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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: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Wednesday November 23 2016, @07:45PM
In November 2015, the idea would have been laughable.
However, unless we're all going to wake up in 6 weeks time and discover its January 2016 again and the last year was all a really bad dream...
Here in the UK, there's now a distinct chance that Scotland will demand a second independence vote, so that they can stay in the EU (which probably makes economic sense for them), and that would quite likely pass (Cameron and Osbourne, with their usual brilliance, made continued EU membership a big deal in the last Scottish independence referendum). Depending on the timing, that could bolster a "Calexit" campaign just like the Brexit vote bolstered Trump supporters (hence the current "Don and Nigel sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g" circus).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:03PM
Nope, it can't / won't happen. California is too economically important, and a huge amount of our defense industry is based there as well. There is also no general sentiment around here to support this, the idea fails before it even begins.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:45PM
Even more Brexit-like :-) "There is no appetite currently for another Scottish independence referendum." -- The Political Establishment including the Brexiteers.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].