Are You Ready For Six Californias?

Yes, not one, or two Californias but if venture capitalist Tim Draper has his way and the voters approve, we could see the once Golden State split into six states.
Yes, there have been multiple proposals to split California into two states with the most recent being in 2011 and it was proposed by Jeff Stone.
And there is the ongoing attempt to get some of the most northern counties to split off from California and with some Southern Oregon counties getting together to form the State of Jefferson.
But this plan by Mr. Draper could make the general election ballot in 2016. And with about a year and a half to get about 806,000 signatures, it should make that ballot.
I don't find myself drawn to this plan because it is too many divisions and has a lot less chance of seeing the light of day as opposed to simply dividing the state by north and south or east and west.
And while this is only a potential ballot initiative, judging by the people on this Facebook link with KNBC 4 News, the beyond low information voter is rearing their collective heads in a really bad way.
Overwhelmingly, the majority of commenters are against the general idea of splitting the state in any way. And that is fine in and of itself. Yet few if any give a substantive reason as to why it would be a bad idea.
A lot of people think that because Mr. Draper is a venture capitalist, that automatically disqualifies him from even promoting such an idea.
Still many think that Mr. Draper is an eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll Republican and just trying to give the GOP some kind of electoral advantage.
Too bad that Mr. Draper is not a Republican but a Libertarian.
And really, if California were to be split in an east/west way, it would guarantee that it would be a GOP electoral gain. Even a north/south split would be better for the GOP than six separate states.
Look at the map below.

 



I look at three states that will be Democrat and or Democrat-leaning. That would be North California, Silicon Valley and West California.

And three states that would be Republican and or Republican-leaning. Those states would be Jefferson, Central and South California.

In terms of presidential elections, it would probably be a wash regarding the electoral college. The same in terms of representation in the senate. And possibly each state House of Representatives would be more competitive.

Nothing in this life is a guarantee, but in this being some eeeeevvvvviiiiilllll Republican plot, eh, not so much.

There would be some very wide economic disparities in each state.

The three coastal states of North California, West California and Silicon Valley would be pretty invested in technology.

Central and South California would be heavily invested in agriculture.

Jefferson would probably be the most economically depressed of the six states for a variety of reasons.

So if that is the case, and I am only generalizing based on the current economy in each of the proposed states, again what is the possible benefit?

Well for one thing each state would be able to exert greater control over issues that they find to be important for each state's citizens. Each state could determine tax policy and what kind of taxes they want.
Each state would be able to determine their own policies towards education, law and order, prisons, whether they want to continue the policy of the ballot initiative or not.
In other words, each state determines it's fate on it's own terms. That is that does not violate the United States constitution.
One of the problems is that local control, cities and counties, seems to erode year after year. More and more matters that cities and counties should handle are being taken by the state.
An example are plastic bag bans.
As I noted in an earlier post, my hometown, Pasadena, passed a city ordinance that supermarkets could not continue to provide plastic shopping bags for customers. That customers could purchase a paper bag for 10c if they do not want to bring plastic, reusable bags. Besides it being crony capitalism at its worst, I think that it will not help in the matter of litter and the like. Now there is a push to take this ban state-wide. Thus no matter where you go to shop, no matter what city, better have those reusable plastic bags if the legislature has its way.
That is not the state's business. Let the local governments decide such issues.
That is sort of the point of why Mr. Draper believes its time to break up the state.
I think that this is worth discussion. I think that if the required signatures are made, this should go to the voters. We need to have a serious talk with each other. I fear that the reactions of the commenters on the KNBC 4 Facebook page is a bad sign. It is clear if you go to the link that many are the lowest of the low information voters.
I'm not sure that this has any more of a chance than the many other proposals to break up the once Golden State, but let's have a serious, adult, conversation about it. About the possibility of six Californias.



Well, Inevitable Happened As Detroit Files For Bankruptcy

Well, the inevitable finally happened and the once grand city of Detroit, Michigan, became the largest American city to ever declare bankruptcy as they filed for Chapter 9 protection last Thursday.
Now, to understand the reason this came about, here are two photos. One of the Detroit of old. One of when this city was on the rise.

Above is the Detroit Masonic Temple. Built in 1926 at the height of the Roaring Twenties, this was at a time when the city was on the rise with the burgeoning American auto industry. The good thing is that it is still being used and maintained by local Masons.
But here more of the image that we are used to of the Motor City.

