'New California' Movement Wants To Create a 51st State (wqad.com)

PolygamousRanchKid, Ayano, and an anonymous reader all shared the same story. Tribune Media reports: A group has launched a campaign to divide California into two states. It isn't the first attempt to split California, but unlike a failed campaign in 2016 to divide California into six states, the campaign to create New California would split the state into one made up of rural counties and another made up of coastal counties.
USA Today provides some context: Breaking up California remains no easy task: A formal secession means getting approval from both Congress and California's legislature itself. But that hasn't stopped folks from trying. Hundreds of times... Monday's declaration of "the State of New California" marked the latest in more than 200 long-shot efforts to split the Golden State. All so far have failed.

Comments

Which billionaire is funding this one?

[HangingChad]

Splitting California's electoral votes is a right wing wet dream. Makes you wonder if it's the Koch family or the Mercers behind this push. Or some combination of billionaires and Russian foreign intelligence.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[skam240]

I bet the Liberals in every major Southern urban area get tired of their right wing state governments too.

Please note that unlike yourself, I have chosen to not confabulate a political point of view I often disagree with, with an extremeist ideology.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[whoever57]

It's also the wet dream of everyone in the area desiring it, to be free of the oppressive liberal extremism that pays the bills in California

FTFY

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[DFurno2003]

Not paying for democrat inner city pet projects and providing sanctuary to illegal aliens is a rural land owners wet dream

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder at times who else is tired of all the apparent astrofurfers who pretend like we're a democratic nation, turn every issue into an "us vs them" debate (often spouting unfounded accusations, disrespect, hatred, and obscenities against whoever the "them" is), and expect people to align with one side or the other.

---

I have no representative. No one approaches me asking me to appoint or endorse someone for that role (or whether I would prefer to cast my own votes on the issues). Instead, we get to vote on who gets to be called "representative" over a everyone within a geographic area. The person who I would vote for, if I should bother voting at all, would fail to obtain enough votes and thus would be disregarded and/or ordered out of the room, should he attempt to represent me anyway.

So far as I can tell I also disagree substantially with the majority of the nation as to how the nation ought to be governed, so getting rid of all the abuses and scandals which both Democrats and Republicans attack each other with and over and making the system function "fairly" is not going to fix the problem.

I also suspect that the majority of the nation also is similarly without a representative: Voting for third parties and watching their candidates lose, staying out of the vote entirely, or voting for whatever mainstream candidate that is merely less unappealing than the opponent form the other party.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's it like to live in a country where you hate half of your neighbors?

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[macsimcon]

Let's review: Wilson couldn't fix California, and neither could the Governator. But Governor Moonbeam did, and now the state is out of the hole, growing again, and projecting a surplus, all from RAISING TAXES.

States like Kansas, Wisconsin, and Iowa cut taxes and are now failing, increasing their deficits.

Sure looks like "Commiefornia" did it right, and those red states full of morons did it wrong.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[BlueStrat]

It's also the wet dream of everyone in the area desiring it, to be free of the oppressive liberal extremism that runs up the bills in California

FTFY

FTFFY YW HTH

HAND

Strat

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[mschwanke97402]

You fail to understand democracy. The concept is not, we lost the election burn the place to the ground, the concept is the other side won, they get to govern, meanwhile we rebuild from the grass roots, one voter and one district at a time. California had a Republican Governor not that long ago. IIRC, there was also a split legislature not that long ago too. Also the dems do not have a super-majority in congress. That is federal. California has an Assembly and a Senate.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the moon made of cheese in your world?

Never have I seen a political ideology get everything so wrong as this left-wing crap I see today. The USA is a nation built on hard working individuals who value individual responsibility, family, and nation. This is exactly the opposite of what the progs/left/DNC/whatever are screaming for constantly. They want a giant nanny state that tells everyone how to run their lives, with everyone absolutely dependent on said state. They want to force their views on everyone else in some PC crusade.

It's the Dem supporters who should be moving to Venezuela, China, and other socialist "paradises". But as Venezuela shows, this doesn't last for too long because parasites always need to feed of the hard work of others. That's why they won't leave the US. Not until it's bled dry, anyhow. Then they'll move on to a productive country full of hard workers, and parasitize that place too.

The founding fathers might've been onto something when only landowners were allowed to vote. Allowing people to vote to force others to give them free stuff has a terrible feedback mechanism.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[skam240]

"The problem is, a couple densely populated areas are steering the entire state"

That's not a bug, that's a feature. Welcome to voting and republican democracy. While we have far more protections for small voter blocks than any other first world country (minorities, although not necessarily in the racial sense) the simple fact is that generally speaking the few don't get to govern, the many do.

What you seem to advocating for is governance by a minority.

Re:Which billionaire is funding this one?

[Lord Kano]

The electoral college has always been and will always be bullshit

The electoral college is a feature, not a bug.

It exists precisely to prevent what would have happened without it in the 2016 election. One party shouldn't be able to pack dependent voters densely into areas they control to have power over everyone else.

