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A God Damn Separate Thread for Splitting California Into Six States
enlightenedbum
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So an idiot has a stupid plan for California.
Have fun making fun of him here instead of the midterm thread.
A long-shot effort to break California into six separate states got a boost on Monday, when the billionaire venture capitalist behind the proposal said he had gathered enough signatures to place it on the ballot in two years.
Timothy Draper, a founder of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested in Twitter, Skype and Tesla, among other companies, has been agitating for months for a ballot initiative to chop the most populous U.S. state into smaller entities.
"It’s important because it will help us create a more responsive, more innovative and more local government, and that ultimately will end up being better for all of Californians," said Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaign. "The idea ... is to create six states with responsive local governments - states that are more representative and accountable to their constituents."
Salazar said Monday that the campaign had gathered more than the roughly 808,000 signatures needed to place the measure on the November, 2016 ballot. Draper and other supporters plan to file the signatures with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Tuesday.
But the plan has raised bipartisan hackles across the state, and opponents say it stands little chance of gaining voter approval. If it does win the support of voters, it must still be passed by Congress, which opponents say is also unlikely.
"This is a colossal and divisive waste of time, energy, and money that will hurt the California brand,” said Steven Maviglio, a Democratic political strategist who has formed the group OneCalifornia with GOP strategist Joe Rodota to fight Draper’s plan. "It has zero chance of passage. But what it does is scare investment away... at a time when the Governor is leading us to an economic comeback.”
Draper's plan would split the world’s eighth-largest economy along geographic lines.
One state, to be called Silicon Valley, would include the tech hub along with the San Francisco Bay Area. Jefferson, named after the third U.S. president, would encompass the northernmost region. The state capital of Sacramento would be in North California, while South California would be made up of San Diego and the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles.
L.A. itself would be part of a state called West California.
Proponents say the division would help create a more business-friendly environment, solve the state’s water issues, and ease traffic congestion.
Have fun making fun of him here instead of the midterm thread.
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
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I mean, I guess it would solve the water issue in the same way that blindfolding your kids and dumping them into a forest somewhere would solve your financial issues.
Also, as a Sacramentan, no way in hell do I want my new state to be dominated by the California boondocks.
Just to screw with future generations of school children.
or at least the stupid version California has.
A state called Silicon valley? Really?
It won't solve the water problem except to let the poors die.
Also this is stupid and looks like a gerrymanderers dream.
F those other states. They should get their own water.
Seems like that would be much less paperwork, in the end.
Often through incredibly deceitful tactics
Draper has hired Arno Political Consultants to gather signatures, who has been known to pull shit like this before, and I have no idea how or why they're still allowed to operate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arno_Political_Consultants
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Well, you could just cut stop running water to LA/OC, build a fence, and laugh at us as we die of thirst. That would solve a lot of the water problem.
On a related, but slightly tangential note, I was up in the Eastern Sierras last week (Owens Valley) and LADWP (LA Department of Water and Power) owns an awful lot of land up there. It's a pretty strange arrangement.
LA and the big cities in the OC would actually be fine in the short term. After the last drought, Los Angeles took action to increase water storage and reduce water use.
It's the arid highly-irrigated agricultural counties of Central California who would be hit the hardest: Fresno, Kern, Merced, Madera, Tulare, etc.
Which means the first thing we feel wouldn't be thirst, but hunger, as our food sources shrivel up.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is obviously not going to pass, so why is he spending money on it?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Delusions of grandeur.
Can't get the permits for a giant golden statue of himself in downtown SF.
Because Silicon Valley feels that they need to be free of the shackles of regulations in order to innovate - this is something the Googlistas have argued as well.
Maybe the shitty shady tactics (pretty sure they are illegal too) that his consulting firm is pulling off will get the whole thing kanked before he can waste any taxpayer money. Actually, why the fuck is that firm still allowed to operate.
Look at the fractals. If we divide the states into fractals, we can divide the water into fractals, and that makes for more water for everyone. It's like the parable of the fish and the loaves. This one time I tried to feed a thousand people with two fish and five loaves, and there was plenty of food to go around once the other 993 people died. And then we divided the people into fractals so the seven survivors could partake of their blood, which has lots of water in it. Then they all got to be governor of their own state.
Wait... We need a seventh state, guys. One of my parable guys doesn't get to be governor.
This confused me the most.
Just start using water meters dammit. Texans use water meters.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
This is the most logical explanation. He doesn't give a shit about six Californias. He just wants there to be a Silicon Valley state with its own government.
Still, I can't help but shake the feeling that there's some other game he's playing here.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's pretty simple: 53 electoral votes deep in the blue column. Make six states out of that and you're going to turn some of those red. I don't think it's any more complicated than that.
That doesn't really get around the "no chance in hell to get through Congress" thing though. I think this dude just had $5m to piss away and wanted to see what would happen if threw out a crazy initiative.
Maybe it's a performance piece to show how stupid the initiative system is?
Pretty sure that's the same reason you DONT hear about splitting Texas.
Nah, that comes up on here pretty regularly for pretty much that reason. It doesn't gain any traction in the media, though.
But it would probably be part of a deal in Congress to let them split up CA if it came to that, though. Nothing is getting through the federal government that would significantly alter the current balance.
Seeing how I then lived the rest of my teens/early adulthood way up north in Chico I saw how batshit fuckawful the budget process was, and more than once wished everything south of Sacramento would just fall into the ocean and stop fucking with me. I dont think many people appreciate how large California is, and how dense the population pockets are. I've since left the state, and have to say if they split it up in some fashion I would consider moving back.
This does not mean I want it split up into "rich fucks with golden castles live in these 5 coastal cities, everyone else get fucked." Something a little more representative of the smaller population groupings of 400,000-1,000,000 would be okay with me.
"Guys, we can do it ourselves," doesn't often work out like one would hope. :?
Yeah, any Partition of California probably wouldn't result in 6 states, for the reasons you mention. Creating two new super-poor states isn't really in anyone's interest.
Edit: Well, it is in some people's interest. But it would never get through Congress, barring a Republican sweep in 2016.
Maybe Draper's a geometric set theorist?
I see California as just a microcosm (okay, a really big microcosm) of the nation as a whole. Bay Area versus Central Valley Wasteland isn't much different than New York versus Wyoming.
I don't know if LA has ever gotten significant water supplies from the Colorado River. It's definitely an issue for people downstream of Vegas in Arizona and far Southern California, though.
He's building his own political machine from libertarians and start-up cultists.
I'm going to lean towards this just being a billionaire' s vanity project.