We’re not talking about a false-flag operation. We’re talking about the governor of California buying into the whole "sovereign citizen’ mindset, where everyone else has to obey the law and pay taxes but they don’t have to.
Read the whole silly Calexit thread, it’s pretty much the same thing.
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t think even that would lead to divorce. It would, however, lead to some family squabbles that would be epic. As a hypothetical: you can’t force a company to sell to people in a given state. President starts getting hinky with California, then California stops exporting food to selected states that support him. A general “Boycott Iowa” movement begins. Oregon, Washington and Hawaii join in. Pressure builds on the President to back down or he loses key votes (assuming there is a president and not a Dear Leader.) States can’t wage war on each other, but there is nothing that says they have to export to them.
Silenus, I never know if you’re just brilliant, or if I’m even more dim-witted than I thought. The whole concept of infighting via interstate commerce seems to have the potential to get the result I was looking for in the OP (forcing more reasonable governance). And as a bonus I now have to look a little closer at the past 20 years to see if my kids ever manipulated me by fighting with each other.
Interstate commerce is regulated by the federal government, specifically Congress. Once some state government starts taking any official action to outlaw shipping to another state, Congress is going to get stroppy pretty quick. Especially if the state government is ordering its citizens to breach their contracts. I.e. some company in Iowa has an order for 500 tons of fruit from a California company, and the state says “no you can’t ship that” it’s an order to violate the law, and those orders aren’t legit.
Plus, the pressure isn’t going to be all on one side. CA companies start losing market share, and Iowa gets its goods from somewhere else. Or companies in Georgia buy the CA goods and ship them to Iowa (at a markup, of course). What’s California or Hawaii or Washington state gonna do about it? Sue them in federal court?
Regards,
Shodan
This doesn’t work. Article I Section 8 of the US Constitution gives the power to regulate interstate commerce to the US Congress, so California cannot legally stop anyone in the state from exporting to another state, and any laws they attempted to pass doing so would be rapidly struck down. The Supreme Court has interpreted the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce very liberally and the right of states to interfere with it very narrowly, there is no question that a state attempting to outright boycott selling goods to another state would be shut down almost immediately.
If you’re expecting all large multi-state Agri-business and shipping corporations and all smaller in-state agricultural operations to support losing huge amounts of money to protest something Trump does, it wouldn’t qualify as ‘California’ refusing to export food, and is just plain not going to happen. More than 1/3 of California voted for Trump or Johnson even though it was clear there was no chance of anyone but Clinton taking the state, and a lot of that 1/3 of the state are in the more rural areas - where the agriculture happens. Expecting people who vote for Trump to voluntarily join some kind of Trump boycott at great expense to themselves is just outright stupid.
And in general, getting public support for trying to starve the 41% of Iowans who voted for Clinton in order to punish Trump for something would be a huge uphill battle, even if it wasn’t blatantly illegal, extremely costly for the people involved, and required the support of Trump voters to happen.
It’s not even going to be all on one side within the state. Trump won almost 1/3 of the votes in California even though voting for Trump in CA is fairly pointless, so the assumption that ‘California’ (especially rural California and not the large cities) is going to act in unison against Trump makes no sense.
Putting aside the legal issues others have mentioned, how would California do this as a practical measure? Would they stop and search trucks and trains at the state line? And if the driver says “Iowa? No, I’m delivering this truckload of oranges to Missouri.” how are these border guards supposed to know if he’s lying?
He might not even be lying. If California tried to cut off Iowa from food sales, all it would do is create an opportunity for dealers in other states to buy Californian food and then resell it in Iowa after it left California’s control.
And even if you voted for Hillary in California, are you going to sacrifice your business in some useless protest?
Regards,
Shodan
Forget food. It gets that bad Google can just “fail to recognize” any ISP from Iowa.
Shodan, if it gets that bad, then yes, I expect that some businesses would react that way. But we are talking the President waging legal war against a state, not the state instituting the struggle. As for the constitutional issue - that’s a non-starter. Regulation does not and cannot require a company to do business in a particular state.
You seriously think Google is going to engage in an illegal fight against an oppressive government that can easily and legally send in LEOs to their headquarters and seize all of their assets when they’re perfectly willing to work with the Chinese government to enable their censorship of information about Chinese government oppression even though the Chinese government can’t possibly touch them?
The idea that Trump is going to have enough support to wage ‘legalized war’ against states, but no support at all from the 1/3 of California that voted for him, and that California will be able to successfully engage in something that’s already completely illegal without the crazy-Trump-State war going on without consequences is just bizarre. This scenario just doesn’t make any sense.
Your scenario involved California forbidding companies from doing business in another state, not anyone requiring companies to do business in a particular state. Or that Trump-voting agricultural companies are, for some reason, going to voluntarily lose a ton of money to oppose the guy they voted for in the first place.
It does nothing of the sort. Show me where I said California as a state would take any action whatsoever. This entire thread is predicated on the President waging war on a state in retaliation for whatever. These actions would affect virtually everybody in said state. You don’t think even Trump-loving companies wouldn’t react to an assault on their livelihoods? California wouldn’t have to do shit. Grassroots civil reaction would take care of it all.
As for Google, who knows? If Trump’s stormtroopers acted to seize Google’s assets, it would signal an escalation that would make Fort Sumter look like a kiddy spat in the sandbox. At that point we are so far down the rabbit hole of fascism that any action against the Feds is justified.
“California stops exporting food” sounds an awful lot like California, the state, taking action to me.
No, this thread is predicated on California ceasing to recognize Federal power. There’s nothing about the President waging war on any particular state in the OP or subject line.
Whatever exactly ‘the President waging legal war on a state means’, it hasn’t been defined clearly, so I was answering in the context of the OP, where it would mean something like ‘the President continues doing things like gutting the EPA and cutting funds to states he doesn’t like’. If it means something else, you’d need to define it - especially since you seem on one hand to be treating it like actual warfare involving the military, but in other places think it’s clearly less since arresting a company and seizing assets for violating law would be a huge escalation.
The US government has arrested executives and seized the assets of companies breaking the law without it being ‘an escalation that would make Fort Sumter look like a kiddy spat in the sandbox’. It’s a pretty routine law enforcement action if a company is blatantly violating federal law and has been done many times without triggering a civil war.