NEEEEEEEEVER going to happen.
The imbecilic unified primary initiative passed, I fully expect this one to pass as well.
Never happen. NO WAY the Calif. and US Senates and Houses will break up the state. It goes against the interests of EVERYONE except a very few billionaires that nobody likes because they won’t effing WORK WITH ANYONE to any productive, SANE goal.
This is a tax dodge for the 1%, ponied up as “reform”, and fraudulently hawked to harried consumers by folding-table-manning MORONS in front of Targets and Walmarts. It’s horseshit of the first order.
what’s wrong with the unified primary thing?
Why stop at six? According to the latest census, the 2014 population estimate for California is 38,340,000 people. I propose we divide it into 38,340,000 states, one per person.
Granted, by 2016 that number will have to change, but we can worry about it when we get there.
The west coast would pick up 10 additional seats in the Senate and 10 additional votes in the Electoral College. Don’t expect Californians to fight balkanization - expect the east coast states to fight it. This initiative may be about taxation, but it is also about representation.
It’s basically a dodge to ensure that only well-funded establishment candidates can ever appear in the general election. You have to run a full, statewide campaign in the primary, which means you have to be rolling in money or already anointed as the representative of your party by someone other than the rank and file. If your party fields a wide selection of candidates in the primary you run the very real risk of your top vote-getter coming in third, and thus your party being completely unrepresented in the general.
Oh, I’m sorry, I mean it ensures that oh-so-wonderful mushy moderates can lead us all to middle-of-the-road nirvana, because politics is a two dimensional line where all that matters is “balance”.
[edit: I need to purge the word “basically” from my vocabulary.]
Except that it’s pretty clear that the division has been done to ensure that instead of two Democratic senators there would be six each of Republicans and Democrats, and the 10 extra electoral college votes would be meaningless, as each lesser state would flip one way or another, mostly cancelling each other out with a maybe a one or two vote Democratic edge.
Not that I’m a fan of the Electoral College: that 18th century nonsense needs to die in a fire. But before it does, California would be basically taking itself out of presidential elections (as would any state that went to a proportional distribution while most states remain winner-take-all).
Anyway, I can’t believe this isn’t the story linked here:
It shouldn’t be much of a fight. Thus far Timothy Draper seems to be the only one inside or outside of California who actually thinks this thing has legs.
I don’t see why - with the help of modern technology - you can’t have your country become the first Fractal States of America, dynamically re configuring itself as the relevant populations move about.
Crazy talk from start to finish.
Also… Water rights???
I’m honestly shocked it’s gotten this far. It’s such a bad idea on so many levels, I can only assume any support it’s received has been ironic.
It seems like the idea is to split things such that “red” portions of the state would have more political clout, but it would completely fuck those areas, as they’re both poor and agricultural. In other words, they’re being subsidized by the “blue” portions of the state, both in terms of money and water. Turn “Central California” into its own state, and it’d be an impoverished dust-bowl within a decade.
Oh good lord. This is a naked attempt to weaken California. As if the future six states would collaborate on anything any more than Nevada and California collaborate on anything.
Further, as a fifth generation Californian from the Bay Area, there is zero chance anyone in my family would vote to leave “California” to join “Silicon Valley.” We’d vote to leave the rest of the US first.
If you’ve got the cash to hire enough petition-circulators you can get anything on the ballot eventually. A lot of people will sign a ballot petition just to make the person with the clipboard go away.
The rivalry between Texas, California, and Florida for the (possibly joint) titles of Stupidest State and Craziest State rages on.
At the very least, the boundaries for the proposed splits don’t seem horribly gerrymandered.
One state, to be called Silicon Valley, would include the tech hub along with the San Francisco Bay Area. Jefferson, named after the third U.S. president, would encompass the northernmost region. The state capital of Sacramento would be in North California, while South California would be made up of San Diego and the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles.
L.A. itself would be part of a state called West California.
And appropriately enough, the new poorest state in the United States, Central California isn’t worth mentioning.
