Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/25/californias-governor-jerry-b.html
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My aura smiles and never frowns.
Me-in-the-80s never ever would have predicted me-in-the-10s’ thoughts on Gov. Brown.
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And when they successfully succeed from the US, I will be first in line to become a California citizen!
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My only disappointment in Jerry was in the 1992 primaries when John Kerrey challenged him saying “Are you saying I’m bought and paid for?” The answer should have been YES. Otherwise he’s been the guy Bernie should have been, he’s actually done things and governed, gotten into the trenches and was mayor of a struggling unglamorous city after he was governor, rather than just be a gadfly and minor annoyance to the system.
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CA cannot secede from the US, that would play into Russia’s hands of creating a powerful far-right country.
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California doesn’t have to secede, it just has to resist and set an example for other liberal states. Fortunately, it has the demographic, the industrial, and the cultural clout to do so.
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I’ve spent more of my life knowing of Brown as a Dead Kennedys’ lyric than I have knowing of him as an actual politician.
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Hey, as long as California covers its own pension liabilities, and builds some new reservoirs to mitigate future drought, I’m all for it.
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Say it! Say it!
CALEXIT! 
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I’m sure you are for it, I’ll assume for different reasons than Putin is. However, as you imply separatist movements in modern OECD countries always run into a fiscal wall: none of them are ever willing to take their share of the federal debt and other obligations with them when they leave.
That’s especially true if they’ll have to spend billions and billions on desalination facilities after separation (because Independent Cascadia and Canada will only be willing to give up so much of their water to keep the lawns of Bel Air green).
So I’m afraid Calexit will have to remain a happy fantasy of a North American region where delusional conservatives and myopic libertarians aren’t constantly wrecking sane and sustainable policies.
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California goes then New York. Soon the right wing left over country is not so powerful. And this is bluster now, but wait till drumpf tanks the economy in addition to tearing up the Constitution.
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I believe that sufficient dams and reservoirs to capture rainfall and snowmelt would be a lot cheaper than desalination.
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I love that he came out to see Linda Ronstadt while I worked as production house crew at the Concord Pavilion.
She called him “MoonBeam”!
Gotta like that.
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Those aren’t cheap, either. California has a lot of reservoirs already, but the problem is they’re almost empty and won’t be re-filled anytime soon. If you ever do the north-south drive along Interstate 5 seeing them is a very sobering sight.
There aren’t too many places in the state that new dams could be erected with that goal, either. Desalination is their next option, since it doesn’t depend on rainfall or buying up and developing large swaths of pricey land.
I’m sure some of the Calexit people are Silicon Valley techno-utopians who believe that one of them can come up with a cheaper version of a desalination plant and “disrupt” water, but until that happens this will be a pipe dream.
Figuratively and literally on the right.
If California becomes solely responsible for its own water supply then the rest of the nation should be responsible for growing its own damn food.
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It’s possible that the outcome we’re currently driving toward is a transfer of power back to the states. We’ve already seen the states defy the federal government on marijuana laws. The recent GOP proposal to let states keep Obamacare may be another step in this direction.
And, really, why not? Not every issue has to be decided on the federal level. Let blue states be blue and red states be red.
“Almost empty”?
Here’s the current status of the California State Water Project’s major reservoirs:
Some of those are currently releasing water because they’re above the level reserved for storage, and into the portion of the capacity reserved for flood control.
Additionally, our major snowpacks are already above average levels for the entire year, and at or above the historical maximum level for this date.
Our reservoirs are nowhere near empty, and our snowpack is at record levels.
How you get “nearly empty and unlikely to be refilled soon” from that, I have no idea.
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Not a bad plan actually. Californians forced to balance their own books might see 80% of their water going to feed 2% of their economy as a liability.
The Balkanization of the US is a fun and fascinating thought experiment. Forget actual state lines, lots of natural border/demographic maps have been drawn. Cascadia is a great for everything west of the cascades and Sierras, but what name for east of the Appalachians and north of the Potomac? And pity poor Chicago, all alone there on the lake.
I’ve heard talk of old school “general” strikes. What about a tax equality strike, each state withholds the percentage that they don’t get back from the Feds. That’ll teach the Red State “rugged individualists” just how independent they actually are from Blue State commies.
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Unless of course the state is doing something the feds don’t like (legalizing same sex marriage, common sense gun laws, making sure people can’t use religion to hammer people down) and then the feds have to do something about it.
That’s how Drumpf/TGOP will see it.
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