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Goodbye, California? Tim Draper Proposes a 6-Way Split
Daniel_Stuckey writes that venture capitalist Tim Draper has mooted a plan "to split California into six separate states, he told Tech Crunch, with Silicon Valley emerging as the richest and most powerful of all. The mockery is already pouring in. Of course a rich tech guru wants Silicon Valley to get its own government, so it can be freed from the dusty laws and regulations of California 1.0. Of course a deep undercurrent of self-aggrandizing narcissism runs through the proposal — only one other state-to-be gets an actual name, (inexplicably, 'Jefferson') and the rest are lazily affixed with topographical descriptors: West, South, Central, and North California...Yes, in shaping his doctrine, Draper has conjured the perfect blend of Seasteading's offshore tech nirvana lawlessness, boilerplate Tea Party antiestablishmentarianism, and good ol' secessionist chutzpah."
Any mention of 'Splitting up California' is just tempting fate at this point..
I've been looking for an excuse to rearrange the stars.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
How about California just becomes it's own damn country and fucks right off.
California is already split into numerous pieces. Drawing some lines and formalizing it will allow each of those pieces to govern themselves as they see fit and allow people to stop bitching at each other for tromping on each others "rights".
Just make California secede from the rest of the US.
Problem solved. Those californian tea party republicans can jump ship to Arizona, Washington, Oregon or New Mexico.
As for silicon valley, just offshore them to Texas. They'd feel at home.
Of course a rich tech guru wants Silicon Valley to get its own government, so it can be freed from the dusty laws and regulations of
Replace "tech guru" with "cotton plantation owner" and suddenly it all makes sense.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
He's never heard of the "House of Representatives"?
Or is he just unhappy that each state gets an equal vote in the Senate?
Because it's a preexisting movement: http://www.jeffersonstate.com/
I think we should do the opposite, and merge all 50 states into one single one. Therefore eliminating all the duplication of government, and provide one streamlined service for everything. That would be a much better direction to go.
It could be argued that Silicon Valley has benefitted the most from the California taxpayer. This proposal doesn't sound too bad as long as Old California's debt is distributed to the new states in a equitable way. The problem would be defining equitable.
There is a really small but similar sentiment in Illinois too. The people who live in rural Illinois feel like the people who live in Chicago and the suburban areas surrounding Chicago disproportionately affect Illinois politics. They feel that the state would be better without Chicago.
Forget increasing Senators, and simply stop giving away states powers to the federal government in the first place.
This would actually be quite good for California, in my opinion. The more isolated the high-tech hipsters are, the better. They are a mixed blessing, at best. While they bring some financial benefit to the state, they also bring themselves, which happens to be quite detrimental to Californian society at large. They surely aren't the pioneers who build the original Silicon Valley back in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm talking about the real Silicon Valley, where real products of value were designed and manufactured, not just the rampant collection and monetization of private data that we see today.
The hipsters are basically Baby Boomers Lite. This isn't completely surprising, given how many of them are the children of Boomers. They've inherited the same sense of overinflated self worth, the same sense of extreme (yet undeserved) entitlement, and the same smugness that their parents wrought upon California in the 1960s and 1970s.
The hipsters are a stain on the rest of California. The public resentment is there, too. Nobody likes how they've driven up the price of rent in San Francisco and the surrounding cities. Just look at how their private buses were attacked recently in nearby Oakland. Normal Californians are fed up with the hipsters and their very negative effect on society.
Isolating these hipsters to the Bay Area would be quite a good thing to do, at least given the circumstances. While we'd have to write off San Francisco, one of the most historic cities in the United States, it's already quite inaccessible to non-hipsters and other normal people. At least then these hipsters would be contained with a geographically-small area, and the rest of California could prevent them and their rot from leeching out into the surrounding new states.
California is such a large state that it ends up having being ruled by the whims of the people of LA. Everything from gun laws, to environmental regulations, to labor laws... or put another way the only reason it's a blue state is because of LA. The number of counties hat end up being 'red counties' is fairly substantial. But they usually get overruled by their opposition. Of course IS how representative democracy works... but at the level of population containing with wildly different political ideologues as you have in California you start to have a good example of 'the tyranny of the majority'.
This is hardly an idea without precedent would better serve the needs of the constituents while be very much in the spirit of the Constitution. Virginia, New York and Massachusetts split and gave us a handful of other states. When states become two politically oriented in one direction for only a given geographical ares while ignoring the wishes and values of the other states they can and should split.
