Actually, you’re right, it’s not hard to do the math. So, it’s not 1/5th, it’s more like 1/3. Which isn’t all that wild (20% vs 33% of a voter is peanuts when it should be 100%). By the way, Rhode Island @ ~1m inhabitants has 4 electoral votes to California’s 38.8m inhabitants 55. Were California equal to RI, that would be one hundred and fifty five votes.
To protect the power of slavery… which we don’t have anymore, and shouldn’t be protecting.
Don’t count your cost savings before they are hatched. Assuming you can replace all the functions the federal government provides at the same cost ignores possible economies of scale. There’s one Coast Guard Academy to train their officers nationwide. Assuming CA could run a much smaller training program for the same cost per officer is perilous. That runs broadly across all services the federal government provides to the state.
Another issue is the accounting behind that number: Just as an example, I have a cousin now retired from the Park Service, who was trained to help with major forest fires. All of his work putting out fires was outside Michigan (with many of the fires he worked being in CA or other states in a possible greater Bluelandia.) His pay, benefits, and now retirement check all look like it was federal funding going to Michigan even when he was working on being prepared for fighting fires outside the state. At best the additional costs associated with sending him to the state with a fire could be tracked but I’d want to make sure I knew if I was voting to secede based on getting back .22 cents on the tax dollar…
Diversification to minimize costs associated with risk: The federal government can effectively self insure against risks nationwide. My cousin was a way to mitigate the risk of fires everywhere in the nation. The federal government could look at risk on teh average across the nation to make sure they had enough responders in place. CA would only be able to look at it across the state. That smaller pool means less average of risk and quite possibly higher costs for a bad year.
States decide within the rules the parties establish. Democrats even give bonus delegates to late states. CA by going late got a 20% bonus in delegates for selecting June in the last cycle along with a %15 bonus for being in a regional cluster. CA traded possible irrelevancy by going so late for a big chunk of extra representation.
If California engaged in an armed insurrection … I can’t imagine anyone trying to help her against the USA … Russia, China … how do they get troops over … how do they get past the America Pacific Fleet … why would any power risk a war with the USA?
Using the numbers above, we have 12% of the general population , not hard to estimate 12% of the military population are Californian … that’s a lot of open rebellion within the military’s ranks …
There are a few issues to consider:
What % of the military is native Californians
What % of the military is stationed in California
What % of the above two groups might fight for a free and independent California against the USA?
I suspect that the answer to #1 is a bit less than 12%, but that’s just a WAG, not based on anything factual. I suspect #2 might be higher than 12%, but again WAG. #3 is the important one, and I suspect it’s way less than 12% (once again, an unknown). I’d expect that those that most of group #3 would be dead or captured within a few months.
I’m not suggesting it starts as an armed insurrection. But what is the alternative?
Westlandia: “So hey, we voted and…um…we decided to go it alone.”
USA: “The hell you say! You and what army?”
Russia/China: “Well, we like the idea!”
USA: “Now, now, OK, let’s talk about this.”
It doesn’t start as an armed conflict, and it doesn’t need to turn into one. But there would need to be some backstop.
Can people stop talking about secession every time a vote doesn’t go their way? We laughed at the Texans for discussing it.
No reason we couldn’t amend the Constitution to allow for some kind of orderly dissolution.
I agree that a unilateral secession won’t work, but if some state or states want to go and the other states also want them to go, then there’s probably a possible compromise that doesn’t lead to a shooting war.
That said, this is a dumb idea. California should not secede.
There’s a criminal insurgency on the southern border run by cartels that might want to expand control north during the turmoil while CA dealt with the loss of federal security forces. They already possess effective smuggling routes and love money so they are a potential source of support to other groups inside the new nation.
The people in the rural red leaning CA counties, faced with losing their US citizenship and guns despite not agreeing may have the necessary grievances to support their own secession back to the US or an armed insurgency. It’s worse if the US decides to covertly support them while pretending to accept the secession. We can say we accept secession and still unleash SOCOM and the CIA.
If you include the PNW in great Bluelandia that includes some of the key areas for the left’s part of our violent extremist underbelly. Since even the eco-terrorist portions of that are strongly correlated with the anarchist elements they aren’t necessarily going to be happy even in a left Bluelandia with strong rule of law. Given the period of weakened security infrastructure when federal assets withdraw that give them a window to potentially exploit.
There’s some real internal, and just across the border, security challenges. If those risks come home to haunt them possibilities:
A good place to start:
being a net contributor to the US economy doesn’t mean CA is or can be self-sufficient.
Most states have no real say in most elections. It was an aberration this year that Michigan was even in play.
Yet your Proposition system has made plenty of Californians very unhappy. Have you forgotten Prop. 8 already?
how is that “likely?” Stuff is grown in California for its expediency, not because it’s meant to be grown in California. Irrigation and draining the Colorado River dry means you can grow stuff despite being in California, not because of it. You take away your “breadbasket,” someone else will make a new one.
You are all way oversimplifying it and being way, way too optimistic about what would happen. You wouldn’t be in NAFTA, and if you assume you’d be granted membership “just because” then you’ll be sorely disappointed. You would need water from outside sources, and if you assume it’ll just be given to you out of generosity you’ll be sorely disappointed.
It would hurt the US for a while, and destroy California. you “#Calexit” and “Yes California” people seem to treat secession just like a 12 year old who is pissed off at his parents. “Don’t tell me what to do! I can take care of myself! I’m running away!.. but you’ll still feed me and do my laundry and take me to school, right?”
Your “best case assumptions” are little more than hoping you can secede from the US but still be treated as though you’re a US state.
