart further up the mountain. They're really busy from Friday on..

One main thing those letter writing part-timers did was to get the city to remove the radar speed traps - now we have cops sitting behind trees etc. all over.

To get onto the main road from where is live is pretty bad also from Fri thru Sunday.

Winter, with the skiing, is not half as bad.

As far as big cities influencing where I live, not so much. This is a very poor, but independent county and Phoenix (Maricopa County) has enough to worry about. When the coal plants close and Phoenix can't find water (I sit on the largest aquifir in AZ), then maybe we'll have issues but not for a while.

All said & done, I love where I live (yes I know I'm moving- but that's to be with family) and it is a small price to pay.

 

As Nimrod pointed out big cities tend to slant politics. You wind up with state wide laws which work ok for cities but cause all kinds of problems in rural areas. In cities people are living cheek to cheek so they need a LOT of rules to 'protect' them from their neighbor's actions. In rural areas very little of what you do will have any effect on your neighbor.

Example if a storm comes through and the wind blows your prebuilt 8' X 8' shed over there's good chance its going to damage something of your neighbors. Therefore a rule requiring some type of anchor system makes sense. But out in the boonies that shed could tumble for a mile and never even reach your neighbor's property so the same rule just makes having a shed cost more.

Similar thing with firearms.

 

Not sure if it's still this way, but for years the fees we paid to the BMV for our license plates went to pay for road upkeep. Funny thing about that, the state only counts the cars in their formula for dispersing the highway/road monies back to the counties.
Don't count the pickups and trucks. Therefore the cities rake in the road money and the rural counties.....well, we're familiar with the short end of the stick.

 

You can add Washington to the list. Eastern Washington, which is darned near the whole state geographically, is a political appendage to Seattle, which is dominated by so-called "progressives." Here on the east side, we ignore most of their dictates, and since they wouldn't be caught dead more than an hour's drive from a Starbuck's, nobody's the wiser.

 

I live near the Oregon border and the wonderful people who live in Los Angeles and San Diego have decided they should have swimming pools more than I should have salmon. They compete in stealing my water with Hollywood elitists who spray our water on their Napa valley grapes all day. My salmon rivers are almost empty right now in the middle of the spawn. Also, because they like to be touchy feely on crime and rehabilitate those nice gang members with the face tattoos, I get to have horrible firearms restrictions. Don't get me started on tax and spend welfare or social programs.

Where I live is about as rural as it gets. I have deer, elk, and bear in my neighborhood far more often than the UPS dude. We have big city problems in a little town. I am moving to northern Arkansas ASAP.

 

That is definitely the case with Delaware, Wilmington runs the state. Our county is more rural, except the resort area at the beach. Very conservative, but you wouldn't know it by the way the state is run. I wish we could get together with the eastern shore of Maryland and form a new state. Western Maryland has been talking about doing just that.

 

Ok here we have so many visit from Kansas City and St. Louis, they come in thinking all should be this way. Most time we tell them this is the way it's done. If at all possible they will try to get it change to theirs ways.

My Mom had Saw Mill in her back yard for years. People moved from the City had them shut down because of noise and put bunch of people out of work :grumble:

Where I live now I can shoot Firearms I do often just watch where I'm shooting I'm sure on weekends during the Summer I make people in the Camp Ground next to me very nervous.

We had Outhouse and no running water, woman at Courthouse asked if we knew it was illegal? Nope. Well if no one complains nothing will be done. Told her as far back as we were it was doubtful anyone would complain.

big rockpile

 

Missouri is lucky, the rural folks can usually out vote the cities, but it is a slim margin. St. Louis has been loosing population for a long time, and Missouri is moving in the right direction generally. I meet a lot of rural people from IL, and most are not happy with the way their state has went. Democracy doesn't work well when city people can control the land and laws of a completely different breed of people.

The city people would never agree to giving up their power, but it would be nice to limit their influence to the city limits.