The Constitution was designed to balance the power of the people so that you didn't have any one area with too large of an influence over the others. It was then designed to ensure all areas would have equal representation in the Senate. It was one of the most careful balances of power ever crafted and has served as a model for countless other governments ever since.
When people feel the need to systematically disregard the political views of a given portion of their constituency they no longer deserve to have that constituency as they no longer represent their needs. California, Texas, New York, Illinois and a couple of other states have long areas on both the left and the right that have systematically ignored large portions of their population for many years.
The only reason it is this big is because it was established at a time when the population was MUCH lower. Were you to do the same thing in the east coast but in reverse, you might get all of new england as ONE state.
Now do you understand? California is much too big.
The government is almost indifferent to voter opinion because they can always play one part of the state off the other part. Which means they never have to do anything anyone wants. They just mommy/daddy the whole thing and then lie when that doesn't work.
Look. It needs to split because its unweldy, inherently corrupt, and incapable of serving the local needs of its residents.
Everything revolves around Sacramento which is the least consequential portion of the state BESIDES for the politics. Its our version of Washington DC. What does DC do? Tell people what to do. Does it produce anything? Nope. Does it create anything? Nope. It just collects the taxes and decides what to do with it all.
Genius ideas like our "bullet" train which as everyone knows is a giant fiasco... which we knew it would be from the start... because a bullet train in California makes about as much sense as a beach resort on the moon.
But it sounds good to the twits in Sacramento so whatever.
Look, you don't like his plan to split the state... Fine. It doesn't really matter what the plan is so long as its reasonable. We just need a more local government in california. A government that actually lives where we live and cares about us because they're ACTUALLY our neighbors. Sacramento doesn't care about San Diego. It doesn't care about the Imperial Valley. It only cares about Los Angeles because that is where most of the votes come from. But it only cares about it in so far as those votes are concerned. Etc.
Too big. Split it. Even in half isn't enough. It needs to be broken into something like three to six pieces.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
There is a really small but similar sentiment in Illinois too. The people who live in rural Illinois feel like the people who live in Chicago and the suburban areas surrounding Chicago disproportionately affect Illinois politics. They feel that the state would be better without Chicago.
I can actually understand that sentiment. But the California equivalent would be Central Valley or far northern secessionists. Silicon Valley can't really make the same kind of argument, because it is already very influential in California politics. Of course, it shares that influence with Los Angeles rather than having it entirely to itself, but the Bay Area is one of the state's main political power bases.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It really should be pointed out that this guy's idea is in no way new. There has been calls for breaking up California into a number of smaller states for years. Mostly for the reason I put into my previous post. In short: having a very large population being nominally controlled by the whims of LA. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(Pacific_state)
For those of you who haven't been out there, when you walk along the streams, you will see signs that say "DO NOT DRINK FROM THE STREAM!".
Why?
Because they are heavily polluted.
From what?
Silicone Valley companies that operated before our environmental laws existed.
Tragedy of the commons indeed.
Business people are too irresponsible not to be regulated.
A split that puts Marin in a different state from SF doesn't make a lot of sense, considering how much commuting goes across the Golden Gate. The greater SF Bay Area should at least be in the same state.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
number of people that would like to see the South go. They take in more federal dollars than they give while electing Representatives that campaign against receiving those dollars. They're largely the reason the rest of the Country can't have socialized medicine.
Personally I can't see abandoning them, but then again I think the point of civilization isn't to protect property but to improve the lives of everyone. That's a fundamental philosophy that a lot disagree with.
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It should be North and South, split it just North of Los Angeles.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I've lived in a number of areas of the country. The common political element that rose above all the rest is the differences between the large cities and the rural areas. So, instead of a split by area, make each large city -- San Francisco/San Jose, Los Angeles/Hollywood -- its own state. (What to do about Sacremento? Is it a city or a condition as the State capitol?) Then City interests could be served by the City States, and the rest of the state with its agriculture base would be able to set policies and law for their own.
Other states/areas could be split the same way: Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington DC area, Michigin (peal Detroit from the rest of the State), New York/New Jersey/Connecticut...and the list goes on. We could combine small states into large states -- think Providence Rhode Island versus the rest of the State.
I'm not sure the Democrats would go for this.
Jefferson was proposed for parts of southern Oregon and northern California as far back as 1941, according to Wikipedia. I've seen a sign for the State of Jefferson Chamber of Commerce along I-5 somewhere in that area.
Such a set of states (such a set of states)
Such a lovely face
What about IP laws if they secede then they may lose rights.