Not. Gonna. Fucking. Happen. You secede, YOYO.
I live and vote in Washington DC. Cry me a river about how California has no political power. Seriously, this complaint is like listening to the wife of that corrupt CEO who complained that her life had been destroyed because they had to sell three of their five houses. Boo-hoo.
This is such nonsense. Next you’re going to claim that Wisconsin, with a sixth of the electoral votes, is more powerful than California. Right?
Oh, and bitching about the Electoral College is short-sighted. The 12th Amendment just says the President and Vice President are voted for by Electors appointed by the states. it does not say how the states must appoint electors. Most have gone with “winner-take-all,” but Maine and Nebraska haven’t. They apportion electors based on district.
so if you want to change things, it might be worth your while to try to change how your state chooses electors.
The state sets them - but in 2008, when two states moved their primaries up, the “Democratic” party threw their votes out. CA is pretty liberal though, so they’d probably be screwed over less.
Funny “logic” that 55 electoral votes, the greatest of any state, is interpreted as having 0 influence.
The military leans right wing. You can’t be serious to suggest that the US military in the 2000s still has huge state loyalty that surpasses national loyalty. You think a right leaning military is going to stand idly by and let a the Union fracture to sooth the feeling of the left?
44% of the military is from the South. US Military Is Not Representative of Country - Business Insider You think they want to see another region succeed to secede? Nah. Which would be somewhat ironic.
Not on its own, it doesn’t. It may have been buried in the thread, but if you look I actually asked for figures on intrastate imports to make that determination.
I agree. That’s a great example of why the status quo is a terrible system.
The proposition finds meager justification because of the dysfunction a 2 party system creates. It wouldn’t be necessary if the legislature was actually beholden to the people, but it isn’t. Consider the case of Scott Walker - a governor, yes, but that position is even less safe than an incumbent state legislator and subject to many of the same political forces.
Now it’s true that bad propositions can and will make it through… but the escape valve there is preferable to not having it, even if it does occasionally add to the screw heap.
You don’t really have the option. Re-purposing huge swaths of land for growing essential food plus purchasing all the food from other exporters that you’ll need until that new foodstuff comes in is ruinously expensive and wouldn’t sit well with those land owners (even if they’re already farmers, nobody likes the state saying “GROW THIS NOW” and I doubt the state could afford to pay them all off). It also takes time, time you haven’t got because even mildly disgruntled people tend to go reign of terror when food becomes a problem. Both parties would prefer interstate trade relations to return to status quo ante-…secession(?) to the alternative, so yes, compromise is likely.
You people that refuse to read basic English treat civil discourse “just like a 12 year old” who’s pissed at the neighbor. I’m not a “#Calexit” person. I asked for a rational discussion of the pros and cons, specifically to establish a very well constructed numerical argument against Calexit. Did you just skip the first half of the OP?
Apparently you’re a fan of the oppression Olympics. I’m not. The injustice done to residents in Washington DC doesn’t suddenly make injustice elsewhere meaningless. So if you want a cookie for medaling gold in the OO, it’s all yours, but please make a salient point.
Swing states matter more, I’ll say that. You’re the first to mention Wisconsin. You’ll have to forgive me if ludicrous strawmen arguments don’t get any more of my attention.
The college itself is a terrible idea. Changing from winner take all is a step in the right direction, but it wont cure the underlying problem.
This is certainly a more realistic approach. That, or abolition of the college, which would probably have even more popular support than mere local reform, given how uninformed voters typically are and how much they hate the college when they catch wind of it. Unfortunately it veers into off topic. The discussion is centered about a theoretical secession.
And yet you argue that having no ability to influence electoral politics beyond being a rubber stamp for the DNC is somehow having major influence.
That state that currently has a dozen or so 'pubs to congress and has sent 'pub senators and voted for 'pub presidents in this millennial’s lifetime sure is a rubber stamp.
There are 49 states, 16 territories, and the District of Columbia that each have less political power than California. Sure, some of them have an advantage in one particular area – let’s say that New Hampshire gets a cookie because of its presidential primary date. But then, California has oodles of more political power in myriad other ways that makes California the most politically powerful state in the nation. But you think you’re oppressed? Give me a break.
Swing states only matter more if you ignore everything else going on in the country. A while back there was a GQ thread about a hypothetical election in which one million people voted for candidate A, and one million and one people voted for candidate B. There were people who, apparently in full seriousness, thought that only one person’s vote mattered in that election. This is the same fallacy that leads you to think that swing states matter more.
I provided the numbers. California has 10.2% (55/538) of the electoral votes, and about twelve percent of the population. That is not a third of a vote. Where the heck does that number come from?
What you’re doing is deliberately comparing California to overrepresented states, but that’s not the logical way to approach it or else you don’t arrive at a correct figure for the average voter. California has to be compared to the AVERAGE, not another outlier. Comparing California to Rhode Island and saying “oh gosh, we only get a third of a vote” is precisely as silly as comparing California to Texas and saying “Hey, we get exactly the same vote!” And yet, silly as that would be, it would in a sense actually be less silly, since of course there are more Texans than Rhode Islanders.
I’m not saying it’s entirely fair Californians get about 6/7ths of the vote the average American does. But it’s a long way from 1/5th or 1/3rd, and a degree of intellectual honesty is merited in a serious discussion.
You think Russia and China are extremely likely to threaten war with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal over the right of a small population to unilaterally secede from an established country? Have you ever paid attention to how large multi-ethnic countries with mutliple dissatisfied minorities feel about unilateral secession by said minorities, or how little major powers interfere in each other’s purely internal affairs?