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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 canopic jug on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:56PM
There are several key ports there in California, including naval bases. There are also several important military bases. The Federal government is not going to be so keen to let them go. Secession plans will have to include how to deal with them, but getting rid of them is most unlikely among the few choices.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:17PM
Nothing new there. Perhaps your government schooling didn't include Fort Sumpter and the role it played in the previous round of festivities.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:39PM
Apparently yours didn't either. It is Sumter. And it didn't play any major role in causing the Civil War except that it was there the first shots were fired. That war was going to happen regardless of whether Sumter existed or not.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Tara Li on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:18PM
Of course the war was going to happen anyway - de Tocqueville predicted it several years before hand. The basis of his prediction? Few northern slave holders were freeing their slaves as abolition movements moved through the Northern States. Instead, they were selling them to the South. Finally, the abolition movements got enough umph, and the Southern slave owners were told that even though they'd paid good money for those slaves, they couldn't keep them - and they couldn't get their money back either. A huge Fuck You! to the South, from the North.
Imagine going to Wal-Mart, buying up a lot of food, then getting home and being told that you can't eat it, and you can't return it for a refund. There were lots of solutions to the Succession. Abraham Lincoln preferred the more violent one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:34PM
What solutions were available? The South wasn't going to give up slaveholding without violence. To do it without violence would have required many decades of economic and social transformation, but there was no desire to do it, and not only was there no movement in that direction for the next eighty years, it actually got worse. The Founders weren't happy with the southern insistence of the rights to have slaves, and those who weren't comfortable with it saw it as a necessary compromise to band the states together. They knew they were kicking the can down the road, but it wasn't like they had the luxury of time to work it all out. Eighty years later, not only was the "right" to own slaves embedded, they were fighting like hell to keep it, which is where we got stuff like the Missouri Compromise.
I don't see how you can lay it on Lincoln's feet because there were no other options other than to keep kicking the can down the road.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:50PM
In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. This influence though slow, is sure. The doctrines & miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years, to Convert but a small part of the human race, & even among Christian nations, what gross errors still exist! While we see the Course of the final abolition of human Slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a Single day. Although the Abolitionist must know this, & must See that he has neither the right or power of operating except by moral means & suasion, & if he means well to the slave, he must not Create angry feelings in the Master; that although he may not approve the mode which it pleases Providence to accomplish its purposes, the result will nevertheless be the same; that the reasons he gives for interference in what he has no Concern, holds good for every kind of interference with our neighbors when we disapprove their Conduct; Still I fear he will persevere in his evil Course. Is it not strange that the descendants of those pilgrim fathers who Crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion, have always proved themselves intolerant of the Spiritual liberty of others?
-Robert E. Lee
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:59AM
And at the end of the war, Lee had freed his slaves, Grant hadn't.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:03PM
Oh I dunno about that. Lets start with the reality that slavery was legal and permitted by the Constitution and that they represented a significant portion of the capital in the slaveholding states. So you are an Abolitionist and want to eliminate the practice, but now lets assume you are actually a moral person who doesn't believe in imposing their ever evolving morality upon the unwilling, or in renouncing settled law and agreements freely entered into. Could it be done? Yes.
Raise money and simply buy slaves, resettle them to the North and free them after equipping them to handle life as free men. None could object to it on a moral basis except the NORTHERN racists; assuming the political will could be mustered to keep them from banning free blacks from relocating north it works. Now what happens in the South as significant numbers of slaves are being bought and removed from the market? Importation was already halted and 'natural increase' was already near the limit. Supply drops, what happens to price; remember your econ 101? Slave labor suddenly gets more expensive, free labor doesn't. Push for reforms of the laws in the South that essentially made freed slaves impossible so that they could be freed in the South and thus remain in the labor pool, now of course as paid labor. Having nothing they will work for essentially slave wages, so they wouldn't be gaining a lot.... initially; however this drops the cost of buying and freeing slaves since relocation and reeducation costs drop to near zero and you can speed up the process. How long would it take that plan to hit the tipping point where owning slaves isn't cost effective anymore? Southern plantation owners wouldn't have been happy, but they probably couldn't have whipped up a secession movement either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:28AM
The West. Homestead Act of 1862 [wikipedia.org]
Your economic analysis is quite good.
