Hyperbole survey

I ran across this UPI report about forward thinking in Oregon. The eventual switch to more fuel efficient vehicles is bad news for a state that gets income based on taxing the sale of gas by the gallon, and so there is a test under way to examine the feasibility of taxing resident by the mile driven in the state, using GPS units on cars to determine how many miles were driven in the state. Apart from wondering if the money spent to run such a system would be worth it, this did seem to raise some red flags about the civil liberties issues. Also, the phrase "People's Republic of Oregon" came to mind. But then, I became interested in where I had actually heard this phrase.

I decided to do some rough research into this, using Google. The phrase "the People's Republic of" returns about 13.1 million hits, the vast majority of which (11.2 million) not surprisingly refer to the People's Republic of China. I expanded my research to use this as a measure of a certain type of displeasure with a given state government, and therefore Googled "the People's Republic of ______" for each state. My results:

1. (tie) 0 hits--Mississippi and West Virginia
3. (tie) 2 hits--Kentucky, Nevada, and South Dakota
6. (tie) 3 hits--Arkansas, Missouri, and Montana
9. (tie) 4 hits--Tennessee and Wyoming
11. (tie) 10 hits--Indiana and Oklahoma
13. 11 hits--Idaho
14. 15 hits--New Hampshire
15. 23 hits--Delaware
16. (tie) 24 hits--Louisiana and North Dakota
18. (tie) 32 hits--Arizona and Nebraska
20. 38 hits--Alabama
21. 39 hits--Rhode Island
22. (tie) 42 hits--Iowa and Utah
24. 46 hits--Alaska
25. 50 hits--Georgia
26. 71 hits--Colorado
27. 75 hits--North Carolina
28. 83 hits--Connecticut
29. 110 hits--Maine
30. 114 hits--Wisconsin
31. 136 hits--New Mexico
32. 142 hits--Florida
33. (tie) 148 hits--Kansas and Michigan
35. 154 hits--Ohio
36. 185 hits--Hawai`i
37. 222 hits--Washington
38. 260 hits--Texas
39. 345 hits--New York
40. 434 hits--Minnesota
41. 492 hits--Pennsylvania
42. 568 hits--Vermont
43. 717 hits--South Carolina
44. 1060 hits--Oregon
45. 1080 hits--Illinois
46. 1090 hits--Virginia
47. 1160 hits--New Jersey
48. 1820 hits--Maryland
49. 17,900 hits--California
50. 23,900 hits--Massachusetts

So, Oregon is near, but not at, the bottom of my approximate survey of internet hyperbole.