Investor Tim Draper Pushes Ballot Measure Splitting California Into 3 States (sfgate.com) 429
"One of several proposals aiming to split California into multiple smaller states has reportedly reached an important new goal thanks in large part to the efforts of its billionaire champion," writes schwit1. SFGate reports:
Venture capitalist Tim Draper, who previously pushed a proposal that would split California into six states, says that his three-state proposal has enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. On Thursday, Draper said in a statement that the "CAL 3" initiative has collected over 600,000 signatures from Californians who would like to see the state split into three. An initiative needs 366,000 signatures to appear on the ballot. "This is an unprecedented show of support on behalf of every corner of California to create three state governments that emphasize representation, responsiveness, reliability and regional identity," Draper said.
The U.S. Congress would still need to approve the change -- and it's probably useful to remember what happened when Draper tried splitting California into six states. He ultimately turned in 1.3 million signatures for a ballot measure in 2014, "only to see nearly half of them disqualified.
"He ended up about 100,000 short of the valid signatures he needed."
The U.S. Congress would still need to approve the change -- and it's probably useful to remember what happened when Draper tried splitting California into six states. He ultimately turned in 1.3 million signatures for a ballot measure in 2014, "only to see nearly half of them disqualified.
"He ended up about 100,000 short of the valid signatures he needed."
Senators (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: Senators (Score:5, Informative)
Only because you fail to understand the senate exists to represent states. The house is supposed to represent the population / people.
It's the stupid 17th amendment that makes this an issue and it's the main reason our federal government has become some completely disfunctional.
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Only because you fail to understand the senate exists to represent states. The house is supposed to represent the population / people.
It's the stupid 17th amendment that makes this an issue and it's the main reason our federal government has become some completely disfunctional.
The poster doesn't failed to understand anything, they just recognize that it's a dumb system for the modern US.
It made sense in the early US which was literally envisioned as a union of independent states, a pair of Senators meant that each government had representation at the big table.
But as the national identity became established state identity subsided, and the idea of Senators representing the State government no longer made sense. Senators because just another representative for their national parti
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State identity diminished, really?
Unlike most blue states, my state is proud of its heritage, culture, low taxes, and self sufficiency. The people aren't soyboy hipsters (except for one city, but we'll forgive them because creatives should get one small haven).
America would cease to exist if state identity disappeared and became a centralized one. Having states allows us the ability to try out quirky programs like school vouchers, genderless bathrooms, and Marijuana decriminalization.
Centralization isn't always a good thing.
Lots of countries have States or Provinces with strong individual identities and lots of autonomy, I'm not claiming the US is any different, nor that every state is the same. But those identities exist in a balance with each other.
But, if you went back to the revolutionary times, or even civil war times, I suspect the state identity would be a lot stronger than the national identity for most people.
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There can be multiple reasons for the government to be dysfunctional. All compounding on top of one another.
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It's basic US civics. The Congress has 2 houses ostensibly for the reason of compromising on this issue. States have equal reps, populations do not. Now you see why the census is so important, I hope.
Re: Senators (Score:5, Informative)
No it isn't. If ten people live on a forested mountain, the one hundred people in the town in the next valley should not be able to vote to deforest the mountain.
We are a republic. We are not a democracy. Democracies are stupid.
Re: Senators (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, if one hundred people live on a forested mountain, the ten people in the next town over and the 20 people in a different nearby town should not be able to vote to deforest the mountain.
The problem is that the founding fathers never imagined that we would have a single state that is almost two orders of magnitude larger than the smallest state. The result of that huge population difference is twofold:
The net result is that Wyoming has 3 electors and California has 55, whereas proportional to the population, California would have 204. If California were three states, it would still probably not have more than 53 representatives (but it might). It would, however, have 6 senators instead of two, and thus four additional electors. 59 electors is a relatively small improvement, but it can't hurt. If California split into six states (to get within an order of magnitude of Wyoming), that would be ten extra electors.
