Yup, this whole thing is a Russian plot to weaken the USA.
But why would “California” be an independent country? Why wouldn’t the parts of California that don’t agree with the state government, especially the republican-leaning agricultural areas, just secede from California or opt to stay in the US when the blue parts of the state are trying to leave? This was something that Calexit proponents in the giant old thread were never able to really answer - whatever justification you have for California leaving the US, portions of California can use as justification for leaving Calexitfornia.
This is especially true since Calexit appears to rely on ‘if 51% of the state votes for secession, then it should be allowed to secede,’ as getting 2/3 or 3/4 in favor is virtually impossible. Only 61% of CA votes cast went to Hillary while 31% went to Trump, and if the state can’t even get 2/3 behind a Democrat I don’t really see getting 2/3 behind leaving the union because Trump is a bad president.
Having suffered under Cameron, I should forcefully urge against 51% as that loon selected for his two imbecilic referendums, neither of which was needed nor had any good outcome, even for the separatists in each case.
2/3 is a bare minimum for action; 3/4 understandable; but good old totalitarian voting outcomes of 99% in favour the only certain assent.
That didn’t answer his question. what’s to stop some of those “states” from deciding to secede from California or choose to remain part of the US?
and besides, simply stating how “California is the 7th largest economy in the world” isn’t really saying they can be independent; a heck of a lot of it is underpinned by being part of the United States. Also, a lot of CA’s economy is agriculture, and agricultural/rural areas are not nearly as liberal/progressive as the urban areas of the state.
this whole movement is borne out of the arrogance of people in SoCal and the Bay Area who fantasize about how California is just so bloody awesome that the US will beg them hat in hand not to leave. And if they do leave, we’ll be so desperate to trade with California that we’ll agree to whatever terms they want.
notgonnahappen.com. Brexit hasn’t even really happened yet and it’s already an ugly mess.
I’m going to repeat this just because Calexiters tend to ignore it completely - once you accept a model for CA leaving the US, why can’t CA counties that don’t like Calexitfornia just use the same model to secede from CA, either to make Calexit-exitfornia or to stay with the US?
In the longer thread, a number of problems for CA were pointed out. CA gets a large portion of it’s water from waterways controlled by an interstate compact and US-Mexican treaty - which instantly goes away if CA is no longer a US state. That would have to be renegotiated from scratch, and some other states have sued to modify the treaty in the past. The US government owns about 45% of the land in California, so the Calexitfornia government would need to negotiate for that land, or end up with a foreign power owning most of their territory. That land includes several military bases, so it’s not just empty land that no one cares about. Citizenship is another tricky subject, if Calexitfornians want to retain US citizenship then they still owe US income tax, but if they give up US citizenship then they can’t simply retire to lower cost of living states when they get old like they do now. There’s a similar problem with social security, either CA has to stay in the system (now controlled by the US) or negotiate for it’s citizens to ge something back from it, and it’s a huge amount of money (enough that it’s largely responsible for the ‘donor state’ statistics).
And all of these renegotiations take place with CA at a severe disadvantage - either they’re a state trying to convince 3/4 of state legislatures to vote for these proposals, or they’re a now-independent country negotiating with a larger neighbor who holds all the cards. As the largest (population) state CA has huge negotiating power because they have so much representation in the legislature and in presidential races, but they can’t trade on that if they’re about to or have given that up.
yep, by more than a few of us. But it kept being hand-waved away with a “you’ll see, everything will go smoothly” attitude.
I wouldn’t say RoUS holds all the cards, but certainly has a far better hand than calexiters think.
I’m all for California secession.
After all the shooting is over, I plan to either get rich selling carpet bags - or pack my own, and head west.
You don’t see the irony?
I don’t know how much I should worry about this, but I’ve been seeing rumbles of a new Constitutional Convention being pushed by some conservative groups. Supposedly the Kochs are involved, as is ALEC. Like the original document, the rules set forth for doing this give equal weight to the all the states, which means that conservatives have a huge advantage. In obtaining a two-thirds majority of the states to call a convention, and a three-quarters majority of states to ratify a new Constitution, every state is equal to every other state, no matter how many or few people live in it. If a new Constitution came to pass under these circumstances, I can’t imagine how it would be anything but a nightmare to Californian political sensibilities. I think we’d have to do something then. Maybe we could become an S.A.R.?
This! They couldn’t actually cut off our Colorado River inlets without an act of war, but they would certainly have no reason to help us with water. They’d do all they could to divert water from us – other states really want it!
We’d be high and dry and really screwn.
I thought the one rainy spring meant the drought was over.