A 51st State?
South California, a conservative’s utopia:
Accusing Sacramento of pillaging local governments to feed its runaway spending and left-wing policies, a Riverside County politician is proposing a solution: He wants 13 mostly inland, conservative counties to break away to form a separate state of “South California.”
Supervisor Jeff Stone, a Republican pharmacist from Temecula, called California an
“ungovernable” financial catastrophe from which businesses are fleeing and where taxpayers are being crushed by the burden of caring for welfare recipients and illegal immigrants.
On Tuesday, the Riverside County Board of Supervisors will consider Stone’s proposal to host a statewide summit for city and county leaders to sketch out a framework for secession….
A spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, called Stone’s proposal a laughable political stunt, saying the Riverside County supervisors should be more concerned about closing that county’s expected $130-million revenue shortfall in the next budget year and possible cutbacks to public safety.
“It’s a supremely ridiculous waste of everybody’s time,” said spokesman Gil Duran. “If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there’s a place called Arizona.”
OTB’s Doug Mataconis reminds us this is not new:
[T]here have been 26 other attempts to slice California up since it became a state in 1850. In each case, the proposals seem to be based in the tensions between Northern, Southern, and Central California, and the competing interests between the three… forming such a new state would require the consent of both the legislature of California and the United States Congress, as required by Article IV of the Constitution.
10 Responses to “A 51st State?”
I’ve certainly heard this idea coming from the most liberal elements of California too. The liberal base and the conservative base have always wondered, wide-eyed, how they could possibly be expected to work with the other — the points of view are just so diametrically opposed.
Certainly the economic woes of California right now put all this into stark relief. As always, both sides are trying to blame each other. The real root cause problem here though is the same root cause problem that tipped off the entire country’s issues — the overslackening of credit and practices surrounding real estate made property (and the structures on them) bubble uncontrollably, and then the burst of that bubble caused huge job loss, sprurring more real estate value depression, spurring loss of the consumer base, spurring more job loss, etc etc. This happened to a much greater extent in California than pretty much anywhere else — higher dollar values, bigger bubble, bigger bubble burst. Separating the state into two states would not and would not have helped this main problem.
Well, I guess this feeble example means the idea is still revived often, which is in and of itself healthy. California (along with Texas and Florida) is in the position of being a state where partition makes a good deal of sense, and each piece qualifies at once as a “real’ state, more than a number of existing states, in fact.
And it’s true that California and its “Massachusetts Lite” liberal politics for ages in Sacramento has left the state Too Big to Succeed. [cynical stare from a native who remembers better times]
To be brief, I will once more post the link to the very best study of partitioning California, to benefit those who need to know — this was done in the early 1990s by the California state legislature. Northern and Southern California (rather than the east-west-oriented concept that Joe found and posted about; a few people do grasp the littoral-interior divide and conceive of east-west partitioning) could be easily separated at county boundaries or (as the legislature says) along the Tehachapis (my preference as a naturalist and in other educated ways). I would prefer a Tehachapi boundary, proceeding to the watershed boundary (you can see that in the report, too, below), and probably cutting off at the north and heading due east at latitude 37. (The watershed could continue at least to Lake Tahoe and the eastern land transferred to Nevada.) Other people might have other ideas. The north-south split that is viable (according to the CA legislature itself) is a fascinating study. (So is the neglected conclusion and contention by the legislature that the northernmost 26 states could succeed on their own — intriguing)
This report tops everything else, including “Two Californias” by far-lefty Island Press (a fine book to enjoy if you can find it, too).
The legislature report also recaps the previous attempts to split the state, starting in the mid-1800s. Maps included, of course.
This is something on-line to note and file (bookmark).
……………..
The California legislature’s report is here. (BIG, BIG PDF file)
(California State) Assembly Office of Research:
TWO NEW CALIFORNIAS : AN EQUAL DIVISION
HISTORICAL AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS
http://www.csupomona.edu/~jskoga/splittingcalifornia/twonewcalifornias.pdf
Oh, and regarding Arizona: While some megastates — CA, TX, FL — can realistically be partitioned, some other states may need to merge in the tougher economic times in the future. The Carolinas might survive separately, but thinking people instantly think of combining the Dakotas, combining Alabama and Mississippi, and even combining Arizona and New Mexico.