 

Missouri is lucky, the rural folks can usually out vote the cities, but it is a slim margin. St. Louis has been loosing population for a long time, and Missouri is moving in the right direction generally. I meet a lot of rural people from IL, and most are not happy with the way their state has went. Democracy doesn't work well when city people can control the land and laws of a completely different breed of people.

The city people would never agree to giving up their power, but it would be nice to limit their influence to the city limits.

Even with Missouri being mainly rural, the St Louis and Kansas City state representatives still keep proposing wildly progressive statutes. They never go anywhere, but sure make for big headlines.

The fastest way to get elected around here is to declare yourself a "Constitutional Conservative".

 

Today is my special day (Labor Day). I sit out in the yard and watch the annual parade of boats and fancy cars leaving for Chicago. In a couple of weeks, the lake will be peaceful and quiet--time to do some fishing, pontoon boating, and simply gazing out on the quiet waters, now abandoned by the city folks from Illinois. Some local people refer to them as FIP's, but you have to be careful to whom you say it, since many now local people are descendants of FIP's or are cousins, or in-laws, or such. This county in SW Michigan has 113 named lakes, and many other pothole lakes that aren't named, so that is a huge attraction for the people from Chicago, which is just 2 1/2 hours away, by Interstate 94, at 85 MPH.

They come just after Easter to check out their summer homes, then by Memorial Day they come, like locusts, in shiny clean cars, muscling their way around town, in the restaurants, in the boutiques and antique shops, and in the farmers' markets seeking their own brand of entertainment and relaxation, Chicago style. They look down upon the locals as "quaint" They also contact Tru-Green to make sure their lawns have been sprayed and fertilized correctly. They seem to always be in a hurry, talk loud, and wear trendy clothing. Whenever a new family buys property on the lake, they try to make it pristine, suburban clean,. and they have led numerous rallies to start weed control projects on the water, or to eliminate water speed limits that were imposed back in the sixties. They spend all their time at the water's edge or on the water itself, not seeming able to grasp the idea of water, versus concrete. One family down the road spent four summers, all of them just standing and gazing out at the water from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, every weekend , like mear cats....... FIP's. They don't know or care that I have a huge garden out back, I gather and cut my fireplace wood, or that I seriously use my Cub for lot of things. They would object, though, if I had chickens, or a pig.....

Yes, they influence our way of life here in SW Michigan. But we get them back. They buy our beer and expensive groceries in our stores, they eat in our restaurants, they buy our gas for their big cars and fancy boats, and they contract with our folks for plumbing, and electrical, and other maintenance things. We also charge them a higher tax rate for their overdone cottages and summer homes since those are second homes and don't qualify for homestead exemptions. And best of all, they'll be gone tomorrow for another eight months......

geo

 

Here in Colorado we have gone from a center-right state to a progressive left state in the matter of 10 years. A combination of out of state population imports from left leaning places and a powerful gaggle of three billionaires with bottomless political action committees and money have really changed the tenor of the state. The politics of the state is pretty much the front range cities verses the rest of us. In fact, last election a number of counties, including mine, voted (symbolically) to leave the state and form a new state. It is that bad. These folks in the cities are imposing their will on the rest of the state without thought or much debate. From gun control to frac'ing bans. The list is long and will get longer as they consolidate even more power. So yes, they have a tremendous effect on how we live in the rural areas of the state.......and what makes it so awful is they don't even know or care how their mandate impact us. I'm afraid it is going to have to break before it gets fixed. Colorado 180....... The USA 180.

 

Three words......rain/flush tax.

 

New York city is at the complete other end of the state but they can out vote the rest of the state, why do you think we have Schumer, or had Clinton?

On a more personal note, when I was a child it was farm land as far as you could see, Then the main road, got fast food places, a mall (which is now gone) got grocery stores, department stores, then housing developments, regular and low cost. Now a super walmart. The city came to us. The city did urban renewal, and many businesses came out to the town to avoid the disruption. So now we are within a mile of just about any store we would need. Wish it was like it was when I was a kid.