The US already has too many political subdivisions. We need to combine states into larger political entities (12-15 large states) rather than split the existing ones up.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
the up of michigan whats to be on it's own as well.
make long inland / NY city into it's own state.
Also cut up Texas into as many as five states,
No comment on whether or not the state of Jefferson would ever be able to support itself without the rest of California, but Tim Draper didn't pull that particular state out of the ether. I have some parents that used to live up in North State, and the hill folk there love the idea of Jefferson.
They even have a website: http://www.jeffersonstate.com/
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
I think you'll find this sentiment in the agricultural areas of most states that have a lot of agricultural area and a few large (1 million +) metropolitan areas, as the metro areas are usually much more liberal than the agricultural areas. Their primary issues are often quite different also. Look at North Carolina, which lumps most of the liberals into a district that is Charlotte, Raleigh, and the interstate highway between them.
Kick california out of the USA. Oh sure they can't really secede. That's not allowed. But how about we kick them out...
They use up more federal cash than they have brought in since the gold rush. Their policys are insane. Their big brother labeling EVERYTHING WILL GIVE YOU CANCER is stupid. For most purposes it's already it's own country there.
So how about it. Just kick them out. Lets see how they do without the usa.
Heck we can even let puerto rico in as an offical state at the same time. So we stay at 50.
Really just swap their positions. Calif is now a us territory. puerto rico is a state.
Why don't you just post the real story and leave out the fucking idiotic editorial by some unimportant asshole? We're quite capable of making our own assessment of the plan. /. editor fail.
Chicago should be split from the rest of Illinois because that one city has little to nothing in common with the rest of the state, politically.
I've often said that when times get tough, you find out what people are really like; when times are good and everyone has plenty, then it's easy to be nice, and courteous, and generous, but when times get tough, you find out who's really like that, and who's just been putting on a false face. In this case what we discover from tough times is who's actually smart, and who's actually dumb as a box of rocks. Splitting up California would wreck havoc with everyone in the former State, and would likely throw the entire U.S. into chaos, and all for the greed and lust for power of (excuse my using an over-used metaphor) the 1%. What they'd actually be doing is very transparent: Leave behind the poorer parts of the former California, so the rich don't have to be "burdened" by them anymore. For the northernmost parts of the State, you may as well just merge it with Oregon in that case, so you can have one larger state full of poor people living in relatively rural areas, all without anywhere near enough jobs to keep them all housed, clothed, and fed. Give the central valley a new spanish name, so the people who live and work there, working the fields, will feel more at home. I don't think I need to go on, you all get the picture, probably without my help in the first place. Of course like all rich despots this wouldn't go like they planned, the northern State could cut off all the water they've been sending to the south and hold it for ransom, jacking the price way up, and the central state could make the food they're growing so expensive that even the richest would be shocked at their grocery bill.
This guy needs to be slapped.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
SV has successful industry and a tax base and some hope of supporting itself. As opposed to the blithering morons who want to secede and form North Colorado (or Metherado as one wag said) who apparently have no idea who is actually paying for their schools and roads and police...
So when will we see the greater NYC area turned into a single state?
The trend towards devolution and smaller, more responsive states is brewing in Europe, so it's no surprise it's also happening here. Is it really democracy when your elected leaders are hundreds of miles away?
"Sir, I'll see your 8 Californias, and raise you 13 Vermonts."
Pontificating about jerrymandering states isn't really "newsworthy" if there are no real stakes. If it were actually feasible to jerrymander Senate seats (as can be done for the House of Representatives at the state government level), other states would copy it, which is exactly why it would never happen.
Gently reply
So long as these states are jointly and severally liable for all the debt California has rung up so far, I've no objection. (For future debt, they're on their own - and I'd avoid buying bonds issued by most of 'em.)
An unintentional Code Geass reference would have knocked me out of my chair!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You are the new king of begging the question.
Next you'll fret that this means less lemon-tart pies will be baked north of the mid-California line or something else equally important and meaningless.
Can't speak for his particular proposal (I haven't looked at it), but the idea of splitting up California has been around for years, and makes a lot of sense. It's far larger and more diverse than most other states, and that makes it really hard to govern. You basically have the SF bay megalopolis (with more population than most other states), the LA/San Diego megalopolis (ditto), the central valley (sparsely populated but with enormous agricultural wealth), and huge rural areas that in many cases don't want to have anything to do with the cities.
This also would gain California much more influence in the federal government (more senators, more electoral votes).
