Though the Democrats who run the failed state of California insist that Governor Jerry Brown is leading them to a new era of prosperity, the results are mixed at best. The state is riddled with public employee pension problems, environmental over-regulation, and high taxes, to list just a few.
The problem? The whole system of representative democracy is skewed to insiders. The ratio of voters to representatives is way too high — twice as high as the next nearest state.
The best thing California has going for it is the right of citizen initiative. Typically, it (and the voters) get blamed for the unwillingness of their “representatives” to stay within their means.
Enter Timothy Draper, Founder and Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a billionaire Silicon Valley professional. He has been promoting an initiative to split California into six smaller states: provisionally dubbed Jefferson (northern counties that have a long history of separatist unrest), Silicon Valley (which could become the richest per capita state in the union), North California (a coastal region from San Francisco south to Monterey County), Central California (a big expanse of many interior counties), West California (four west coast counties including Los Angeles), and South California (five counties including San Diego). Draper insists that his idea is the “something structural, something fresh” that the state needs to prevent further decline.
The initiative has received enough petition signatures to qualify for a 2016 ballot.
But is it a waste of time? Even if Californians vote for it in great numbers, the U.S. Constitution requires a formal request from the state legislature. And the California Assembly is not likely to cede so much power.
Which would provide another valuable lesson about how anti-Californian California’s leaders are.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Six Flags Over California”
A comment on yesterday’s topic of the Oligarchs controlling and enforcing the status quo. Today Fedex was indicted for “drug dealing”. People in mass are buying drugs overseas for a simple economic reason. They are anywhere from 1/2 to 9/10s cheaper overseas. Big pharma cannot have it’s prime market destroyed by overseas competition, even if they themselves are selling the same exact drugs in other markets for 1/2 to 9/10s the price they charge here in the US. Consequently Fedex & UPS will pay a heavy price for delivering the competitive priced drugs.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014 – 07-17/fedex-indicted-for-distributing-controlled-drugs-online
As for today’s topic, i wish them well. It’s another example of decentralization happening. Most of us have totally lost representation by our elected leaders and they control the tax flow and do as they damn well please despite proving year after year they they have no intention of governing in a responsible way. It’s happening in Scotland, Spain, East Ukraine among others.
It is the people that vote them in fault. Stupid people deserve what they get.
Actually Linda, 1/2 of all paychecks now flow from government sources whether it is federal, local, state, social security or whatever. Government has gotten so large now that they are voting themselves back in. Basically if you are “inside” you rule, control the money, tv time and therefore the vote. And with out-of-control government debts, pension obligations, etc, they are only just starting to put on the squeeze. It will get much worse with the debt track and if.…..if and when people stop loaning money to the insolvent governments and interest rates explode higher one morning then the western world will implode. We’re just trying to marshall enough votes to stave off the inevitable for a while. This is one of the side effects of Federal Reserve policy. They have crushed interest rates in the name of stimulating the economy which cancels out the market signal to the government(which should be rising interest rates the closer you get to over-indebtedness) that normally forces an entity to reign in it’s spending. It’s kind of like increasing your credit card line of credit right before you file bankruptcy.
So, through that lens, you see where the blame lies. It is in the status quo of present leadership on both sides, with the power to control media, manipulate the news flow, present deceitful government statistics, give paid time off to employees to run down and vote for all these ill-advertised local Tuesday elections to raise this or that tax and the govt employees know exactly how to vote, too and all the while pretending there are two parties when they are complicit in destroying the finances of the country.
I’ve heard of California breaking into two to three states but six? Harry Reid would drool at the thought of ten more senators, ALL of them Democrats.
Notice that the proposed states all cut across the state from east to west. The coastal areas would continue to dominate the inland sections of California.
I’m not at all certain that this would be a full positive boon to the Democrats. Indeed, the suspicion that it wouldn’t be a uniform gain is probably why Paul Jacob is right: the Assembly will balk.
Jefferson would split from the Democrats fast, I bet, at the very least sending rural Dems in place of urban Dems — and there’s a big difference, there.
South California has Orange County, which the liberal press loves to make fun of as weirdo country, a place for nutball Republicans, like the Freedom Newspapers that serviced the area for years.
Even interior Central California has lots of Republican support, doesn’t it? The real stronghold of Dems is in the concentrated population centers in the Bay area and L.A.
I even wonder about Silicon Valley. It’s been pretty solidly Dem for a long time, but these are people whose loyalty is not ideological but cultural. They could turn on a dime.
My prediction is that if the Dems in the Assembly do comply with a demand from the voters to split up the state (something I’ve been arguing for for years, though I never dared to suggest a whopping six state diversity), they would wish to see Jefferson combined with Silicon Valley, to give less power to rebel voters, thereby increasing the chance of a continuing Democratic advantage.
Far northern California has harbored separatist dreams since World War II. The name “Jefferson” didn’t come out of nowhere. It was the preferred moniker of the separatist movement, which has gained ground, again, in recent years.
This is all very interesting.
I collected signatures on that initiative. Even if it passes, even if the legislature formally requests it of the Feds, there is no possible way Senators will agree to allow their club to be diluted by ten additional Senators.
What I told signers when I was petitioning is that it’s only an exercise.
Hey guys … isn’t there something in the USA constitution that prevents a new state being formed by dividing an existing state?