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posted by martyb on Wednesday November 23 2016, @05:25PM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by butthurt on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:19PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:19PM (#432119) Journal

    [...] not liking an election result isn't a reason to secede [...]

    Perhaps it isn't only the result of the 2016 presidential election that bothers them, but a system designed to "nerf" the influence of people in the most populous states. The intention was to balance the power of the slave-holding and free states.

    California has 12.0% of the U.S. population but 10.2% of the Electoral College votes and 2.0% of the Senate seats. Texas has 8.4% of the the U.S. population, 6.3% of the Electoral College votes and 2.0% of the Senate seats. Both California and Texas were, briefly, independent. The Texas secession movement has the euphony of "Texit" in its favour.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/inspired-brexit-texas-considers-seceding-texit-article-1.2686747 [nydailynews.com]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population [wikipedia.org]
    http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/electorl.htm [worldatlas.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @02:40AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @02:40AM (#432234)

    Los Angeles County has WAY more people than Wyoming, yet that sparsely-populated state gets 2 senators, while the entire state of California gets the same count.

    If there was to be a proper "Democracy" in the USA, a system of senatorial districts would be a good start.

    Some folks have redrawn the map of the USA, divided into 50 equal divisions by population.[1] [archive.li]
    L.A. County, Orange County, and the Frisco Bay Area come out as examples of those divisions.
    The rest of the state (well, sorta) gets split into 3 more divisions.

    N.B. Those 3 counties would be Blue (Orange County switched colors in the 2016 election) and the 3 other chunks would be Red.

    We really do need a Constitutional Convention to rework a whole bunch of outdated ideas that are still in the centuries-old founding document.

    [1] There's another dude(?) who used pretty much the same divisions but came up with some different names.
    He called Washington+Alaska "Washlaska" and called Hawaii "Nice Weather".
    Bitterroot is "Rocky Mountain High" and Great Basin is "Loving Hands".

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:38AM

      by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:38AM (#432259) Journal

      So CA should split into multiple states then.

      Without the Senate and without the EC, the people of NY City, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco would have total say over an entire country with many varied local cultures for which they have absolutely no understanding or caring. I say this as a Green voting lefty, not some right wing whatever.

      Honestly, Democrats are a bunch of whiners crying about losing and blaming the structure of our government rather than the fact that they ran a war mongering, offshoring, prison state loving, surveillance pushing, bankster codling candidate while totally ignoring the plight of the working class. Yet it's the structure of our gov't at fault? Give me a break. Here's the run down:

      B Clinton won first election (helped by Perot). 2nd win is a gimme, evidence: GWB. SInce then however:
      Gore: ran as more hawkish than GWB (though GWB lied) and as a wall street shill. LOST
      Kerry: more of the same neo-liberal crap. LOST
      Obama: Ran as a raging liberal (also lied). WON
      H Clinton: Ran as center/right Republican. LOST

      It doesn't take much more than a 25 IQ to understand the Clinton-way, is the losing way. Democrats wanna win elections? Move left. Otherwise, run yourself into irrelevance -- you're almost there now.

      • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:25AM

        by butthurt (6141) on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:25AM (#432309) Journal

        A minor point: the San Francisco area isn't as populous as you imply; for census purposes it's the 11th most populous metropolitan area. The Dallas area is the fourth most populous.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistical_Areas [wikipedia.org]

        [...] total say over an entire country with many varied local cultures for which they have absolutely no understanding or caring.

        You exaggerate, but I agree that a pitfall of democracy is the tendency to act against the interests of minority groups. However, weighting people's influence according to where they live makes it more likely that the interests of the majority won't be served. Jeremy Bentham would not approve.

        > I say this as a Green voting lefty [...]

        According to Breitbart News,

        Trump won Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral college votes, by 68,236 votes, Wisconsin, with its 10 electoral college votes, by 27,257 votes, and Michigan, with its 16 electoral college votes, by 13,107 votes.

        Had those 108,600 votes gone to Hillary Clinton, she would have won the presidency with a a 278 to 260 electoral college victory over Trump.