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
The House is where population is directly represented. The Senate is where States are directly represented. The Senate was supposed to protect the Sovereignty of States (which function was seriously harmed by the 17th Amendment) and limit the ability of a tyranny of the majority. I.e. the lightly populated states could combine forces to stop a majority in the House, which will inevitably be controlled by the big cities.
The interesting thing at the moment is that the Senate is more controlled by the big cities. (Seattle has two Senators, the rest of Washington gets ignored in that chamber.) Since not all House districts have a major city, they still listen to the countryside on occasion.
"the point of civilization isn't to protect property but to improve the lives of everyone. That's a fundamental philosophy that a lot disagree with."
I might well disagree, depending on who defines "improve the lives of everyone". The world has plenty of unhappy experience with those who are convinced they can run other peoples lives better than they can.
Ah yes. Selfishness, terminal narcissism, endless wealth and stupidity determining the future. What could go wrong with that?
"No comment on whether or not the state of Jefferson would ever be able to support itself without the rest of California,"
Support itself at what level of government meddling? Jefferson probably would not be able to support the level of intrusive and all-encompassing supervision, nor provide the level of financial support to it's citizens that is in vogue at UC Berkeley. But it should be able to provide the level of services that its citizens actually feel they need.
Trivial case, do they need a formal Animal Control Department, or is the shotgun in the closet adequate to the task?
In a prison-type way.
1) CA has a larger economy than most other nations on earth.
2) CA pays more to the federal government than it gets back. (something people who bitch a lot never bother to look up.)
3) CA pays more to the federal government than any other state.
I think they should split up or change how senators are allocated because it's totally moronic that small nothing states are on a fully equal footing with much larger states. Senators have too much power too... which made far more sense when they were picked by state government and not by popular vote, as the founders intended (they also didn't intend House seats to be capped.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
... and any 'journalist' that can't do the 5 damned seconds of Googling to learn about it is undeserving of the moniker.
California leaving the union would not end all trade relations with them. If nothing else they will have to keep selling stuff to the rest of the US to pay for their electric bill.
Given they already demand special air quality rules, special water quality rules, and have marked their entire State as carcinogenic, and keep claiming they pay more in taxes than they get back, you would think they would ask to leave.
Stomping off in a huff and shelling a Federal military post on your way out has been previously determined to be not allowable. Asking politely to leave is protected under the First Amendment.
Guess what? That's the real political make-up of California. The majority of Californians do identify as Republicans, and not as Democrats.
While they are extremely loud and prominent in the media, the left-leaning portion of Californian society is actually comparatively small relative to the entire populace of California. They are outnumbered, and basically isolated to the regions where academia, media or high-tech is big. The rest of the state is quite conservative, especially when you get into the large rural and mountainous expanses.
So the SV hipsters shouldn't cry about democracy working like democracy should, and granting them representation proportional to their population. They should accept that there are a lot of people who have very different views that are just as valid, if not more valid in many respects. If these hipsters end up outnumbered in the legislature, it's because they're outnumbered in society at large.
"This also would gain California much more influence in the federal government (more senators, more electoral votes)."
Since the reason to split it up is that the different regions can't agree, it seems unlikely their Senators would agree after splitting up. They would likely net out to about the same.
It could be argued that Silicon Valley has benefitted the most from the California taxpayer.
Anything can be argued. And a lot of the drive behind the secessionist movement is the debt being accumulated by California as a whole. They don't want that debt.
My view is that the only fair way is to allot a fixed amount of debt per citizen (around $5500-6000 per capita) and let the weaker states go bankrupt.
Just kick them out of the union.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Considering how bad California taxes are, who wouldn't want to make their own state to get away from it. They should just all move to North Dakota, and get away from the idiot Democrat leaders.
I lived in CA from 1979 to 1992.
The entire time I was there, and on until today, I have heard talk of splitting up the state.
This happens in many places. Here in Ontario, there is sometimes chatter of splitting the Greater Toronto Area into its own province since such a massive proportion of the population lives there that much of the provincial legal and political structures are already defined as "in Toronto..." or not.
While this would actually make some sense (although where to draw the line is not entirely obvious), the benefit would be small enough to not really justify the effort since things already work, as they are.
I assume that the situation is roughly the same in Illinois and similar areas but the difference is probably that provincial law is already fairly sparse as compared to some of the implications of state-level power in the US political structure. That might make the issue more relevant, there.