Twice in the last 17 years the democrats lost a race they should have won, if the vote was fair, and the world would have been better off both times.

I call bullshit on all counts here.

If they *should have won*, then they would have won. They lost according to the rules that everyone knew from the beginning. Al Gore lost the presidency because he couldn't even carry his home state. Hillary lost because she lost states that Obama carried in the previous two elections. I live in a state that's full of Union Democrats and Hillary lost it. She was the first Democrat to lose this state since Dukakis.

The elections were perfectly fair. The candidate who performed best under the system that is mandated by the constitution, prevailed.

If the presidency was based on the national popular vote, everyone's campaigns would have been waged differently. It's all speculation about who would have won if the rules had been different.

In what way would the world have been better off if Gore had won in 2000 or Hillary in 2016? Are you talking about the Iraq and Afghan wars? Those military actions that most Democrats in congress voted in favor of taking?

Under Trump, the stock market is hitting all time highs. Personally, my 401k is up over 15% in just the most recent quarter.

Enough with the sour grapes. If put up a better candidate if you want to win.

LK

Re: Which billionaire is funding this one?

[ShanghaiBill]

Real estate is more expensive here in Cali, but we sold a place/bought a place, so it doesn't really figure into our expenses.

Here is a list of things that make California unaffordable to most people:

1. Housing

So, yes, you are right, it is affordable, as long as you ignore housing.

Re: Which billionaire is funding this one?

[Chas]

The fuck it isn't.

Money is being pulled out of these people's pockets to pay for things they do not support in any way, shape or form.

Taxation without representation?

Basic freedoms being abridged to appease political ideologues?

Only if Puerto Rico gets statehood, too

[jordanjay29]

All of these split-state movements make no sense as long as we're keeping Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands in territory hell. If anyone deserves statehood, it's these places, not some disgruntled counties in a long-established state.

Obio0vusly republicans

[kfh227]

That state has the most electoral votes and it is always a democratic state. If they split it into 6, they could probably get 2 of those new states to be republican states.

What horse crap. Can we do that with Florida too?

Re:Obio0vusly republicans

[serviscope_minor]

the only parts in CA which are liberal are the cities, everyone else is just forced along for the ride

So the vast majority of californians are liberal then and the tiny minority remaining are just forced along for the ride?

I don't why country dwellers think that city folk count for less just because they live closer together. Your value as a person is not proportional ot the amonut of land you own.

I am 100% In Favor Of This Proposal

[Ferretman]

Honestly most of California has basically nothing at all in common with the coastal regions they want to separate from. I'm not sure how the electoral shakedown will break out, roughly 50/50 I'd guess.

Ferret

Better idea: Split the US in two countries

[Anonymous Coward]

Better idea: Split the US in two countries. The Red States and the Blue States. And build a wall between the two.

It is obvious that conservatives and liberals have two fundamentaly different and irreconcilable ways of seeing the world, two completely different and opposite cultures, and that their union will never be anything else but a neverending compromise between the two that satisfies noone and only breeds frustration, anger and hatred. The civil war never really ended, people just stopped killing each other. The US is simply living under a century old cease fire.

Let the two countries in one part their own ways amicably. This way the red states will be able to continue electing their beloved Donald Trumps and the blue states their Harvey Weinsteins, and everyone will be happy.

Let's keep things even

[skam240]

If we're going to do this then maybe we should trim the liberal parts of Texas off to create another state as well to keep things even. Otherwise a plan like this is just tilting the federal government to the Right.

Interesting budget quandry...

[michael_cain]

If you dig into the details of the current California budget and look at the cash flows for roads, schools, medical care, and a couple of other things, what you find is a huge amount of money transferred from the coastal areas that would be in one new state to the rural areas that would be in the other. This is not unusual; it happens in a lot of states. (I used to do that kind of study professionally.)

Split the way it's drawn, the rural need for subsidies would remain largely unchanged, but the burden to provide the money would fall solely on the few cities (San Jose, San Diego) and their suburbs that got stuck in the rural state. Given a choice after they see a draft budget, San Jose and San Diego are going to scream about being included in the rural state.

Re:Interesting budget quandry...

[michael_cain]

Then let the rural areas demand higher prices for their products, and see how far they get. (Note: too many family farms have sold out to large corporate interests; it won't work.)

Everyone sells their products. Everyone pays their property and sales and income taxes. The state collects a pile of cash and distributes it. In a substantial majority of cases, the result of formulas is that suburban areas send money to the rural areas (urban areas too, but less so).

A few years ago Colorado had a 51st State movement. I had an opportunity to interview one of the principle movers. I pointed out that when they cut themselves off from the urban/suburban areas, they would not be able to afford to have a state university, would have to let hundreds/thousands of miles of paved rural roads revert to gravel, and leave tens of thousands of people without health insurance. You know what he told me? "Those are features, not bugs."

I have an idea ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since California was stolen from Mexico, let's just give the whole thing back where it rightly belongs.