A friend sent me this.

Venting Nickels suggests secession
Frustrated by the state and federal gridlock on solving Seattle's transportation problems, Mayor Greg Nickels suggested secession at a Thursday luncheon.

While all said tongue-in-cheek, my reply was, “our taxes would go down for awhile.” My friend replied that Eastern Washington would get crappy roads for a long while and Western Washington would get a power cost spike. This is largely true. Maybe we should re-build some nuclear power plants. The ones we scrapped in the 70's and 80’s, today would appear cheap and profitable had we kept them; hindsight and all that. I am not sure how that would help the roads in Eastern Washington. Of course, if there was a secession, Eastern Washington could charge a tariff.