While there's no separatist sentiment, Washington has the same problem - the largely rural are east of the Cascades feels disenfranchised because of the influence of the much more populous and more urban Puget Sound area. But even within the Puget Sound region, there are splits... over here in west sound, we're far more rural than the Eastside.
The natives are rebelling
if states did not have equal representation in the Senate then states like Wyoming and Rhode Island would have no say in the Federal Government. They would then essentially have no representation in the government, Hence the reason for the two houses and the reason why one is proportional and the other is not.
There is a really small but similar sentiment in Illinois too. The people who live in rural Illinois feel like the people who live in Chicago and the suburban areas surrounding Chicago disproportionately affect Illinois politics. They feel that the state would be better without Chicago.
Ditto for the province of Ontario (Canada) and Toronto.
I think this is a difference between rural and urban cultures. I'm sure there's a few sociology papers on the topic.
Last year, California sent $292.6 billion in federal taxes to the US government. California received $258.9 billion in federal spending. In other words, the federal government received nearly $34 billion dollars more from the state of California than was spent in the state.
Let's see how it works out indeed.
The purpose of the Senate is to be undemocratic.
Whenever you see someone complaining that the US is a republic not a democracy, this is the sort of thing they are talking about.
This doesn't affect the nation at large the way a split would do, but there's a California group that's just gotten approval to start gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would create an Assembly district for every 5,000 residents, and a Senate district for every 10,000 residents. They wouldn't all go to Sacramento, but rather themselves designate from among their number the same number of representatives (80 Assembly, 40 Senate) for each legislative body as we currently have. The advantages are said to be a kneecapping of special interests' ability to influence elections, a drastic reduction in the amount of money needed to get elected, and a much more diffuse and responsive legislature. Additional details via the link. I haven't made my mind up about this, but it's an interesting idea.
It could be argued that Silicon Valley has benefitted the most from the California taxpayer.
That cannot be argued, because it is totally backwards! Do you have any idea how much tax revenue both Apple and Google ALONE bring into the state? Never mind tons of VC money flowing into companies there, which flows into the state through income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes on things the government buys... That is money flowing in from all over the world that California benefits hugely from.
If it were not for Silicon Valley, the state of California would look like Detroit thanks to the policies and regulations they have enacted!
It is only fair to split up the debt though because the people across the state voted for the people and policies that brought on the debt. It's just that the Silicon Valley section will pay off their debt in a year or two, while in that same timeframe most of the other sections would probably declare bankruptcy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's a game played all over the world. Just yesterday we here in Britain got to see the same debate play out between Vince Cable and Boris Johnson (look them up if you care), vis a vis whether the UK is too London-centric; cue the opinions that the UK would be better off without London and/or vice versa. And there's the minor variant of Scottish independence (based around exactly the same theme)- a referendum on which is due next year.
And Spain has the same thing with Catalonia (and others), and Belgium has got its Flanders/Wallonia issue, and so on and so forth. It seems people are never happy unless they're trying to split countries apart of merge them together in various ways.
Draper's slipshod plan would actually be a step towards that goal—and towards a government that ceases to favor the concerns of rural voters over the urban ones.
There is already an entity that does the exact opposite of that; The House. The House is proportionally represented and the concerns of urban voters override the concerns of rural voters. By having two separate bodies with sometime conflicting goals they are forced to compromise. If both bodies had the same voting base then they would be exactly the same so why have two bodies.
Dear Mr. President, There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. P.S. I am not a crackpot.
God spoke to me
Most people (libertarians excepted) think that government is a voluntary arrangement. That is how they justify taxation as not being theft and draft as not being slavery.
If so, what is wrong with voluntarily merging or splitting?
What is the optimal region of government? Why would the current boundaries be the best?
Truly voluntary organizations (clubs, associations, firms, groups of friends, marriages) merge and split all the time. That is part of experimentation to find better arrangements. If government is voluntary too, why should its boundaries remain static?
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Native Californian here... presently living overseas but with strong desires to move home. I've always liked the idea of three states: North, Central and South. Many proposals have coastal versus interior, but the north coast is so sparsely populated compared to SF and south that it would also be ignored. Yuba city and northwards would be Northern California. Central Cali would keep Sacramento as the capitol and include San Louis Obispo. Everything south of San Louis Obispo is Southern California. The lines don't need to be straight up latitude lines. As far as politics, D would claim at least four senate seats, maybe all six.
Some of this was hashed out before WWII sunk the idea politically. Then there is the idea of the State of Jefferson...
