Plan To Split California Into Six States Gets OK To Gather Signatures
sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com
sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com
That said, as a former San Luis Obispan, the notion of being an adjunct of Los Angeles (see http://www.sixcalifornias.info/) makes me shudder. And having Los Angeles and Orange County in separate states makes no sense. If you were going to carve up California along lines of economic and cultural interest, then I'd adjust the Six Californias as follows:
Jefferson (blue, in the far north) -- looks about right (and has a great history, worth reading about).
Northern California -- I'd swap Alpine, Mono, and Inyo counties into this state (from Central Valley), as this creates a state which is dominated by wilderness, tourism, and natural resources.
Central Valley (red) -- I'd take San Benito from Silicon Valley, to create a state which is unified by agriculture.
Silicon Valley (yellow) -- I'd shift San Benito to Central Valley and Monterrey to Central Coast (green), creating a more technology-centric state.
Central Coast (green) -- take Monterrey, but send Ventura and Los Angeles to Southern California. This is a rural area dominated by nature and tourism, and shouldn't be swallowed by Los Angeles politics.
Southern California (orange) -- take Ventura and Los Angeles from Central Coast, so as not to split up the overall conurbation.
Chances of this (or any version thereof) actually happening? Nil -- but it's kind of fun to think about.
I don't think we've ever valued democracy for its own sake. The founders were much more focused on the States and checks and balances. Democracy had to fit into that framework.
[Edit] the proper rights of a British subject became the proper rights of an American citizen and should affect the House directly.
First, quite obviously, the borders of California were no part of that deliberation.
Second, the focuses of the founders don't have to be our own. They had legitimate concerns, of which we should also not lose sight, but that doesn't mean democracy is an illegitimate concern.
As to unreasonable: It's a rare issue that unites the smaller states. From a national political perspective, Vermont and Wyoming couldn't be much further apart. So I am not persuaded by arguments that assume there is a threat of a small-state Senate alliance against the overwhelming wishes of the rest of the country.
On the other hand, if you want to argue that overuse of the filibuster has put an inordinate amount of legislative power in the hands of the Senate majority leader and a dozen middle-of-the-road Senators, I agree. But the solution to that problem is to fix the filibuster, not destroy the Constitutional balance between states and the Federal government.
"From a national political perspective, Vermont and Wyoming couldn't be much further apart."
Vermont and Wyoming are strongly united on a number of issues (guns immediately springs to mind). I'm not the least bit sure that Central California and Silicon Valley would be united on fewer. The notion that Vermont and New Hampshire should be separate; Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhodes Island should be separate; Maryland and Virginia should be separate; but Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco all belong in the same state is laughable.
"But the solution to that problem is to fix the filibuster, not destroy the Constitutional balance between states and the Federal government."
Right, because when they wrote the Constitution, Jefferson and Madison and friends carefully laid out California's borders.
When California entered the Union, its population was less than 1% of the total US population. Now it's well more than 10%. The borders that made sense when it was a state like Wyoming don't make sense anymore. It has population like the eastern seaboard, it has industry like the eastern seaboard, it should have borders more like the eastern seaboard.
Bay Area and LA Area pay the bulk of the taxes in the state - there is a net transfer of money from the rich counties on the coast to the poorer ones in the north and east, in short, it would take counties that get many services paid for and supplied by the state as a whole, to a level that could possibly resemble a third world country.
California is unmanageable - but its because via the initiative process the voters have boxed everything into a corner.
edit: It seems they target to have a better ratio senators/californians and to get rid of the debt.
details: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/19/tim-draper-six-californias-...
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/02/05/rich-stat... http://bber.unm.edu/econ/us-pci.htm (per capita income list as of 2012)
However, many eastern states can be traversed in on common travel routes in about that time. In clear traffic, you can do the Maryland stretch of I-95 in about two hours. Connecticut and Rhode Island are not particularly large.
That discussion includes some breakdowns of possible voting numbers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6957513). I don't think it would be a slam dunk for Republican senators but it would be a lot more likely. (dragonwriter's followup to my numbers analysis is important and accurate.)
It's a step (possibly a small one) to diluting the DEM monolith that his California.
Today CA can be depended to field a DEM slate of senators, and send DEM electors to the electoral college [1]. If broken up, then some of the new senators would presumably go GOP, as would some of the electoral votes.
It would be fascinating to see the outcome of such a plan. The results would be interesting from poli sci, economics, and sociology perspectives.
[1] Is CA an all-or-nothing state, or is it proportional? I don't recall.
1) latest one http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/04/4798111/missouris-koste...
I'd venture a guess that 2 maybe 3 (if also looking at the numbers for the house elections) of the 6 new states may go republican.
I do think it might be a problem for Democrats in the first place because CA would no longer be an electoral fortress. Much like the plan to split NYC and surrounding counties from NY state.
I am more interested in water policy once a split occurs. I would imagine some desalination plants would finally be built.
I agree, although there are some desalinization plants already.
By staying one state, California has the benefit of being one of the most powerful economies on the planet which, even without having things pass at the federal government, allows significant world power.
California's car efficiency standards over the years for instance basically forced every car company that sells a car in the US to up their efficiency. There is no chance that would happen if it was just 1/6th of California.
I ain't buying new flags...
I would take this news article a bit more seriously if they had spelled "states" correctly in the first sentence...