Won’t work - the vast, vast majority of water use is for agriculture, and they aren’t going to pay desalinated water rates to grow almonds. On the other hand, most of that food leaves the state, so we don’t need it - and it doesn’t add that much to the state’s economy, especially once you subtract the various subsidies. So the rest of the country can go ahead and buy their food from Mexico (with an extra 20% tariff on top), no problem.
California is also perfect for solar, if we’d ever get our thumbs out and get serious about it.
Even if it was a good idea, CalExit is supremely dumb, unworkable horseshit, but I think there are various questions Another one is, I think, what good does California do the rest of the country under an administration like Trump’s, and how does that balance with the damage done to the citizens of California by the Trump administration?
Worse, even - there might be more tax money to be spent on the citizens of the state, but as a separate country, even more people would want to come here from other states, thus exacerbating all the existing problems.
This sentiment by Trumpists is increasingly baffling to me - because looking around, I see liberals are looking at what’s happening in the lives of the rustbelt/midwest, but pointing out, “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t vote for assholes who are promising to make the problems worse” just pisses them off even more. Also, a certain amount of that rustbelt narrative is bullshit, too: Peter’s Choice – Mother Jones
Still needs a confirming vote in Congress. Two other places need the option to become states: DC & Puerto Rico.
*That’s why Clinton’s “my turn” run, with the DNC not being committed to flipping Congress, was such shit. Increasing representation is the key to finally putting down the death cult minority.
Unlike with the attempts at separating Quebec from Canadia, California can live on it’s own; beyond that, I have come to think that maybe the rest of the 'states could use a special period, where the “evil liberals” really do pack up their stuff and take off.
It might give people some needed perspective, and maybe shake loose some stuff. Or set some stuff on fire.
I keep thinking of other things that would cause potential problems
The pension bomb. The dollar. Monetary policy.
Even if Calexit were possible to pull off on a practical level, in order for it to work out as a positive for California everything has to go right, and just one or two things going wrong could sink the state. Too much downside for not enough upside to take a risk with such huge unknowns.
No Cali don’t leave, we need you now more than ever.
In fact if just a few hundred thousand of you 38mil would move into these empty red lands we could take this whole thing back. There are other nice places not on the coast, promise.
I agree with you, I don’t see any reason why it has to be just CA.Taking OR and WA along for the ride makes perfect sense, as well as the whole northeast.
I also agree with all of those that say that exiting isn’t the answer, but the point is to show a willingness to exit if things get bad enough. Right now Trump is doing things at a national level, if that extends to trying to control things at the state level, then maybe it is time to seriously think about succession.
You know Texas sues the Feds for a lot of stuff, mostly EPA. Then they get all bent when cities want to ban fracking, a school district wants to allow trans people to use the bath rooms, or a county says it’s not going to arrest you for being undocumented. Hech the state will even force us to raise our taxes, or give us unfunded mandates. The state governement here are seriously misguided.
I’m 6th Gen Californian – my g’g’g’grandfather rented space in Hangtown to Mr Studebaker so he could make wheelbarrows for gold prospectors. On national holidays, I fly a 31-star American Flag. But unless this requires Californians to give up their citizenship, it’s nonsense in my book. Folks don’t get it both ways. I’ll remain a scallywag.
See the first lines of “Dubious Legality of Unilateral Secession”
“The Constitution does not directly mention secession.[54] The legality of secession was hotly debated in the 19th century, with Southerners often claiming and Northerners generally denying that states have a legal right to unilaterally secede.[55] The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Constitution to be an “indestructible” union.[54] There is no legal basis a state can point to for unilaterally seceding.”
Non unilateral secession was nodded to in White vs Texas. But I’m not aware of anything firm establishing how. The only mention of partitioning in the constitution and the approval of congress pretains to creating new states from parts of old states.
So as I said. At a minimum you’ll need broad support in the full Federal government. Both houses to pass an act seperating the state(s) in question. A president who will sign them. And courts who will buy that you’re appropriately seeking “consent of the states” via that route, and that that part of White is valid, when its inevitably challenged on constitutional grounds. More than likely you’d need broad enough support of the state governments themselves to hit that bar. OR to get an amendment in there laying out a clearer pathway or breaking down the well establish unconstitutional nature of unilateral secession.
That’s all vanishingly unlikely to get pulled off. Any secession attempt that fails at those steps and tries to keep moving towards secession is likely to wind up in military conflict.
So it would be a clearer path of improvement to get representation for the disenfranchised, then get statehood for those areas that still have no representation?