Rich libertarian has crazy idea. News at .... WTF this isn't news anymore then when the crazy guy on the corner starts talking about aliens.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
...for I have a greater chance of winning the Powerball or Mega Millions lottery than this ever happening. (FYI, I don't buy lottery tickets.)
My point is that this is not going to happen... ever. The state as a whole will not approve of it, Congress will never approve of it (even if it ever becomes less dysfunctional), and politically it's a bad idea. It'll take one powerful state politically and water it down into six.
Now, the idea of a State of Jefferson for the areas of the state north of Redding is not bad in some ways. The conservative nut jobs who live there and in southern Oregon deserve each other. They can run it into the ground. However, this country cannot withstand the existence of another South Carolina.
I think California succession is a better idea given the size of its economy. We Californians can stand on our own. And we wouldn't even have to change the flag. There is a reason why the phrase "California Republic" is written under the grizzly bear.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Have gnu, will travel.
The only way to kneecap special interests is to limit campaign contributions to a few dollars per voter.
Repeal the 17th (or replace it with something better, if your a fan of the "state governments were too corrupt to be able to chose the senators" theory).
I wonder if the 17th did not exist then could the 55 mph speed limit law from the 1970s happen, if congress could not get the senate to pass that law to strong arm the state's with federal highway funds.
Its not reasonable for there to be such vast disparities in population between the states.
I totally disagree. There were huge divisions even when the original stricture of government was set up. But it makes sense that if you want each state to be an equal participant in government, you have some means to give each equal representation regardless of population.
Otherwise states less populated would get totally overwhelmed by what the more populated states want to do. That is not a good thing. The Senate is there to put the brakes on mere populism.
The whole checks and balances thing is not just a catchy phrase. It's there to keep the government from running unchecked and letting a passionate mob ruin everything.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As far as I'm concerned, if Indiana wants Crook county, it's welcome to it.
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The people who live in rural Illinois feel like the people who live in Chicago and the suburban areas surrounding Chicago disproportionately affect Illinois politics. They feel that the state would be better without Chicago.
They certainly affect the level of corruption in Springfield (Illinois state capital ). Since most of the corruption from "the most corrupt state in the union" comes from Chicago/Cook County.
I'll bet that if you repeal the winner-take-all rule for electoral votes, things would change dramatically.
But there is some basis for some sort of shake up, no pun intended. With raw population density being pretty much the only factor in determining representation levels in Sacramento, you end up with L.A. and San Francisco (and to a lesser extent, San Diego) determining the fate of the rural and suburban areas. I've believed for some time that federal elections and more specifically campaigns would be very different if winner-take-all rules were abolished. If you look at the breakdown of electoral votes by county rather than by state, you'll see that a much different result. Yet presidential candidates usually blow off rural and suburban America. Imagine if they had to spend more time there.
I'll bet that if central California had as much or more of a say over their fate than L.A. does, they'd tell L.A. that no, as a matter of fact, they aren't going to get any more water from the Sierras without paying for it.
rather see California split into its individual atoms!
With the failure of so many blue cities and states, it should be increasingly more obvious that their philosophy/ideology is wrong. Issues like gun control invariably fail to account for the increase in crime which results. (Interestingly, states which outlawed radar detectors enjoyed better road safety when those bans were lifted, so why can't they accept the same for gun laws? Unfair comparison? Maybe.) The practice of taxing to provide too much to people and making them dependent on the government will result in a strain on the economy and the local tax payers. Some people will continue living in such areas while others will certainly want to leave which certainly decreases the people from which they can leech taxes which means they will have to increase taxes to compensate and the downward spiral continues.
Why do they not get it? Also, who are they giving these government contracts to? Their friends? Yeah, they are. That kind of crap needs to stop too.
The equitable way to distribute the debt would be to add it into the Federal Government's debt. California would have a surplus instead of a deficit if it wasn't a donor state.
The rest of the UK would BE better off without London. It is true London and the South East do create the most wealth but it is at the expense of the rest of the regions as it is a self perpetuating cycle. Business relocates to the SE/London because of the greater resources. More businesses mean London can demand more of the pie to cope.
NorCali -- SF Bay Area (starting from about Monterey/Salinas as its southern border), Humbolt, Lassen, all the way up to the OR border.
SoCali -- Coast south of Monterey all the way down to Mexico border, including all of the LA basin, San Diego and the Mojave area
Joquain -- The central valley from Redding to Bakersfield, and the Sierra Nevadas along the NV state line
Tech biz/hippies/redwoods, hollywood/flakes/deserts, then agriculture/rednecks/mountains. Each one would have its own special economy to live on and is a much better social/attitude split.