The only real long-term fix is to either replace PAA 1929 with a true proportional representation law or get the courts to overturn PAA 1929 as an unconstitutional violation of Article I Section 2 Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution as amended. Then change the electoral college so that it matches the congressional behavior, i.e. president is elected by electors proportional to the population, and the vice president (and president of the senate) is elected by two electors per state.
Re: Senators (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been saying this for years. The only way to fix the problems is to add about 2000 new Congressmen. But do you think any of the 435 wants to dilute their power?
Hell no. Why would they. The failure to pass the Apportionment Amendment was the greatest failure of the Republic, it doomed us from the start.
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For a solution to the Electoral College issue, check out the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact. It turns out that the constitution leaves allocating electors up to the states. If enough states (representing the majority of the Electoral College votes) decide to all allocate their votes to the national popular vote winner, then that's the way it works.
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That would only mean that California decides who's president and the balance of power focuses there, leaving the rest of the country with little representation in the federal government. California's issues, needs, and politics would dominate the country. No thanks. There's a reason why we have multiple ways of measuring representation (house and senate) for passing laws and electing leaders.
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No, it really wouldn't. Right now, the balance is tilted severely in favor of the lowest-population states, and there's only a single way of measuring representation for electing the President and Vice President. What I proposed would create a balance that is entirely missing in the executive branch, and would also correct a severe distortion in what was supposed to be (but no longer is) proportional representation in the House of Representatives.
Re: Senators (Score:5, Insightful)
False: in 1776 Virginia had roughly 447,000 people and Georgia had roughly 23,000. If the founders actually had a population that disproportionate how could they not imagine the disparity between California (39 million) and Wyoming (600,000)?
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False: in 1776 Virginia had roughly 447,000 people and Georgia had roughly 23,000
Jeez, why no go back a bit further when VA had 100% of the population. That was a temporary situation and you are being intentionally spurious.
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Re: Senators (Score:3)
I'm sorry your pedant cap has confused you from understanding English.
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Do we trust the good intentions of politicians, or do we enforce their inability to deforest Montana?
Re: Senators (Score:2)
They may not vote to deforest Montana, but they could easily pass envirnonment protection laws that hurt regional economies. Especially as a competitive advantage so that CA companies don't have to compete with companies run under lower standards.
Re: Senators (Score:3)
but they could easily pass envirnonment protection laws that hurt regional economies
It's much more likely that they would pass enviromental protection laws that would ameliorate regional economies by internalizing externalities and removing socialized losses.
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You've got some derp on your chin, either wipe it off or get back in the pile.
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The original federal argument in 1787 was that a strictly popular house would effectively represent the few most heavily populated regions. So the Senate represents areas and the House represents populations. Most states have adopted a similar system.
Re: Senators (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Senators (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's even simpler than that: the US was intended as a voluntary union of states, and "you join us and you lose all ability to control your own future" is not a particularly good selling point for a political union.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, a strictly limited federal government, intended to preserve freedom of movement and trade within the US, and to defend the US against foreigners.
It wasn't supposed to create a progressive welfare state with a strong nationalist streak.
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That's a false dichotomy. The states only need to be subordinate to the federal government in a few areas: external borders, military defen
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RightwingNutjob pointed out:
It's not weird. It's intentional. The intent is to require broad geographic as well as popular consensus to pass laws that apply to the entire country, thereby protecting minority rights from the tyranny of a 50%+1 majority concentrated in any one place.
You're correct about that being the original intent of the bicameral national legislature of the USA. However, in actual practice, the effect has turned out quite differently.
In large part, that's because the Founders could not possibly have forseen the evolution of California, for example, from a Spanish territory a continent away into the largest constituent state of the Union by population, with the largest economy of all the states (and currently the 10th largest in the world
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"Quashing overwhelmingly popular legislation" isn't automatically "tyranny", it may well be liberty. For example, "expropriate the Jews" may be "overwhelmingly popular" (it was in Nazi Germany), but killing such legislation actually protects liberty.
