As Kate’s “O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas” posts frequently prove, California is an absolute mess, proof positive of an entirely corrupt and incompetent government. While “The Big One” may indeed come one day, tech investor Tim Draper has a much quicker solution: Break it up into 6 smaller states. He argues that this will create competition, which will in turn force governments to do a much better job.
Recently Draper sat down with Adam Carolla to discuss his initiative. Columnist Jeff Jacoby weighs in here. If you know someone in California, you can direct them to the Six Californias website.
Canada will be forced to do the same thing eventually; it’s in the natural societal flow of avoiding civil war inherent in multiculturalism.
Liberalism prefers to dam natural societal flows and attempts to control everything.
It may sound good, but it’s not.
In both Colorado and California the secession movements are driven by democrats hoping to gerrymander the senate.
Basically, six Californias means (or so they think) 10 democrat senators versus 2 republicans – i.e. nearly permanent control of the senate.
When the answer to one large currupt government , that is stealing the freedoms and $$ of their serfs, is to make 6 of the same you know insanity has taken full root.
And which “California” gets thrown to the proverbial socialist wolves? Well, the one more than the others at any rate.
Britain/UK has been getting worse for at least sixty years. One thinks it can’t get worse but it always does.
Now illegal immigrants (“asylum seekers”) are treated better than natives. Old age pensioners, who paid in, get less than asylum seekers on welfare, who didn’t.
The only end to it will be national bankruptcy.
Coming soon to a country, state or province near you.
A six state California will take a bit longer as the parasites flee from the bankrupt bits to the rest.
Exactly. Beat me to it Paul. Unless we divide Texas and a few other red states into smaller bits this is a very very bad idea.
What Paul Murphy said above is 100% bang on.
6 Californias (or 6 ANY states) = 12 Senators, and you can bet that despite the stated intentions, at least 10 of those 12 Senators will end up being Democrats.
Furthermore, if you study detailed voting and legislative trends over the past 20 years, I can make a strong case that the current California has already “made” 3 additional Californias via the “Californication” of Oregon, Nevada and Washington.
People leave California because they don’t like what it has become and/or can no longer afford it, yet they continue voting for similar leftist loons in their new state.
California has to be allowed to financially collapse …and we have to pray that whoever is in charge of America in DC when that happens lets it unfold and does nothing to intervene.
“People leave California because they don’t like what it has become and/or can no longer afford it, yet they continue voting for similar leftist loons in their new state.”
Bingo! This is what is happening in Alberta.
I think people don’t always understand California. The power in California is entirely concentrated in the hands of extremely wealthy liberals that inhabit the surroundings of Los Angeles (Beverly Hills, Bel Air, etc.), the general San Francisco area, and all of the Silicon Valley area. Plus, on the academic side you have the far left University of California, and most notably the Berkeley Campus.
These wealthy liberals and the fellow loons at Berkeley don’t give a rats rear end about what happens to the Californian economy. They don’t give a damn if people leave California. They view California as a giant suburb in a warm climate, where they can get cheap gardeners to tend to their estates and where as professors they can wallow in their liberal ideas. They don’t use public services. The wealthy among them don’t use commercial airlines. Their kids are in private schools.
So while we may think California is going down the tubes, the folks that run the place don’t – this is key. They couldn’t care less what happens outside the left-wing bubble of control in which they live. They couldn’t care less if the economy goes bust. They couldn’t care less if companies leave. Indeed in their minds, all the better. Most of them think California is too crowded.
Remember that from top to bottom California is filled with rabid, and I mean *rabid*, Obama supporters. And California is their little playground, where they live in luxury, enjoy warm weather and enjoy all the benefits of being part of the US with little care about the country as a whole, or their own state.
Once you understand the mind of a wealthy Californian liberal, you understand everything about California.
I will say this much about the proposal: it is my observation that when humans gather in groups that get too large, under one control structure, they become leftists and big government takes over. Look at the EU as a prime example.
One of the great things about the US, and Canada to a large extent, is that the countries are divided into smaller regions, that are mostly autonomous. I have always felt that such an arrangement is healthy for society. I think humans are not wired to be creative in very large societies, and they tend to become ants in large groups.
So perhaps Draper is right, the only hope is to split up California. BUT, unless he can split it into “Conservatives go here”, “Liberals go here”, it will not achieve much.
Coming up with five new state names could be problematic. I mean, after “Moonbatia” and “Dorkville”, where do you go?
Hollywood
Disneyland
SillyCon Valley
RapLand
Bakersfield
SonnyBono
That’s a bang-on description of Californicatia
The Democrats are trying to impose on the US the forces destroying CA.
Those can easily be defeated by starving the state of Federal bailouts, and by eliminating Unions by bringing them under the same antitrust laws that ban other monopolies.
If the problem with California was the size, this proposal might work.
The problem in California are the majority of voters are in favour of their current path. As such, all this proposal will create is 6 polities that are will go down the same path instead of one.
Unless of course some practical thinking group can gerrymander some districts to save one of the Californias.
No matter how far down the drain California goes – just like Detroit – the public will keep voting for the same. As Mark Steyn says, culture trumps politics, and hyper-regulating tax-and-spend big government is simply a fact of life for that state.
Splitting the state into 6 pieces will make no difference, except to multiply a bloated state government across 6 capitals instead of one.
I just finished driving south, through northern California. In Yreka, they’re selling hats and t-shirts promoting “the State of Jefferson,” which is what northern separatists want to call the 51st state, to reside between Oregon to the north and (the hated) California to the south.
All California needs is the Terminator..
This movement has been going on since I lived there briefly in the nineties. Nothing new. I suspect that two states might be more likely to bring a sane conservativeish philosophy to the new state based on how the split happened. Northern CA plus the central valley would be fairly conservative, problem is I don’t see them letting the CV go. It’s where much of their money comes from.