California: Six Easy Pieces
[guest post by Dana]
UPDATE: The approval discussed in post took place in February of this year. However, because we discussed California yesterday and its abysmal budget, I wanted to remind readers, especially out of state ones, that there are pro-active measures, no matter how extreme, occurring. Not every Californian is content with the way things are being run here.
Californians are one step closer to the possibility of the state being divided into six separate states.
Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper got the go-ahead this week to collect signatures for his “Six Californias” plan, according to the California Secretary of State’s Office.
Draper needs more than 807,000 signatures of registered voters by July 18 to get his proposal on the November ballot.
According to Draper, California, with 38 million people, is too unwieldy to govern and properly represent all of its residents.
“Vast parts of our state are poorly served by a representative government dominated by a large number of elected representatives from a small part of our state, both geographically and economically,” the plan says.
Draper believes his “Six Californias” proposal will address the state’s troubled public schools and outdated and overmatched infrastructure systems.
Here is a map of the proposed six states:
*South California: San Diego and Orange counties
*West California: includes Los Angeles and Santa Barbara
*Central California: includes Bakersfield, Fresno and
Stockton
*Silicon Valley: includes San Francisco and San Jose
*North California: Sacramento area
*Jefferson: Redding and Eureka areas
There are political concerns, of course:
Brendan Nyhan, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, isn’t sold on the idea. “Splitting California into six states would raise all sorts of concerns about the partisan balance of the senate. I can’t imagine this would ever go anywhere” said Nyhan.
Nyhan says a plan like this would surface many issues. Things like water policy, agricultural policy, and even the electoral college would all change if this plan were to take action.
The plan aims to settle California’s financial issues after the separation of the states. If things can’t be resolved, each state would receive a portion of the state’s debts based on the newly created state’s population.
If the federal government approves creating six new states, “all tax collections and spending by the existing State of California would end, with its assets and liabilities divided among the new states,” Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in a statement on Tuesday.
That would leave decisions regarding taxes and public spending of the new states up to its elected leaders.
According to Kurt Bardella, president of public relations firm Endeavor Strategic Communications and former aide to Rep. Darrell Issa, it is unlikely the six state solution would occur. Not only would Congress have to approve the additional states, but also the addition of 10 senators.
The implications would have tremendous repercussions at every level of government, from Congress all the way down.
And here is a different map of the proposed six-state California:
–Dana
The names are stupid. As long as we are going to waste time on this fanciful idea, we might as well come up with some even more ridiculous names:
Jefferson — OK, this one we’ll keep. I’m always in favor of naming states after Founding Fathers (though I would prefer Hamilton or Adams)
North California — The State of Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald did die in California, after all, so this is in honor of his best-known work. Lots of Jay Gatsbys live in this part of the state, so I think it works.
Silicon Valley — The State of Clinton. Bill Clinton perfectly encapsulates this area; not ashamed to be filthy rich while still holding all of the requisite left-wing social views in the mistaken idea that this grants absolution.
Central California — The State of Ceres, named after the Roman Goddess of Agriculture. Sorry nk, I would try to name it Demeter, but I think a Latin name is more appropriate for the demography here.
West California — The State of Obama. Arrogant, narcissistic, whiny, petulant. Infinite potential, but too lazy and self-satisfied to get off it’s ass and accomplish anything of substance.
South California — The State of Reagan. Getting old, slightly out-of-touch. A past to be proud of but seems to be ignored in the present day and faces an uncertain future.
JVW (feb406) — 6/22/2014 @ 10:42 amHey! You tossed Marin County in with Sacramento> Why are you cursing us with those commie sobs?
papertiger (c2d6da) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:02 amJVW, great list.
Silicon Valley — The State of Clinton. Bill Clinton perfectly encapsulates this area; not ashamed to be filthy rich while still holding all of the requisite left-wing social views in the mistaken idea that this grants absolution.
Perfect. No self-awareness ever of their hypocrisy.
At this point, it’s an idea that will never come to fruition, however, what can be done in the immediate future to turn this clunker around? I have been listening to Neel Kashkari, who will be on the ballot running against Jerry Brown, and he sold me when he said the first thing he would do is stop the boondoggle bullet train to nowhere. And if possible, he would like to see those funds used to build desperately needed desalinization plants throughout the state. Jerry Brown’s legacy be damned. He’s a moderate who voted for Obama with squishy reasoning (I’ll find the quote…). . Jerry Brown would have to die three days prior to the election for Kashkari to have a remote chance of winning. And even then, Brown would likeley win.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:03 amWhen asked why he voted for Obama in 2008, Neel Kashkari stated, “When you’re in an issue as complicated as this (financial crisis), and you see someone speaking with great nuance, and one person understands that the economy is collapsing into the Great Depression, I cast my vote for Obama.”
