Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Dividing California into Smaller States

Open Email to Texas House Representatives and Senators:

Dear Texas House Representatives and Senators,
According to the Washington Times,Tim Draper, a multimillionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist, has proposed dividing California into six states. The proposal was taken seriously by the state government and given a legislative analysis. Legislative analysis indicated in a report that the division is practical. I have not seen the report, but the Washington Times goes through the various pluses and minuses of the proposal, presumably taken from the report. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/4/six-californias-plan-difficult-but-doable-assessme/.
It should also be noted that Silicon Valley, the origin of the proposal, would become the richest state of the six.
It is said that organizers are working to gather the 1 million signatures needed to place the measure on the November ballot. If California voters vote in favor of dividing the state into six states, it is also said that Congressional approval would be necessary to make the split. Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution empowers the U.S. Congress to grant statehood. The Constitution declares that new states cannot be created by merging or splitting existing states without the approval of both the U.S. Congress and the states' legislatures.
Proposer Tim Draper said, “California, as it is, is ungovernable". Presumably, he means it is ungovernable because of its size. If that is really the case, how is Texas, which is also very large, governable, or even the whole United States governed by the Federal government?
What does this mean to non-Californians, if California is divided? Others may see some advantages and disadvantages, but I only see now an advantage to voters in federal elections. As it now stands, California has 55 electoral votes, which is almost twice as much as any other state, except for Texas. This entitles California to 55 seats in the House of Representatives. Since California is considered a Democrat state, 55 Democrats in the House are a significant bloc involving passage of legislation. If the state is split into six parts, the collective 55 electoral votes would also be split, presumably in favor of Republicans.
The other question is whether the citizens of other states have the right to tell Californians what they must do. I believe they do not have that right. This is also consistent with my opinion that if California cannot govern itself in its present form, it also has the uninterrupted responsibility to bankruptcy without support of other states. If California is split into six parts, one or more of those six may still go bankrupt, wherein I have the same opinion. If they are unable to handle their problems, they must bear the suffering consequences.
My recommendation to our Texas Representatives and 2 Senators is that if the situation comes to a vote in the U.S. Congress, you will vote in favor of allowing California to divide into smaller states.

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