The US was set up to protect negative rights, i.e., liberty, but the federal government is currently prima
Re: Senators (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not a "weird system" at all: the US is a union of states. If you want the rural states to be part of the union, then those rural states want to be assured that they can't steamrolled by the high population states. It works the same way in the EU. It's the way free and voluntary associations between states work.
The kind of majoritarianism you believe in, extended to the rest of the world, would mean that China and India get to tell everybody else in the world how to live their lives. I don't think that's a good idea.
Re: Senators (Score:2)
Re: Senators (Score:5, Insightful)
I made no such assumption; I mentioned "rural states" because that's what the GP talked about. My point is that statements like "essentially making some people in extremely rural areas have a massively disproportionate influence on the 99% of the rest of the country" pose a false dichotomy, they take it as a given that either one kind of state dictates to the other kind of state or vice versa, with no other possibilities. In fact, people in neither state should have "massive influence" on anybody in another state; if California wants to be a left wing welfare state, Utah wants to be a theocracy, and Texas wants to be a libertarian free market state, they shouldn't be able to impose their preference on each other through the federal government. The reason why progressive and left leaning states want to use the federal government to impose their will on everybody else is because if they don't, people just run away from their uncompetitive high tax regimes. But that ought to be their problem, not anybody else's.
Re: Senators (Score:4, Informative)
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A common misconception. In actual fact, the US has a large and strong political left. What is different about the US is that it has a strong liberal center that keeps the leftists and the theocrats in check, something is pretty much entirely missing in Europe.
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Re: Senators (Score:2)
You know that the blue states overwhelmingly are bankrolling and paying tax money to the red states, right?
17th Amendment weakened the protections (Score:2, Informative)
Thank God for the 17th Amendment, or this would be the United States of New York and California.
The 17th Amendment weakened the protections that the Senate was supposed to provide.
Originally the 2 Senators were selected by the state legislatures. So we had the protection of the small states from day 1, this compromise was necessary to get the constitution ratified in the first place, to get a strong central government in the first place.
However by the 17th's allowing the popular election of the Senate we moved one step closer to the "mob rule" the founding father feared, we lost one of those che
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Land owners fearing mob rule? Color me surprised.
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There are very few revolutions that didn't replace one tyrant with another. Mostly because it takes someone who wants to wield power to start a revolution. And these people are rarely the nice kind.
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I'm pretty sure you can name a few if there are even plenty of them.
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Re: Senators (Score:2)
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Re: Senators (Score:5, Insightful)
That's by design. I'll assume you're not an American and say this: the system is designed to allow equal weighted representation of high VS low population areas. It's the reason we have a large country with a lot of people in it as a democracy and not like China, a large country with a lot of people being governed by a dictator.
Re: Senators (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that the designers envisaged such a large disparity representation that this creates. 37M in CA vs. Wyoming with about .5M?
Re: Senators (Score:3)
Plus the geography. Rhode Island is like this suburb, you could drive thru it on way to NYC and not notice. California, evening of day 2 at milemaker 790, you're like "damn, I've driven across Germany three times, I've driven across India from Pakistan to Nepal and I'm still in the same state!"
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You doubt because you are ignorant [wikipedia.org].
Let me assure you that Virginians envisaged the existence of Delaware and Rhode Island..
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2 Senators part of checks and balances, compromise (Score:5, Informative)
It has always seemed weird to me that California has the same number of senators in Washington as North Dakota and Vermont.
Short version: Works as intended. Small states supposed to have disproportionate power. Forces more compromise.
... and in those days there was probably a large degree of truth to it. Today the Senate is a bit closer in composition to the House due to direct election so we have lost some of those benefits. However the protection of the small states still persists.
Long version:
The organization of the US government is heavily influenced by the concept of checks and balances, forced compromise. Power spread among the three branches of government, executive, legislature, judicial. Power spread among the interests of the people and the interests of the states. Power spread among the slowly changing and the rapidly changing. Power spread among the large and the small states.