        -- http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/11/113000-votes-pa-wi-mi-gave-trump-56-electoral-college-votes/ [breitbart.com]

        Jill Stein is trying to raise funds for a count of the votes in those three states.

        http://jillstein.org/recount [jillstein.org]

        • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:02AM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:02AM (#432323) Journal

          I'm really mad at Stein over this. If Clinton wins, progressive values are dead for anywhere from 8 to 20 years. With Trump, a lefty stands a chance in a mere four years and Democrats won't sit around silent while their president guts the Bill of Rights and gets us into a nuclear conflagration over pipelines in Syria. Clinton would have to see all three state go her way though, which is pretty unlikely.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday November 24 2016, @09:22AM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday November 24 2016, @09:22AM (#432339) Homepage
          > According to Breitbart News,Trump won ... Had those 108,600 votes gone to Hillary Clinton, she would have won

          Don't repeat Breitbart maths, they ain't too bright. Had 54301 of those votes gone to HC, she would have won, as she'd have 54301 more, and Trump would have 54301 fewer.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by BK on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:01AM

      by BK (4868) on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:01AM (#432303)

      We really do need a Constitutional Convention to rework a whole bunch of outdated ideas that are still in the centuries-old founding document.

      OK. Agreed. But replace them with what and how... ? Yes, that's the purpose of the convention, but it's not nearly that simple.

      From CNN [cnn.com]:

      We've already had one constitutional convention -- literally The Constitutional Convention, in 1787, which gave us the Constitution -- and there hasn't been one since.
      The document itself lays out the rules for calling a convention -- two-thirds of the states, or 34, have to petition Congress to call the meeting, according to Article V of the Constitution. But from there, it's open to interpretation -- and battling. Does each state get two delegates to send to the convention or do they get a number proportional to their population? Those are the kinds of questions that could make agreeing to a convention almost impossible.
      Despite the long odds, a group of lawmakers -- mostly Republicans -- have been meeting since 2013 to come up with guidelines to prevent total chaos.
      That group, The Assembly of State Legislatures, approved a detailed package of rules this year -- outlining everything from who would lead the group to how proposals would be debated.

      A convention may not give you the changes you want. You may not get the rules you want. When time comes to compromise...

      --
      ...but you HAVE heard of me.
    • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:26AM

      by driverless (4770) on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:26AM (#432326)

      There's another dude(?) who used pretty much the same divisions but came up with some different names.
      He called Washington+Alaska "Washlaska" and called Hawaii "Nice Weather".
      Bitterroot is "Rocky Mountain High" and Great Basin is "Loving Hands".

      I always thought the natural divisions of the US were the People's Republic of California, the United States of Canada, and Jesusland.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 24 2016, @12:47PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 24 2016, @12:47PM (#432361) Journal

      Some folks have redrawn the map of the USA, divided into 50 equal divisions by population.

      That would be another nail in the coffin for the division of power from federalism. Currently, a senator represents a state not some arbitrary division of people. And of course, I guess we haven't yet learned of the perils of gerrymandering? The power of the Senate gets transferred to who is in control of allotting these senate divisions.

      I'll note that these these matters are routine rural/urban conflicts and as a result, a strong reason for the Senate and Electoral College still exists: to give rural areas a voice. In other words, some of the same reason these things existed in the first place still persist.

      We really do need a Constitutional Convention to rework a whole bunch of outdated ideas that are still in the centuries-old founding document.

      There are two problems with this assertion. First, the convention would have to be called for by at least two thirds of the states (currently 34 states). That means that you would have to include a fair portion of the states whose interests are being acted against by this convention. Second, so what if there's a few outdated ideas in the document? What makes you think everyone is going to agree on which ideas are the outdated ones? For example, some might think that the Second Amendment is outdated while others might think direct vote of US senators is outdated (and instead require senators to be appointed by governors of the states which incidentally neatly eliminates your concern about the Senate while making the Senate more like the EU's Council of the European Union).

      My view is that instead of making a mess that nobody will like (and which only a tyranny could pass), use focused amendments that consist of the desired change as well as the necessary political bribes to induce parties to vote or secondary changes (so you aren't stuck in some terrible intermediate state).