Ugh. But I’ll take him if it’s between him or Jerry Brown, yet again…
Dana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:09 amwe might as well come up with some even more ridiculous names:
You left out one: If-It’s-Good-Enough-For-Mexico-It’s-Good-Enough-For-Us California.
Mark (246552) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:17 amYou keep the name California for central California. Silicon Valley you
all San Francisco, or smething to with the Bay. Or maybe you call it West California,, and West California you all Los Angeles. Or you call it south Calfornia and South California you al San Diego.
3 of those states have to be Republican, or maybe just two, given that it would give some Electoral votes to a Republican candidate for president.
Dems might possibly trade about 10 Electoral votes for 2 Senate seats.
(8-4 instead of 2-0 gives you a net gain of two. Probably you’d have to
Sammy Finkelman (107dde) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:39 amadmit DC too at the same time, so there might be more of a gain.)
the best argument for this plan is the status quo
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:52 amSammy points out the political apportionment rules that will prevent this from ever happening. Along with being forced to bring DC into the union, why wouldn’t other large states start demanding the same considerations that California is getting. If you live in upstate New York don’t you think you are kind of tired of your state’s politics being dominated by New York City and it’s suburbs? If you are in upstate Illinois aren’t you tired of a corrupt Democrat party run out of Chicago (though the GOP is scarcely better)? If you’re a liberal in Texas aren’t you scheming to carve out a version of the state runs south from El Paso and along Highway 190 to the eastern border? Why wouldn’t all of this come to fruition if California gets its way?
JVW (feb406) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:54 amThis would have to be approved by both houses of Congress, and there’s zero chance of the House approving it.
Steven Den Beste (99cfa1) — 6/22/2014 @ 12:11 pmSouth California — The Orange Curtain: Erected to keep the aging hippies, irredeemable leftists, self-anointed elites, unwashed, non-working ne’r-do-wells out with a well-guarded, fortified border on the northern, northwestern lines and a 200 foot tall/100 yard wide hyper-powerful hominid zapping force field on the southern border. Eastern (current Cali/AZ/NV) border guarded with Predator drones and Armed Robots Driving Super-charged Sand Buggies.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/22/2014 @ 12:25 pm8. We really would have 57 states, or 65.
Add 5 more for California.
DC
1 more for New York, or a few
Illinois?
Texas?
It is not that DC would have to be admitted, but it would make the deal more workable, since there is a national advantage to the Republican Party right now in splitting California.
Sammy Finkelman (107dde) — 6/22/2014 @ 12:27 pmCentral California = Farmlandia
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 6/22/2014 @ 12:41 pmSilicon Valley = Nerdistan or maybe Fudgepakistan
North California = Colitas
Jefferson = Waredifugawi
West California = Greater Weaksuck
South California = Cooztopia
anyone stupid enough to say what he did is too stupid to vote for.
me? i’m gonna vote for the Green Party candidate for governor. if we can get them over the hump in just one election, the SecState will have to list them in all elections going forward, thereby potentially siphoning off some of the libtard vote, which could make a difference in some races.
it’ll be the 12th of never before i ever vote for another RINO like CashAndCarry, or Mittens, for that matter.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 6/22/2014 @ 1:30 pmredc1c4,
Aside from Los Angeles and San Francisco and north (on the coast), the Green Party doesn’t have a chance.
Jerry Brown is a known quantity. People like that.
If California is ever going to have a chance of seeing a more centrist government in place, then it will have to be someone who is fairly moderate like Kashkari.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 1:48 pmwell, this conservative Native #Failifornian is utterly uninterested in voting for a “Libtard Lite” RINO carpetbagger like that scumbag. he’s not “moderate”, he’s just another big government, nanny state spendthrift and i refuse to vote for him.
as for the Green Party not having a chance everywhere, that’s utterly irrelevant to my point.
whether they have a chance or not, every liberal vote they siphon off is one less for the Deamonrat candidate in the same race. even if it only makes a difference in local races here and there, it’s an incremental improvement, and that’s more than running scum like CashAndCarry will bring.
there’s no way all the idiots i live with will ever vote for someone like him where there is a full fledged lieberal to vote for, and i refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils any more.
redc1c4 (abd49e) — 6/22/2014 @ 2:09 pm“This would have to be approved by both houses of Congress, and there’s zero chance of the House approving it. – Steven Den Beste”
I agree but I hear the planned approach is a legal appeal via the Supreme Court (the reasoning escapes me right now) rather than Congress. Hey, why not, both Obama and the Supreme Court ignore Congress these days.
