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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the states-of-mind dept.

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.

16 of 565 comments (clear)

  1. Which billionaire is funding this one? by HangingChad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
    1. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by skam240 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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    2. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    3. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by DFurno2003 · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    4. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    5. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    6. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by macsimcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    7. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by BlueStrat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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

      --
      Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
    8. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    9. Re:Which billionaire is funding this one? by skam240 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "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.

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  2. Only if Puerto Rico gets statehood, too by jordanjay29 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. Obio0vusly republicans by kfh227 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Obio0vusly republicans by serviscope_minor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  4. Better idea: Split the US in two countries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Interesting budget quandry... by michael_cain · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Interesting budget quandry... by michael_cain · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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."