The Senate was designed to represent the state governments themselves and to be slowly changing (6 year terms rather than 2). Originally the senators were selected by the state governments. In 1913 things were changed so that Senators were directly elected by the people.
The Senate was also designed specifically so that the large states could not dominate the small states, effectively making them vassals. This was an essential compromise that allowed the formation of the country in the first place. The small states would not have otherwise voted for the constitution if they did not have some sort of protection. The Senate is their protection, their balance, their tool of compromise.
Keep in mind that the founding fathers not only feared powerful central governments, they also feared the poorly educated and overly emotional mob. They were worried the legislature could be dominated by the mob if purely directly elected. The Senate being selected by the state governments was intended to balance the influence of the mob with the influence of the better educated, the latter being more characteristic of those in the state governments compared to the average citizen.
Well, that was the theory
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Short version: a bunch of weird rationalizations why some people should have votes that count more than other votes.
For state issues, everybody in the state should have a vote of equal weight. For federal issues, everybody in the country should have a vote of equal weight. Making Wyoming votes count 3.6 times what a vote in California gets is bullshit derived from historical accidents. There's no good reason for it and the status quo should change.
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Some federal issues have massive impact on individual states.
Small states only get equal representation in one part of the legislature. The other part of the legislature, the one that controls spend
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Small states supposed to have disproportionate power.
So some people are more equal than others. Seems fair.
Try reading past the first line. It does wonders for insight, give it a try.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting ... (Score:3)
Try reading past the first line. It does wonders for insight, give it a try.
Yes, it's all reinforcing the concept that the opinion of a person in a small state is more valuable than that of an individual in a large state.
The people get a proportional say in the House. The states get a proportional say in the Senate. No law can be enacted without the "people's" consent via the House. This is part of the checks and balances of the system that prevent the "wolves" from voting on lunch.
"“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.”
Benjamin Franklin"
The fear of such mob rule is why we are a republic rather than a pure democracy.
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States aren't people, they should have no say. The only thing that matters is the citizenry.
We are a union of states, the contract that created that union gave states a say. The citizenry are actually better off this way. Moderation and compromise are mandated, this often leads to better results than letting the mob have whatever the mob want.
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The Constitution was built that way, to give smaller states excessive representation. This scheme is obviously designed, not to mitigate that feature, but to exploit it. It creates two sparsely populated Republican leaning states and one extremely densely populated Democratic leaning state.
This tilts the Senate and presidential elections toward Republicans while leaving the House untouched.
Here's an alternative: split California in two -- uniting the NorCal and SoCal proposed in this scheme -- and admit P
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Well, I don't know about this guy, but looking at his map I see he includes San Francisco and San Mateo in "NorCal", so you're right. NorCal would be dominated by the Bay Area.
I actually agree that coastal/inland in many ways makes sense, although that would create basically permanent and unsolvable inter-state water rights disputes unless the coastal states had non-contiguous inland territories -- something that isn't unprecedented.
I doubt there's any way to divide California into equally sized pieces wit
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If I'm reading the map right, each of the new states would have one major city. NorCal has the Bay Area (and Sacramento), NewCal has LA, and SoCal has San Diego (and Fresno). Since cities tend to be heavily Democratic and rural areas heavily Republican, both NorCal and SoCal would have exciting elections. NewCal seems pretty likely to be a safe Democratic state.
I'd be a NorCal resident. Given that the entire split won't add Representatives, the balance in the House ought not change. We'd gain four senators.
Re: Senators (Score:2)
It's because the system tries to treat all states equally. Otherwise those states with more resources would undermine those without.
The Senate is about the representation of the states as members of the country. The House of Reps is about representation of the people in the country.
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Yeah let's do what the billionaire wants. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, Sacramento legislature & Governor actions simply do not reflect my interests, that is certain (& I am certainly not a billionaire.)