Otto Maddox (990b3b) — 6/22/2014 @ 2:35 pmboehnerpoofter and reid have managed to bring the congress into lower repute than america’s obscenely perverted supreme whore court
good job, guys
happyfeet (8ce051) — 6/22/2014 @ 2:40 pmI’m from Upstate New York, and I still remember Ed Koch’s “interview with Playboy magazine in which he described the lifestyle of both suburbia and upstate New York as “sterile” and lamented the thought of having to live in “the small town” of Albany as Governor.” —from Wikipedia
They left out the part where he said that Upstate lacked the culture because it didn’t have a good Chinese restaurant. Most of you may know that he lost his bid for Governor. Never cared for him, and as far as NYC is concerned, it’s nice to visit but I could never live there. I’m not a big city kind of person.
Hadoop (f7d5ba) — 6/22/2014 @ 2:41 pmredc1c4: similar inclination here.
I’m from the proposed “State of Jefferson”; I’ll vote for any way (or at least most!) to get out from under Sacramento.
And I know our congressman (La Malfa) supports splitting Jefferson off.
We currently don’t have as much infrastructure or tax base, so it would be a rough start. But consider that we’re already displeased with much (probably half) of the existing state laws, and you can tell that the legislature here will go in a different direction.
I figure a couple years to clear out the Augean stables of CA law, then we might get some business moving in, which will probably take at least 5 years to open, and so on…the first few years we’ll be hurting, then we’ll be catching up, and after about 10 years we might be in business.
And our votes will finally do more than fill up the ballot boxes; at present, our vote for anything higher than congressman is worthless.
At least 3 parts are likely to vote Republican: Jefferson, South California, and Central California.
Also, water is a big part of it up here. Up here we fully expect LA to try doing what they did to Mono Lake.
Ibidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 4:56 pmSide notes: La Malfa got a straight-up 53% majority in the primaries, with a Republican endorsed by the American Independent party getting 10%;
Heidi Hall (the latest Democratic candidate) is trying to argue that “someone who isn’t proud to be a Californian shouldn’t represent our state in Congress”.
In refutation:
We are not voting for someone to represent California. We are voting for someone to represent us. California’s legislature is a ton of bovine manure, to use the least objectionable term .
If you want to represent California, go find somewhere that appreciates aforesaid fecal matter.
Also, the comment box is borked (runs behind the sidebar on Firefox 30.0; much as I loathe the politics and the RAM use, it’s the most functional browser on my platform).
Ibidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 5:11 pmGod forbid California gets 12 US Senators. So be careful what you wish for.
Corky Boyd (c95a33) — 6/22/2014 @ 5:57 pmCorky Boyd @21:
Ibidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 7:45 pmI’m saying that (stereotypical) California won’t get 12 senators.
Look up Doug LaMalfa and Tom McClintock for an idea of how politics can go in these parts.
Tom McClintock as govern! A girl can dream.
Dana (6875fb) — 6/22/2014 @ 7:48 pmCalifornia needs the opportunity to drive itself into the ground. It needs to become the new Michigan or New Jersey. However, Texas needs laws to to prevent the illegal immigration of California refugees.
Way back in the ’70s, I lived in Oregon for a brief time. It was a nice state then. You could see bumper stickers that said “Don’t Californicate Oregon.” Unfortunately, the Californians managed to infiltrate. They did the same thing to Washington state.
The stupids will do the same to Texas unless we act now to convince them that Texas is a humid hell-hole with poisonous snakes, scorpions, giant garfish, alligators, tarantulas, really big roaches, bobcats, mountain lions, bears, tornadoes, hurricanes, dust storms, drought, NRA members, the GOP, Baptists, Masons, Boy Scouts, cactus, crazy sorority girls, the Daughters of the Texas Revolution, secessionists Austin and Aggies. All of those things are true, of course, but we need to act now to spread the word because all of those things are better than people from California.
Ag80 (eb6ffa) — 6/22/2014 @ 7:52 pmMight need some kind of Voight Kampf test, to weed them out,
narciso (3fec35) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:20 pmDana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 11:09 am
McCain, as someone who didn’t know absolutely everything about everything, would most likely have appointed a better circle of advisors who would have handled the aftermath much better, and not have locked us into the juvenile, academic, feel-good, approaches that got nowhere and cost us a couple Trillion$ in additional GDP.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:36 pmTo admit DC as a State would require a Constitutional Amendment to Amend the language in Art-I, Sec-8(17).
