I love Freerepublic but the state I live in is not impotent. It is a tyrannical state in which citizens are treated as serfs.
At this point in time, I would much rather the feds had more power than the hideous bureaucracy of NYS.
Do not feel that you are alone or that other states are not just as tyrannical as yours. Back in the eighties and early nineties, Democrats used their control of Congress to pass a suggested "Uniform Commercial Code" and "Model Cities Program". This provided federal carrots and sticks to states and cities that adopted sufficient quantities of these drafted "codes" effectively trapping almost all of We the people inside layers of boxes that include Federal laws and regulations, state laws and regulations and local government codes and regulations. This provided Democrats with a measure of security that We would be boxed in by our own Constitution under state and local law, even if a conservative Court threw out some of the federal provisions. We suffered and immense loss of freedom through those programs. Getting the Federal bear off our backs still must be the first step toward recovering many of our lost freedoms. Once the bear is caged, we can turn our attention to state and local governments, but I must warn you, unless we use the Great Debate to learn how to change the hearts and minds of the American people, changing state and local governments will take longer and may entail simply waiting for competition to teach state and local governments what works and what doesn't.
The Founders thought each state would be in competition with every other state. The "free market" in government would discipline states and show them which techniques lead to progress and which ones take their states backward. There are a lot of variables here and I don't want to get to far into the future. For the time being, we will do well to focus on reining in the Fed. Let's see if we can learn to walk before trying to tackle the state capitals.