Of course, there’s an alternative, which I told my Big Tex Gal Pal about and made her laugh (especially given how she views this state, New Mexico, as “an annex for Texans to play in”).
Q: What should the future boundary between California and Texas be?
A: The Continental Divide.
(And don’t forget the “cask,” as Franklin put it — envision Hitler and Stalin gloating over a map of Eastern Europe — that’s New York and Pennsylvania over a map of New Jersey. hahahahaha)
Additional amusement for the also-learned:
Joe W. — with or without combining Alabama and Mississippi:
Look at the following map and think about how Georgia can grow.
(continue that western boundary — river — to the Gulf Coast at Apalachicola, first and foremost; then get as reasonable or as ambitious as desired extending the Atlantic coast southward…)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~crackerbarrel/AGF.html
Add this …
http://www.srwmd.state.fl.us/documents/Maps/SuwanneeRiverBasinFlorida%20-%20Georgia%20Map%20-%20PDF.pdf
And finally, consider a good choice for partitioning Florida (below). (The most ambitious Georgia would annex the northern part, at least west to the river at Apalachicola.)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Cross_Florida_Barge_Canal_ACoE.jpg
Since any split would require the consent of precisely the same people who benefit from the current arrangement, it is never going to happen.
There is a very good reason why the only reason a state split ever occurred before was during the Civil War.
As partitioning (and consolidation) involve knowing present boundaries and their history, I’ll add a link to a little book I have that’s light but fun reading, and a link to a show now on teevee that may be based on the book. (I got my copy at a going-out-of business Borders store. The Vulture strikes again) Note there is a new “sequel” to this book, about the people deciding borders.
http://www.amazon.com/How-States-Got-Their-Shapes/dp/0061431389
(This reviewer was sharp enough to know about Point Roberts.)
http://mostlynf.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/how-the-states-got-their-shapes-mark-stein/
If you want the ISBN to the (original) book, I have it here (book in hand, paperback; you can order a used copy for pretty cheap):
ISBN 978-0-06-143139-5
The “sequel” is (I don’t have it yet, no copy in hand, no ISBN):
http://www.amazon.com/How-States-Got-Their-Shapes/dp/1588343146
The teevee series (I haven’t watched it)
http://www.history.com/shows/how-the-states-got-their-shapes
[...] A 51st State?The Moderate VoiceThe real root cause problem here though is the same root cause problem that tipped off the entire country's issues — the overslackening of credit and practices surrounding real estate made property (and the structures on them) bubble uncontrollably, …and more » [...]
A rule that would force States that have more than 5% of the US Population to Split into two States, and a rule that would force States that have less than 1% percent of the US population to merge with their Neighboring State would do wonder for democracy and the sanity of this country.
At this time that would mean no States with more than 15 Million Inhabitants and no State with less than 3 Million inhabitant. Bye bye Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhodes Island, Both Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Alaska, Maine Hawaii, Idaho, Delaware, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi… Hello West New York, North Florida, East Texas, North California, Central California & North California…
[grin] Double-counting a state, the way Dems boost their votes?
Don, it wouldn’t help “democracy” (though it would appeal to the liberal activists who find federalism antithetical and who despise the equal suffrage in the Senate — why not try to abolish the Senate?). It certainly would help egalitarianism as well as federal interventions.
You’re in well-learned company; Rex Tugwell (New Deal architect) wanted to set up a new Constitution and set of states in this country that would require each state to have at least five per cent of the nation’s total population.
(“There shall be Newstates, each comprising no less than 5 percent of the whole population. Existing states may continue and may have the status of Newstates if the Boundary Commission, hereinafter provided, shall so decide. The Commission shall be guided in its recommendations by the probability of accommodation to the conditions for effective government. States electing by referendum to continue if the Commission recommend otherwise shall nevertheless accept all Newstate obligations.”)
Subsidizing red-state votes is an important American institution, Don.