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:42 pmAg80 wrote:
Up here (Lassen/Modoc/Shasta/Siskiyou/Tehama Counties, among others), a bunch of folks would agree with that last statement.
And we’ve got a share (though not quite as big) of Republicans, Baptists, rattlesnakes, black widows, scorpions, bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, bears, NRA members, Boy Scouts, prickly pears, wildfires, Masons, Mormons, Pentecostals, desert, poison oak, and so on. The weather is dry, but it will usually get above 120 degrees at least once or twice a summer.
It hasn’t kept the Southern Californians out, though.
More bits of “political context”: In a town of ~3,000 here, a local “unorganized militia” group has over 200 members.
Our current congressman (La Malfa) is considered “Tea Party,” and he was endorsed by the previous congressman (Wally Herger), whose politics were about as conservative.
The Republican candidate usually gets right about two thirds of the vote.
Anthony Watts lives down in Chico, which would also fall into Jefferson in this proposal.
Of course, the local rag is owned by the AP, and is mostly what you’d expect: liberal trash. We typically call it the Wretched Flushlight. Some home-schoolers have their kids proofread the paper as an English assignment, which should tell you the writing quality; the bias and opinions are of a similar grade.
Ibidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:44 pmAg80 (eb6ffa) — 6/22/2014 @ 7:52 pm
You’re not going to scare anyone away reciting that list of FEATURES!
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:45 pmIbidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:44 pm
Send map coordinates….sounds like a nice place to be.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/22/2014 @ 8:46 pmaskeptic: I’ll tell you “Shasta County/Tehama County, CA” . Good enough?
Ibidem (34e45a) — 6/22/2014 @ 9:00 pmaskeptic @ 26,
I don’t disagree with you. However, the way I see it, if there is a remote chance of Republicans taking back the state leadership, then the party must expand. And the way the only way they are going to do that is if it becomes more inclusive. And a moderate is who will reach those on the periphery, and independents. If we are looking for purity in the party and a litmus test of conservatism, then kiss state leadership goodbye. It’s no different than the tension we saw with the last two presidential elections: purity of the party or a bigger tent. In California, especially, it’s going to be one or the other. We are way too polarized and conservatives already have an immense uphill battle.
I may not like it, but I believe that’s how it is here.
So, for the thousandth time, it becomes, are you willing to compromise on principles in order to get a moderate elected, or do you staunchly refuse to yield in order to remain pure, and lose another election?
Dana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 9:24 pmYou are very patient, Dana. I remember how crazy this discussion became last election cycle. Why, who knew that Obama and Romney would make exactly the same decisions, as several people claimed?
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
And the Left really only cares about free abortions, raising taxes, and gun-grabbing. Literally anyone who agrees with those things—and has a “D” after their names—is acceptable to the DNC.
So the pursuit of ideological purity actually assists the people who are running the show right now.
I understand the frustration on the Right. But I want the current characters out of office before we lose some cities.
Simon Jester (9a3101) — 6/22/2014 @ 9:33 pmHi Simon Jester. So glad to have you join in. I hope all is well with you and yours.
The argument seems to always boil down to the same ‘ol, same ‘ol – party purity or reaching a wider swath of voters. I guess at this point in time, at least with California elections, I’m willing to ease up if it increases the chances of our state moving more center. What does party purity get in an election? In California, a guaranteed defeat.
Dana (fe2228) — 6/22/2014 @ 9:47 pmTo respond to Dana, who is much too smart to be up this late, I would say that I have almost always advocated a Big Tent Theory, and have in the past even worked for Moderate Republicans in their election campaigns. One in particular I was quite enthusiastic for, until he broke his tax pledge (doesn’t that seem to be something they are prone to do?), whereupon I cast him out of my consideration, never to be welcomed again – and, that was someone of prominence here in CA.
askeptic (8ecc78) — 6/23/2014 @ 12:15 amAnd I sleep quite well, thank you.
Um, what? That’s exactly like saying the planned approach is to use magic, or to appeal to the Pope. It’s another way of saying there is no plan.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/23/2014 @ 3:30 pmNo it wouldn’t. The clause doesn’t require that there be a capital district; it just gives Congress jurisdiction over it, should one be formed. Congress could decide that it no longer wants a capital district, and turn it into a state; since Maryland ceded it it’s not in its jurisdiction any more, so its consent would not be required. The more logical thing to do with DC, though, is simply give it back to MD, just as Congress already gave VA back its part of the original district in 1846. Or to keep a tiny DC, in which almost nobody lives, and give the rest back to MD.
Milhouse (b95258) — 6/23/2014 @ 3:43 pm