Nice balanced description. How do you feel about the project, peon I don't know and could care less about's opinions?
We don't need your help. Now fuck off and die, tyrant.
Keep real people SAFE from techies and other gd yuppie environmentalist jihadists! DIE YUPPIE SCUM!
As a native Californian, I have for many years that California Tax Policy is whacko. This goes way back to the 1800's. There are a lot of laws added and piled on over the years. A lot of things the State is required to do or prohibited from doing. Since the 1960's, getting a lot of steam from Prop 13 in the mid 1970's that limited property tax, there has been a lot of Budget by Proposition. Liberal or Conservative whacko's, and we have a lot of both, are part of the current problem, but neither created it. What it would take to fix Calif. tax and governmental problems would take a State Constitutional Convention to break one heck of a Gordian Knot. The problem is is that anyone with half a brain can see that 'their' side or interest group has a lot to win but a lot to loose from such an event. And generally, no one wants to risk it.
By the way, under Jerry Brown the state Budget this year may show a small surplus. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9312_California_budget_crisis#From_2012_and_into_2013
The proposal cited by the OP, is more of a wish list from one point of view, rather that something that solves problems but doesn't screw over a large chunk of the populace.
A two-way split is all that's needed One state that's the coast + 25 miles inland ("West California"), and another state ("East California") that's the rest.
Such a massively narcissistic idea. Does he think that the rest of CA, not to mention the rest of the US, is just going to hand him a state because he asks for it? Apparently so. I like the part of his petition where it requires the state to give him his own team of attorneys with unlimited state funds to spend opposing the will of the Attorney General and other state authorities.
If he wants to found his own Monaco with himself in the role of Prince, he can buy any country that's for sale. Europe and the Americas are taken, but I hear that Somalia is available. He can hire Academi (formerly Blackwater) to provide land-based security. It's even got its own navy of pirates with speedboats, Arr!
If he wants to stay in the US, he's got to get support from outside of California. I would go for a coalition with the Colorado secessionists, and the unionists in D.C. and Puerto Rico, who have already voted for statehood. Splitting Texas might be an additional option, but they need a draft map. I think three states would suffice. South Texas would have its capital in San Antonio, North Texas would center around Dallas-Fort Worth. The big question would be whether Austin would agree to combine with Houston, or would demand to have its own state in order to prevent its wierdness from being diluted.
Taxation without representation is tyranny! Statehood for DC, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands & Pacific Territories!
The Bay Area makes up about 20% of the population of California, yet we pay 33% of the state income taxes. (The city of SF has 2.5% of the state population, yet pays 5% of state income taxes). I can't find stats for where state funds are spent, but I'd be willing to wager we get back substantially less than what we collectively pay, and that any debt the state currently shoulders would only be larger were it not for the outflow of wealth from the Bay Area.
"(inexplicably, 'Jefferson')"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state)
Here is one person who has drawn a map based on 50 states having equal populations (~6 million at 2010) as response to the problem of unequal state population in the Electoral College and the Senate:
http://fakeisthenewreal.org/reform/
"The largest state is 66 times as populous as the smallest and has 18 times as many electoral votes."
He gets 5 or 6 states out what is now California.
Go to the link for the map.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The people who live in rural Illinois feel like the people who live in Chicago and the suburban areas surrounding Chicago disproportionately affect Illinois politics. They feel that the state would be better without Chicago.
I know dumping on Chicago is popular now with a black man from Chicago leading the nation. I also grew up in Wisconsin and believe me. Most of use would be happier without those assholes from Chicago coming into our wonderful state, but they bring lots of cash with them, so it's hard to make laws keeping them out.
Chicago is a major port. Look at a map some day and see why. The Midwest is America's bread basket and Chicago is how the grain is shipped. Illinois is lucky to be have that.
One of the reasons California does as well as it does (you laugh, but there's some amazing literal and social engineering to keep the whole mess running) is that the state boundaries are close to the watershed boundaries. Water is *the* currency of the West, for energy and agriculture and domestic use, and having the water-governing bodies under one government is... well, it's bad enough, but it's easier than separate states grandstanding against each other. (GA/TN, recently.)
So the 6 Californias is badly designed and not ambitious enough -- let's reorganize the whole country --
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/19/map-the-united-states-of-watersheds/
Tends to keep metro areas together; also biomes often fall within a watershed, and then determine what the most productive land uses are.