 

American Stand, you must not be too far from me. When we travel and say we are from Illinois, everyone assumes Chicago. Does the rest of the US not know there is much more to Illinois than that? We did have one cabbie in NYC that said "Ah, so you live on a farm!" We see many many tourists in our local state parks. One small town that was a dirt town when I was a kid is making it big on tourism now. We also see much drug traffic from the city. Many of the younger set (late teens and twenties) come to our parks to do things that are illegal. Many many drug and alcohol busts in the parks and 9 times out of 10, they are city or suburban kids. Usually when park service has to haul someone out of the river or off a cliff on a stretcher, they are also city/suburban kids and adults. Most are ticketed with being in a restricted area. Do they think the rules only apply to us hicks? Sorry to say but we know better than to swim in a flooded river and to try to walk on sandstone bluffs.

 

Making the mountain lion a protected species rarely effects those in down town San Francisco but is a real pain for those who actually have to live with them.

 

We have the same problems here in Maryland. We have 23 counties and the city of Baltimore in the state. 20 of the 23 counties vote conservative but because of Baltimore City, Baltimore county and two counties around D.C. we always get out voted. That's why it appears that Maryland is a very liberal state but in reality it's the big city areas that override all 20 of our conservative counties. As someone earlier mentioned there is a drive to have western Maryland become a separete state so we can control our own fates. My county would be one of them in the new state of Western Maryland but I think I'll have moved out before that happens, if we're ALLOWED to separate.

 

Unfortunately the city folk think they have the right to control everything. They have the voting power because there are more of them so the abuse other people by taking control of our local water, land, schools, etc. It is simple bullying. They have the power and they abuse it.

Of course, not all city people are like that - but enough are that they do it. They don't see it that way though. They see our resources as theirs.

 

As someone earlier mentioned there is a drive to have western Maryland become a separete state so we can control our own fates. My county would be one of them in the new state of Western Maryland but I think I'll have moved out before that happens, if we're ALLOWED to separate.

I've read that it would be better for us to join WV or Pa, than try to form a new state. Much less restrictions to the process. Also read on some forums that a few people talked to WV reps. and they would welcome us with open arms FWIW.

 

NYC does cause some issues for the rest of the state. Not so much for us, except for the elections, like BlackFeather said. Our immediate area is mostly hunting camps, and yes, many of the owners are people from NYC or NJ. We have not had any problems with them and I have no complaints. Our taxes are very low for NY because of the area we are in, and nobody seems to pay much attention to our little homestead. I try to keep it that way.

 

NYC does cause some issues for the rest of the state. Not so much for us, except for the elections, like BlackFeather said. Our immediate area is mostly hunting camps, and yes, many of the owners are people from NYC or NJ. We have not had any problems with them and I have no complaints. Our taxes are very low for NY because of the area we are in, and nobody seems to pay much attention to our little homestead. I try to keep it that way.

That was my philosophy too except substitute pot for hunting. But first the feds came knocking with DOJ issues and the EPA issues then the State took away local revenues while dumping responsibilities locally. The resulting mess has eaten away at local autonomy while taking ever more money away only to return it with restrictive grants.

Now the drought has the feds and the state fighting over our rivers. I swear if we did not have local indian tribes to protest, LA and sacrameno would take all the water.

 

Where the big voting blocks are is where the control is. I think that is everywhere.
Not all cities are liberal. In Arizona the State is still run by the good ole boys that are Conservative. Tucson is very liberal compared to most of the rest of the State. Phoenix Metro area is a pretty conservative city compared to most cities its size. 5,000,000 people.

You can add Nevada to the list. Liberal Las Vegas runs the State entirely. Las Vegas has NOTHING in common with the rest of the State except gaming.

 

So far so good in TX. Dallas is very lib/D & so is Houston, Austin is off the charts! The rest of us still outnumber them, tho, but there is a pretty big push this election to turn us blue. Not gonna happen. Wendy Davis, running for Gov, is waaaay too 'out there' for TX. Her supporters chanted "hail satan" in the Capitol.

 

"Open arms" is when you're reloading.