And this is pretty much what around one-third of the city of Detroit looks like today.
One wonders how it took this long for Detroit to come to this inevitability.
It is a combination of a lot of things to be honest.
Sure it is easy to point out, accurately, that the city has been in steady decline since the race riots of 1967. Very true.
It has seen not only so-called White Flight out of the city and to the surrounding suburbs. But there has been Black Flight as well for before 1967, Detroit was a mecca for Black Americans. Even an unskilled Black could go from poverty to the middle class. And once they did, they saw a lot of bad things as a direct result of the 1967 riots and a slew of incompetent political "leadership". So they joined their fellow Whites and moved to the suburbs.
Say, do you remember city councilman JoAnn Watson that I wrote about here? Do watch the video for she basically said that just as former Democrat Mayor Coleman Young did, the current mayor, David Bing, should just go to Washington, D. C., hat in hand and "bring home the bacon".
In other words, you and I from all 50 states should fork out money to Detroit so that they can continue to "govern" the way that they wanted.
And let's look at this statistic.
Detroit was the United States' fourth largest city in 1950 with a population of 1,849,568. Today in 2013, the population (as of the 2010 census) is 713,777. In reality is it at this point hovering at 700,000. It went from the fourth largest city to the 18th in 60 years.
One huge problem is that Detroit depended on the auto industry and nothing else economically. During the boom times of Detroit, there were more than just the big three we know today as Chrysler, Ford and General Motors. There was American Motors, Packard. De Soto, Studebaker, and many more. Eventually, many went by the wayside for a variety of reasons. Which left Detroit with the big three. At some point because of the end and or contraction of many auto makers, the big three thought that they were invincible.
But they were not.
The Chrysler company is a great example of that non-invincibility.
Thanks to the gas shortages of the 1970s, Americans went looking for smaller, cheaper cars, that got better gas mileage. Thus people began buying Datsuns (now Nissan), Hondas and Toyotas. And leaving the big three in the dust. By 1979, the company was in financial free fall and went to the federal government for a loan guarantee of what now seems a paltry sum of $1,500,000,000. Congress approved the loan and yes, it did give the company new life. But by the late 1990s, Chrysler was merged with Daimler-Benz, the makers of the Mercedes-Benz. But they could not save the company and it was sold to an equity firm and they realized, THEY could not save the iconic brand. So in 2008, the federal government essentially merged Chrysler with the Fiat car company from Italy. The irony is that Fiat left the American market about 30 years ago. Now they are back, thanks to the federal government.
During this time, the writing was on the wall, yet the big three decided to keep giving into the demands of the United Auto Workers and salaries continued to rise, but not profitability. One of the reasons at one time or another the big three were on the brink. The big three did not have the fortitude to say no to the unions and, voila, eventually they became what they are today.
And during this time, the political leadership of Detroit did not one thing to diversify the economy of the city and the area. They kept counting on the auto industry to somehow ride in on the White Horse and save this city. The problem is that no one saved the auto industry from themselves. The UAW, the same thing.
This column by the National Journal's Ron Fournier is a good one. Because he states the obvious about the lack of vision to move from the the manufacturing to another kind of economy.
Imagine that if the city leaders had to plan to make Detroit a Great Lakes Silicon Valley, no one would be writing about this demise of Detroit. Or maybe to be a place for insurance companies to do business. Anything. yet nothing was done.
One thing that Mr. Fournier writes about I touched upon earlier and that is the so-called White Flight that created the population shift that made Detroit a majority Black city. What Mr. Fournier did not write about is that once Blacks became part of the middle class, they followed Whites out of the city. And what is left is, dare I write this, a lot of people that probably wished they could be some place else.
Because the political class has made the average Detroit citizen feel like they are victims of fill-in-the-blank grievance, the idiocy of people like Councilman Watson rules the roost of government. They have no problem creating a victim class and at the same time trying to buy allegiance of city workers with unsustainable union contracts in good times. They have focused not on rebuilding the city as a whole, but the left's wondrous plans of downtown revitalization. And in that, sure they have attracted some thrill-seeking White hipsters to downtown lofts and the like. But what about the rest of the city.
Another great column is this one in The New York Times by Charlie LeDuff. When you read it, it sounds like Detroit has become a third-world city within the United States. I want you to read this carefully because if this was almost any other American city, we would be up in arms:

If this were New York, these stories would have ricocheted around the world. But this is Detroit and, of course, nobody gives a damn. Even here people have been conditioned to accept these things as
normal, a nuisance, the buzz of a fly.

Mr. LeDuff is correct. I mean, remember the Robo-cop movies? Where did they take place? DETROIT! And this was in the 1980s when things were not nearly in the dire straits that they are today.
So yes, sorry you 30,000 pensioners, you are screwed. You will have to live on less. Have less health care than you are used to. And the rest of you that are on the city payroll, you are pretty much screwed too. You will see the wonderful union contracts renegotiated by default. You will see you future pension benefits reduced. Your salary reduced.
And for the rest of the citizens of Beirut on Lake Michigan? A time for a fresh start a time to force those people who put you in the position of living in America's worst big city out. Bring in people that actually give a damn for you and the city.
This is the rock bottom that Detroit should have been in years ago. I suppose better late than never.