Parts Of California To Secede From The State?

A local California official has gotten a lot of reaction by proposing that parts of California secede from the state and create a new one.

Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone said in a statement that Riverside, Imperial, San Diego, Orange, San Bernardino, Kings, Kern, Fresno, Tulare, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa and Mono counties should form a new state of South California.

“Our taxes are too high, our schools don’t educate our children well enough, unions and other special interests have more clout in the Legislature than the general public,” Stone said in his statement.

This came on the day Gov. Jerry Brown signed budget legislation that will divert about $14 million in 2011-12 vehicle license fee revenue from four new Riverside County cities.

In an unofficial CBS news poll, 88 % of the respondents like the idea, but I see some problems with it coming to fruition.

For those unfamiliar with California, the counties named above constitute the largest and most populous chunk of 'Red' California, the part of the state outside Los Angeles and the Bay Area that mostly votes Republican. There's absolutely no way that the existing Democrat power structure in 'Blue' California would allow its tax base to be eroded in this manner or allow the creation of a new jurisdiction that would put two new Republican Senators in Washington, and the Obama White House would likely do everything short of military occupation to help them prevent it. There are a great many states with a similar configurations to California..a large Red state area dominated politically by a small urban Blue colony that feeds off them, and the last thing the Obama Administration would want is for folks in places like southern Illinois or eastern Washington to start getting ideas.

A similar scenario occurred when the San Fernando Valley attempted to secede from the City of Los Angeles, with the city pulling out every trick in the book to keep their tax base intact and their cash cow securely attached.

Blue California will likewise do whatever's necessary to hang on to its own cash cows...disallowing petition signatures for a referendum, excessively valuing state assets to make the cost of 'divorce' obscenely high, threatening to cut off services and divert revenues to other parts of the state, whatever it takes.

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