How to fix California? Make six of them, says billionaire Tim Draper

The Guardian ^ | July 18 2014 | Andrew Gumbel

[PoloSec]

Tim Draper loves California so much he’d like to see six of them.

The Silicon Valley venture capitalist, best known for backing such companies as Hotmail and Skype in the early days of the internet boom, believes government in his home state is so broken down that the only way to fix it is to break it up – like taking an axe to a creaking corporation with too many unprofitable divisions and too much bureaucracy choking its potential.

And so he dreams of Silicon Valley, his home turf, getting the chance to run itself; Los Angeles becoming its own smog-choked fiefdom that can create whatever tax incentives it wants to stop film and television production leaving town; San Diego and the long desert border dealing with the immigration crisis by itself; and the sparsely populated areas in the east and north of the state getting some autonomy – not to mention the right to send two senators each to Washington.

It’s the sort of idea one might hear floated over a dinner table or in a spirited debate in a bar. Since Draper is a billionaire, though, he has paid professional signature-gatherers to muster popular support for his dream of splitting California into six and seems likely to get his proposal on the ballot in 2016. He claims to have gathered a staggering 1.3 million signatures – more than 7% of California’s vote-eligible population – of which he formally delivered just a small initial consignment earlier this week.

The reaction, at least so far, has run from bemused to outraged. Nobody – except perhaps Draper himself – thinks the measure stands the slightest chance of passing. (California voters are a lot more indulgent about putting measures on the ballot than they are about approving them.) But that hasn’t stopped

[MarMema]

Agree. And get rid of Jerry Brown.