Yes. There are very clear, repeatedly used, constitutional methods for doing all of that.
With secession even before you get to problems of separation, forming a new government, the inevitable economic doldrums, instability, and often severe inequality that come with building a new nation. You’re facing down the fact that the only real way to effect succession is to win a war that you are desperately unlikely to win. The definitive legal argument (really even in the courts) on the subject of secession (of any sort) is that the Confederate surrender at Appomattox sealed the deal. No secession. The surrender itself, and reintegration of the Southern States was an acknowledgement that the right to secede did not exist. To overcome that you need to be able to win that war.
I’ve said this before. My family helped foment, fight in, and win a no shit real guns and bombs revolution. Bifurcating their country from another and then worked to build a new government.
People died. A lot of them. Including a good number of those family members. And the resulting nation was dirt poor, unstable, and riddled with horrid inequality for the next sixty some odd years. And Ireland is considered a rare success story in terms of nation building, a nation who got their shit together shockingly quick.
The events of the Civil War, as you’ve mentioned, do not really address the ability of Congress to add and remove territory. You keep stating that they do, except they don’t. It’s sort of beside the point of what we should do, though, which we seem to be in agreement on.
I still don’t accept your assertion when it comes to White v. Texas having any bearing. The Constitution is pretty clear that the territory of the U.S. can be added to and disposed of by the Congress in any way it sees fit. Unilateral secession is beside the point, and White was argued at a a time when stamping out the idea of secession was paramount. The incidental rhetoric around the decision was if anything, a corollary to the beginning of the “Redemption” era that created Jim Crow.
Congress definitely has the legal power to allow and implement secession. Some kind of civil unrest would likely be something that would make it important enough to do, as you’ve said, so we are both talking in pragmatic, political terms, and secession is kind of a dumb idea in that frame.
The legal precedents set by court cases are quite clear. Unilateral secession, as in secession without direction and assent from all parties involved has been repeatedly and conclusively ruled unconstitutional. So far as I know White v Texas is the only one of those decision that mentions a possible pathway for non-unilateral secession. And so far as I know it does so in passing. And at no point has an actual pathway or legal process for that been laid out. Laws, government structures, policies and subsequent legal cases are all predicated on that precedent.
The results of the civil war absolutely have a bearing on the subject as legal theories about secession are often argued and predicated on the whole succession didn’t work/surrender as an acknowledgement of its unconstitutionality. And that has legal weight, its part of the precedent its all built on. What your talking about here is essentially a legal argument. Attempting to find a pathway through the legal systems and Government of the US to effect secession.
Under the legal frame work of the Constitution the Congress’s legal power with regards to adding or removing territory in the form of States is only mentioned in regards to adding or creating them. There is no stated or implicit method for removing States that are already states. Nor is there any discussion of how States might leave.
Basically the argument you’re presenting was tried. And failed at court multiple times. And would in the present/future in all likely hood. If you press secession even in the face of that legal failure. Well that’s likely to lead to armed conflict. Given the lack of law based options for secession that’s where it ends up. Break the law, forcibly bifurcate yourself from the legal system that disallows it.
You can argue that there is an absolute, above and outside the constitution/nation whatever right to self rule and sovereignty for all people. And in the grand scheme of things I think that’s true. But that puts you in the same place, largely. You’ve stepped out of the bounds of formal secession and into revolution. Which will more than likely take the form of violent conflict.
Secession is a dumb idea for a number of reasons. But that’s the major one. You largely can’t. And once you see that fact you get a much clearer idea of the stakes involved. So are Californians really willing to agitate a military revolt over a discrepancy in federal spending and disproportionate representation in federal elections?
Pick a newly formed nation. Even ours at its outset. Point is if you’re going to advocate breaking off you should understand the stakes. And the risks and problems of sticking around should probably look as bad or worse than those you create by breaking off.
In short:
Those wishing to secede should ask themselves. What are you prepared to do when the rest of the country says “No”? Because in almost all of the long history of that particular question in US law the answer is already no.
It always confuses me when people say this. California’s water comes from California. The 5% of our water we get for SoCal comes from the Colorado River which is half inside California. Literally the border between California and Arizona follows the middle of the Colorado River.
California is geographically isolated from the rest of the U.S, and it has local versions of all the federal agencies. If you don’t live there, you may not understand the degree to which it is already a nation-state.
It’s like if Australia was, for some weird historical reason, part of China, and you were arguing that it would be traumatic for it to separate. It simply would not. It is a political problem, not a practical problem.
