Posted on 03/09/2014 11:24:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
"I love Germany so much that I am glad there are two of them," the French novelist and Nobel laureateFrancois Mauriac commented acerbically during the Cold War. Investor Tim Draper loves California so much that he thinks there should be six of them.
Draper is one of Silicon Valley'ssuperstar venture capitalists, an early funder of numerous high-tech enterprises, including, most famously, Skype and Hotmail. He is also the prime mover behind the "Six Californias" initiative, a proposal to partition the nation's most populous state into six smaller ones. From north to south, those new states would be: Jefferson, North California, Central California, Silicon Valley (including San Francisco), West California (including Los Angeles), and South California.
With 38 million people spread over such a vast and varied territory, Draper argues, a monolithic California has grown ungovernable. The state's population is more than six times as large as the average of the other 49 states, and too many Californians feel estranged from a state government in Sacramento that doesn't understand them or reflect their interests. He is far from the first to say so. Plans to subdivide California have been put forward since the earliest days of statehood in 1850. In an 1859 plebiscite, voters approved by a landslide a proposal to split off Southern California into a separate state. (The measure died in Congress, which was in turmoil over the looming Civil War.)
Can Draper's six-state plan do better? It moved one step closer to plausibility last month, when California's secretary of state gave backers the go-ahead to begin collecting the necessary petition signatures to put "Six Californias" on the ballot. If 808,000 signatures are submitted by July 14, the measure could go to voters in November.
Clearly, a six-way Golden State split is the longest of long shots, and critics aplenty have already started blasting Draper's proposal. But even many of the critics agree that California has become an unwieldy, unmanageable mess.
"No other state contains within it such contradictory interests, cultures, economic and political geography,"writes Keith Naughton at PublicCEO, a website that covers state and local California issues. "It has become impossible to even remotely reconcile the array of opposing forces. The only way to get anything done is to shove laws and regulations down a lot of unwilling throats." In the Los Angeles Times, business columnist Michael Hiltzik claims the economic fallout from the Six Californias plan would be "horrific" — he's especially disturbed that the proposed new state of Central California "would instantly become the poorest state in the nation," while Silicon Valley, where Draper lives, would be one of the wealthiest. Yet Hiltzik concedes that "Californians have lost contact with their government as more budgeting and administration [have] been upstreamed to Sacramento" and as state policies have "taken decision-making for everything from pothole repair to art and music classes out of the hands of the locals."
It's been a long time since an existing state was partitioned into smaller states. It last happened in 1863, when 50 northwestern counties of Virginia were renamed West Virginia and admitted as the 35th state. More than 40 years earlier, Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts since the 1650s, voted overwhelmingly for a divorce, and eventually entered the union as a new state in 1820. In both cases, separation was driven, then embraced, by communities and people who had grown alienated from a state government dominated by interests they didn't share. West Virginia's mountain people had chafed under Richmond's rule, and sharply opposed the formation of the Confederacy. Mainers had long complained that the Legislature in Boston — where Maine was underrepresented — was not only too far away, but too willing to sacrifice their interests to those of Massachusetts.
Maybe those chapters from 19th-century history have no relevance to California today. Or maybe Draper is onto something that shouldn't be dismissed too casually. Last September, in California's rural north, Siskiyou County and Modoc County voted to pursue secession from California and support the creation of a new State of Jefferson. Local residents crowded the Siskiyou board of supervisors' chambers, and when a speaker asked who in the audience favored the idea, the local paper reported, "nearly every hand in the room was raised."
Conventional wisdom says Draper's scheme hasn't got a chance. But venture capitalists have a knack of seeing openings and opportunities that most people miss. Would "Six Californias" would be an improvement over the status quo? That's definitely a debate worth having.
I like the split, I am all in.
So how many more liberal senators and house members is this going to give us?
Are the rest of the states going to have a say in this?
The House would not change, that is based on population distribution.
Only the Senate would increase.
the 1/6 th that controls the water controls the other 5
Just as one state is obviously centered on LA and another on SD, so SF will demand a state of its own, rather than having the city and its hinterland split up between a state based on San Jose and one based on Sacramento.
I notice differences in the maps relating to whether Bakersfield goes with LA or with the Central Valley. I don't know which way they'd go if this becomes a reality, but maybe Santa Barbara wouldn't want to be the tail to the new LA state either.
The house is not going to change in any significance, its about population which stays the same.
Four of the six have a good chance to elector more conservative senators.
I'd say 3 have a good chance of electing Republicans, but they may not be what many people mean by conservatives.
I would add the blue counties of "North California" to "Silicon Valley" and call the resulting state North California. (It doesn't make sense to have the northern suburbs of San Francisco in another state).
The red counties of "North California" could be divided--those north of I-80 added to Jefferson, those south added to "Central California." Maybe "Sierra" would be a better name than Central California. Possibly add San Luis Obispo County to that state.
I would then rename "West California" to "South California" and "South California" to something else...maybe "Pacific" or "Pacifica." Maybe Orange County should be divided with the older suburbs near the L.A. County line going with what Draper calls West California, and the southern part going with what Draper calls South California.
Congress did a pretty good job on the whole of picking names of states when we had under 100 million people--in a nation of over 300 million people there should be people who can come up with some good names for the new states.
Sounds like a good idea, but I believe the site would be better nuked from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure....
“The House would not change, that is based on population distribution.
Only the Senate would increase.”
Woudnt this be a net gain for conservatives ?
Right now = 2 Liberal Senators forever
The split may be 6 Liberal and 6 Conservative Senators
This would appear to change from 100% liberal to 50%/50% ?
Tax payers would end up paying more and Mexico would take the lower states
I think so.
Is “egg sucking dog” state one of the names being considered?
Its a start just not to be Boxer and Finstein.
These areas are more conservative than people realise, they will be energized at having a real chance to elect the people who represent them and not just SF.
What?
That makes no sense.
The southern CA states would be less likely to be supportive of illegals.
Its the SF liberals who foisted them on the state.
Besides we own all the guns. (Jefferson state would too)
“Think thats bad? Wait until you have 6 separate states fighting over water rights, etc.”
It would seem most Water, Power and Food is generated /grown in the more conservative proposed states but still technically owned by the liberal states ie P.G.E, S.M.U.D. + various large Agrcultural holdings
Perhaps the poorer new states could dream up a nice tax for our exports?
I would be living in the poorest state of the union and would expect to be compensated by the evil rich.
Not that I'm aware of, but it might be worth translating it into the various Indian languages indigenous to California. If it sounds good, use it. Several of the existing states have names of Indian origin that are sufficiently garbled that no one is sure what the name means.
“These areas are more conservative than people realise, they will be energized at having a real chance to elect the people who represent them and not just SF.”
You are on with this point. I would live in Central Ca. I’d be happy to not have to pay the tax rates of current Ca.
Further it would be nice when I travel to not have to apologize for living in Ca.
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