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from the you-can-go-your-own-way-♩♫♩♫ dept.
Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general's office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.
Marcus Ruiz Evans, the vice president and co-founder of Yes California, said his group had been planning to wait for a later election, but the presidential election of Donald Trump sped up the timeline.
"We're doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention," Evans said.
The Yes California group has been around for more than two years, Evans said. It is based around California taxpayers paying more money to the federal government than the state receives in spending, that Californians are culturally different from the rest of the country, and that national media and organizations routinely criticize Californians for being out of step with the rest of the U.S.
Could California go it alone?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:18PM
Personally, I have long thought that secession should be a fundamental right. More, it should be encouraged. Governments are like companies: big is usually bad, smaller is usually better. Beyond a certain size, the shareholders (company) / citizens (country) no longer have any real control over how the place is run.
Clearly, there need to be guidelines: some minimal geographic size, geographic contiguity, and a super-majority of residents. If those are all fulfulled, fine, secede.
The place you are seceding from should have no say in the matter - of course they will object, if only because they stand to lose pride, and the politicians stand to lose power. Maybe if parts of the country can leave at will, the politicians will be more motivated to govern well.
Just to pick one random example of many [wikipedia.org]: Why should Catalonia not be allowed to secede from Spain? Why should Spanish politicians, or even the rest of Spain, have any say about it? If it were up to the Catalonians, they would already be gone.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by BK on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:21AM
Well... that gets you to the libertarian paradise. Every person is entitled to be their own nation-state. The extent of that nation-state is whatever they are willing and able to defend with force against all would be takers. Everyone can do whatever fuck all that they want unless someone is prepared to invade and stop them.
I won't speak to the justice of Cali or Texas or Catalonia or Kurdistan, but if you defend secession as a 'fundamental right' then you are saying that nobody but himself should be able to tell David Duke what he can do on his land. Are you prepared to disavow David Duke's fundamental rights?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:38AM
In the end, I believe secession as an inevitability as the ties that bind are far weaker than the histrionics that tear us apart, and especially as there is a push for a stronger federal government which is increasingly used vindictively.
There is lack of recognition of other states as sovereign except by making it formal through secession, so as that is the only option available, more and more states will move in that direction.
The sad part is that much of this could be avoided by weakening the federal government, but the ideologues find it impossible to let others find their own level.
(Score: 1) by davefx on Friday November 25 2016, @05:32AM
Catalonia currently shouldn't secede from Spain because there doesn't exist that super-majority of residents wanting to be out of Spain.
Nevertheless, this problem shouldn't be seen in a simplistic way as rights. For example: let's suppose that a territory, after being benefitted by a central government to become an industry and commerce center for decades with low taxes, high-level infrastructures, and having received immigration from other places in the country without those benefits... decides to secede from the rest of the country, as they are very rich, and other parts of the country are poor and they don't want to support them.
I can't see that as fair under any point of view...