Your understanding of markets is spot-on.
...now, if we can just get folks to stop referring to "markets" as "Capitalism".
We should also note that England and Canada got rid of slavery and neither required a civil war to accomplish that.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 24 2016, @02:48PM
...now, if we can just get folks to stop referring to "markets" as "Capitalism".
Since when has that been a real problem? I'll note here that capitalism or private ownership of capital implies some sort of market for trading capital.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @10:14PM
...in your deviant mind.
There are people who, as an example, grow vegetables, sell them by the roadside, and are in competition with others who do the same--all without taking a loan from a money man or hiring others to do the work.
That's a market with no lenders|stockholders in the loop and no (exploited) employees, i.e. none of the touchstones of Capitalism.
...and "possessing money" as the defining mark of Capitalism is the kind of "thinking" I expect from a simpleton.
.
Since when has that been a real problem?
I see it here every time the topic comes up.
As an example, your current attempt to conflate the 2.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 25 2016, @03:22AM
There are people who, as an example, grow vegetables, sell them by the roadside, and are in competition with others who do the same--all without taking a loan from a money man or hiring others to do the work.
Grow vegetables in what? They need land for that. How do they move vegetables around? They need some sort of transportation like a truck, cart, or basket. How do they sell vegetables? They need some sort of signs, display, or practiced sales pitch. The capital is there. Whether they are considered to own that capital is what's important here. If no one owns land, for example, and everyone is a squatter, then land wouldn't be privately owned capital.
That's a market with no lenders|stockholders in the loop and no (exploited) employees, i.e. none of the touchstones of Capitalism.
Neither which is required for capitalism. Once again, your definition of capitalism is not recognized by anyone other than yourself. Please use standard definitions [oxforddictionaries.com].
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state:
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:06PM
Apparently yours didn't either. It is Sumter. And it didn't play any major role in causing the Civil War except that it was there the first shots were fired. That war was going to happen regardless of whether Sumter existed or not.
The US might have started a war anyway, but the Confederacy made the pretext easy by starting a fight with Fort Sumter. The US wasn't some totalitarian state that could completely fake an attack.
Delaying the start of the war would have worked to the South's advantage, particularly since a key problem was acquiring European allies and convincing other states to join (particularly Kentucky and Missouri).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:49PM
A better example would have been Fort Monroe in Virginia. Fort Monroe remained in Union hands during the entire war.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:45PM
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:20PM
Easy answer, and one I could actually see The Donald implementing:
In the lead-up to the referendum, move all mobile assets out of California. Offshore, to other states, whatever. Requisition rail access if necessary; just get it moving.
All personnel who would be willing to switch to California may stay - if it doesn't come to pass, no black mark on their records, but they aren't forced to leave either.
Anything that can't be moved but is too valuable to ditch, gets loaded with thermite charges, to be fired by trusted teams should the motion pass.
California can then have the land, some buildings, and a few folks who'd rather stay. Pity about the ports. But if they want an aircraft carrier? They can build their own.
And if it doesn't come to pass, then set everything back up. Crisis averted.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday November 23 2016, @10:21PM
Sounds expensive. Let me guess, the Mexicans will pay for it?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:09PM
In the lead-up to the referendum, move all mobile assets out of California. Offshore, to other states, whatever. Requisition rail access if necessary; just get it moving.
I have a better suggestion. Do nothing until California secedes, then use the bases and US ownership of so much of the territory of California as bargaining chips. That stuff doesn't automatically become part of California just because they seceded. As to what to bargain for, that depends on the situation. It could be preferential trade, long term leases on the bases in question (this being far from the first time that the US has maintained military bases in other countries), an outright sale, or ransom to allow US citizens to escape California.
If they decide to do a Fort Sumter-style attack on these bases, then you still have the choice of razing the bases and abandoning any military presence in California or using it as a casus belli for war with California (this would be the efficient way to attempt to stop serious war crimes like genocide).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jcross on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:52PM
The USA already has a shit ton of military bases in other countries. Why would this be different?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:59PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:26PM
They also own huge tracks of cali. Like 60% of it. Those are the parts where water and power are coming from.