Rather than Senators representing geographical areas how about if they represented the relative strength of the different political parties among the electorate? Hold a national election and for every percentage point a party gets it gets one Senator (with some method of distributing the remainders). Under such a system I'd feel free to vote for the party that best matches my political views (which wouldn't be either of the two leading parties) rather than voting defensively. It would definitely raise the status of the minor parties. I imagine the Libertarians would get 10 or 15 Senators and the Greens 5 or10, maybe 1 or 2 for the Constitution party.. It might lead to the splintering of the major parties and after an election cycle or two I doubt either would hold a simple majority any more which would force them to deal with other parties. It would be interesting to see what happens and it certainly would reflect the political views of the country as a whole better than anything we have now.
The sooner the USA has successful secesion movements the better. They will stand as an example for the rest. As long as pandering to and worship of Big Federal Government is promoted? The closer the USA and the rest of the world comes to collapse. The sooner the USA gets back to it's power from the bottom up rather than the current top down approach the sooner the USA will rediscover it's former glory. Untill these things happen? The USA will continue to slide toward 3rd world status with nuke's! It's already arguable that the USA has slid to 2nd world or poor 1st world with dropping standards.
BTW, just because the guy is rich doesn't make the argument any more or less valid! You want your argument to be as valid? Get as rich ya moron! "Oh, but I can't, the system wont let me"! And you want more of the same system that deamonises enterprise? Idiots!
The ragged clothing and dirty faces really bring me down.
You're right that the Constitution requires Congress to give consent to split a state. In fact, they've already done so.
In the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States that Congress passed March 1, 1845, the text includes the following:
So Congress has already given such permission to Texas, allowing Texas the option to split up anytime it wants.
Thus, I'm not sure about the GP characterization as "unlikely". Congress has done it before.
because a bullet train in California makes about as much sense as a beach resort on the moon.
You don't know much about high speed rail. High speed rail makes sense when you have LOTS of people in a region, like tens of millions of people. The population of California is approaching 40 million. As California continues to grow, the value of high speed rail increases. I think California should build a high speed rail line. Do I agree with the current execution of the line? no. What I think is stupid, is that DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NYC, and Boston have not built a true high speed rail line.
Silicon valley may be the richest - but no water, no food
The whole USA should probably jus be split into 2. One would join us Canucks up north and become the United States of Canada. The other would become Jesuland.
Should do the same in NY so the idiots in NYC don't ruin upstate. Logging and quarrys in the ADK park now wtf!
The Propellerheads had this idea years ago. [end of obscure musical reference]
The idea will never fly, but how does the author associate "boilerplate Tea Party antiestablishmentarianism" with this at all? A quick google of Tim Draper's politics shows that he plays both sides. He supported GHWB and Obama. My guess is he will contribute to whoever he thinks will win.
Not hard to split up the debt. take the total revenues/taxes for each district last year, figure out the % it is of the total. Now use that percentage on how to break up the states debt.
I know that Northern Cali/Jefferson will get screwed, but it they want freedom, they should take the deal. It will prove to be a bargain, The rest of the state is not slowing down in ow fast they are spending money. The sooner they split, the less new massive debt that is not fair for them to take, that they will have to deal with.
vi +
Put all of the tax and spend liberals together with the Hollywood airheads. Allow the rest of the state political representation, which they presently do not have.
gosgog:
Seems to me the one place that really needs to be split off or preferably done away with altogether is DC!! That affects the entire Federal Gov't & constantly interferes with all the States. It is entirely populated with 90% Totaly retarded damn fools who reside in the Congress & who have separate Culture unrelated to the rest of the U.S. population.
Lets split into two countries, Democrats and Republicans. Then we can have the worlds largest red vs blue competitions! Capture the flag, paint ball, hell we can even have deathmatches. Who needs videogames when you can drive to the state line and make war with your neighbors! #murica #battlefieldmurica #noscope
Draper's idea is not only somewhat selfish and very conventional, its a way of reductionist thinking that compounds the original error... Its re-hash of stupidity we are suffering from everyday as a result of having drawn dotted lines on maps where no dotted lines should be. All the challenges of the 21st Century, the Anthropocene Era, do not care about dotted lines on maps. If Draper were really smart, he would investigate business opportunities to make the lines irrelevant. I have two such opportunities for him or any other VC that cares to change America for the better - but it will take some patient capital. Tim: If you do want to make a positive impact, there are much better ways than compounding old errors, but I understand your frustration. Its time, in many ways, to get outside the box - do something positive. Let me know.