Borders, welfare, taxes, sanctuary cities, gazillion $ high speed rail and on and on are simply outrageous.
Yeah right... (Score:5, Insightful)
From tfa
"The reasoning behind the proposal is that California has gotten too big to be governed effectively"
Nonsense, the reason for this is to break up the largest Blue state to conservative's advantage.
Re: Yeah right... (Score:2)
How are those four new Democrat senators going to help the GOP? Are a few more seats in Congress worth it?
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While I have no problem "paying my share" for the services California provides, there is a hell of a lot of tax revenue that California takes out of the economy... if they can't run a surplus they are seriously ineffective.
But... what happens when all those pension obligations really start coming due...
Splitting up California would be an interesting challenge. You would have a large number of people working across state lines.
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Sure! In the same way Bernie Madoff ran a money-making hedge fund!
Re: Yeah right... (Score:2)
...while providing welfare for red states in the form of federal/state imbalances.
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Let's split him up.
Re:Ineffective government due to one party control (Score:5, Insightful)
California is running a budget surplus and has the most successful economy in the country. Meanwhile the vast majority of red states face the same issues of ideological super majority you atribute to California and can't generate enough wealth to support their backwards economies without suckling at the feds teat. If you're so concerned over the effectiveness of state governments maybe you should try generally voting for Democrats. It seems to have worked out well for the majorities in Blue states
Furthermore, you don't seem to know how California divides politically. "Southern California" would most certainly be red.
Even So Cal is Blue ... see county map (Score:4, Interesting)
California is running a budget surplus ...
Temporary, and having more to do with the national economy than anything done in California.
... and has the most successful economy in the country.
Irrelevent, the legislature/governor have little to nothing to do with that.
If you're so concerned over the effectiveness of state governments maybe you should try generally voting for Democrats.
You suffer from a reading comprehension problem don't you, is it politically inspired? One party control is the problem. One ideological extreme getting all they want is the problem. You don't want either part in supermajority control. You want balance, you want them to have to compromise, that moderates the stupidity.
Furthermore, you don't seem to know how California divides politically. "Southern California" would most certainly be red.
You are amazingly ignorant of the facts. Examine the blueness on the county results map.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Ineffective government due to one party contro (Score:2)
You seem to be misunderstanding the dynamics of CA lawmaking. The disfunction stems from populist approach of direct democracy, not from the single party. The partisan politics is simply shifted to be between the progressives and the liberals, rather than the Democrats and Republicans. The checks and balances are still there. But they can't make up for a system in which voters can decide to both increase government services and not pay for them.
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Re: Yeah right... (Score:2)
Texans will break it up as soon as the secede.
Horizontal DIvisions (Score:2)
I do not oppose the idea of splitting CA into 3 or even 6 states because that would mean more senators. With a majority in the senate we could get more of our federal tax dollars back to pay for badly needed infrastructure projects (that of course assumes they would work together).
I disagree with these specific divisions though. The man funding this want to make silicon valley its own state. I would prefer to make any new divisions horizontal instead of cutting out a small area and calling it state.
Of
Yeah, it looks gerrymandered (Score:2)
If the splits were along lines of latitude, it might be worth considering. But the proposed map is obviously along lines to increase or reduce influence of certain groups.
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Of course all of this is mute
Moot, not mute.
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How many signatures did he collect? (Score:2)
Because if nearly half of the 1.3 million signatures collected last time were disqualified and he was still short 100,000 signatures, that would mean that it requires at *LEAST* 750,000 signatures.
The article says over 600,000.... assuming that means between 600,000 and 700,000, that's not going to be enough.
Why were half the signatures from the last one disqualified anyways? What was wrong with them?
Re: How many signatures did he collect? (Score:2)
Can't find anything directly spelling it out, but the company hired to gather signatures, APC, apparently has an illustrious history of misleading people into signing petitions.
https://pando.com/2015/07/03/j... [pando.com]
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One of tells in these schemes (this is at least the fourth such scheme to be advanced by right-wing billionaires in recent years, two of them with Russian support) is that they do not respect country boundaries. It is not a matter of like minded counties wanting to separate themselves. Instead these schemes have the new inland "red states" cut deep salients into existing coastal urban counties to grab a chunk of the blue urban economy to pay their bills.
He's not fooling anyone (Score:3, Insightful)
California & New York are more or less the last bastions of civilization in the USA. They're the one place that was more or less untouched by Tea Party style trickle down low or no regulation politics. This would suck for the entire United States (including rural California) except for the billionaire class.
Bottom line, we don't need to break up because we have nothing in common. 99% of us are members of the working class. That more than anything is what binds us, makes a whole. And it's also why guys like this want to split us up.
Outstanding idea, we should have an amendment (Score:2)
that forces a state to split up when it constitutes some % of the US population vs the combined rest of the states.
It's ridiculous that 5 states in total have 1/3 of the population. We're a republic of states not a giant monolithic slab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
Not sure what that would mean for smaller states. And I'm sure this is probably flame bait
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Hmm... is not ridiculous that the three states of Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota have a combined population of only 2/3 of one percent of nation? Clearly they should be required to merge to form one state. You must agree right?
Ah, the right wing is always trying to cook up new rules to grant themselves more power.
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It will never work (Score:3)
One word
WATER
Gerrymandering at the Senate level (Score:2)
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You erroneously believe that democracy automatically means majoritarianism. States and counties are supposed to represent cohesive populations with shared interests. The people of San Francisco have next to nothing in common with rural California. So in order not to steamroller over the people of rural California, the two p
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Ok, but to make things fair, there should be at least three CA states, each centered around a major city, and only one rural state, which would still have less people than any of the others. That way, the majority of the people won't get steamrollered by a even more backwater senators representing empty acreage than we already have in this country.
Re:Draper has gerrymandered California (Score:4, Insightful)
What you call "backwater" is mainstream American. It's coastal California that's way out of touch.
And mainstream America doesn't even want to tell Californians how to live, mainstream America simply wants to be left alone by Californians. It's California that keeps insisting on pushing their environmental, welfare, social justice, and immigration agenda onto the rest of the country.
Re:Draper has gerrymandered California (Score:4, Insightful)
You are posing a false dichotomy, namely that either California dictates to Nebraska how to live, or that Nebraska dictates to California how to live; either of those is tyrannical.
The correct answer is, in fact, that neither California nor Nebraska should have power over each other; the powers of the federal government should be limited to ensure that California and Nebraska coexist in a peaceful, well-defended union that allows free movement of people, goods, and services within the union. It's only progressive pricks that have taken this original, good idea and tried to turn it into an authoritarian central state. And the EU is, of course, doing the same thing.
(And, in fact, I live in California, but I would like California to have less power.)
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You mean the money for military bases, Indian reservations, bloated government healthcare, and inefficient educational systems? I'd say they thrive.
Receiving federal funds isn't a benefit, it's a liabilitiy.
Re: never going to happen (Score:2)
No one does. It's just way too complex.
Re: Maybe fix what's broken first! (Score:2)
It might benefit Republicans. I don't have the exact demographics breakdown of where he wants to place South California, but it does not seem improbable that would become a red state, with only San Diego holding out blue.
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I don't see how this would benefit anyone other than California...
To be blunt, so what? This is a decision for Californians about how we want to govern ourselves. Why does it have to benefit anyone outside the state? And as a Californian, why would I give a hoot about their opinions?
Re: Old men (Score:2)
If it gets split into three states, there might be more Republicans in Congress, but it would also create four entirely new Senate seats, with at least three likely to be Democrat. Strategically, it's not a good deal for GOP unless they are extremely confident in taking at least half the new Senate seats.
Draper's split doesn't seem to make that likely. I would imagine California and North California will still be solidly blue, while South California has some potential to pull a single seat in some elections
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and it can't. That's the point of the senate.