It’s nice to think about taking your ball and going home. However, if we denigrate Texas everytime they threaten to secede we really shouldn’t be giving California a pass.
Edit- fix fat finger spelling
I don’t denigrate Texas every time they say they’re gonna secede. In fact, I want them to. If they don’t want to be a part of America, then let them go do their own thing. If that turns out to be a bad move for them, then that’s on them.
It’s a moot point anyway, though, because the ruling post-Civil war (Texas v. White, specifically) determined that unilateral secession was not allowed. In order for California to leave they would either have to come to an agreement with the Federal government to do so (or a majority of all other state legislatures, or something… there’s no precedent) or fight a war against the rest of the union and win, forcing capitulation and a concession.
Both possibilities seem extremely remote.
This is only posturing, and even if it passes it is not designed to result in California actually leaving the union.
CA better get their hands on some ICBMs. Keep one pointed at DC, and another pointed at Mar-a-Lago. It’s pretty much the only way a state can keep its sovereignty.
I know Cali won’t HAVE to, but can they join Canada?
If California could actually pull it off, sure. They’re the largest economy in the United States, and a larger economy than many whole nations. Would any sane country turn that down?
I know that a Canadian lawmaker offered to take Washington, Oregon and California as new provinces in response to Trump: https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/canadian-lawmaker-offers-take-washington-oregon-california-new-provinces/LPFT7I4AYBGCLHBKVOB2TIFQOQ/
Other than the “state of Jefferson” I think all three states would be interested
This is stupid and a pointless gesture. Do something more productive with your time.
🐻New California Republic🐻
And a fascist militia like Caesars legion willing to fuck around!
And the Dead Kennedys can write the anthem
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Brexit was clever wordplay, every proposal since hasn’t been. Fuckin “Calexit”, do better.
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Yeah, you don’t get to just leave a country. Believe it or not, there was actually at least one war about that!
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Fuck CBS for their cancer ass website.
Exit = vacate… Vacation…
Californication?
Dream of it lol
Caliagainstya
Californiout
Caleaveornia
Adding -exit every time a region leaves some kind of alliance is going to be like adding -gate to every American political scandal
You mean like watergategate? https://youtu.be/vB9JgxhXW5w
Californexit
And Brexit as wordplay was just a rehash of the prior Grexit moment Greece had…
Brexit was clever wordplay, every proposal since hasn’t been.
Same for Make Britain Great Again
Good ol mibga
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Remember how the federal government treated the south when they tried to secede. And people still celebrate it, not without good reason. But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.
Well, there are two big differences.
The ethical one, the South wanted to secede to keep their slaves, and to clarify because the term slavery has been run ragged by propaganda, they wanted to keep their forced labour/death camps where they could kill, maim, rape, buy and sell people, also children, and have them do backbreaking, crippling work to enrich themselves.
On the other hand, California is contemplating this because the South, after losing their war, did a 200 year psyop to get a rapist and a bona-fide sieg heiling Nazi in power to force California to drop initiatives that would keep the Earth inhabitable and let their citizens live in peace.
The pragmatic one is that while the South was what it was, California is still an economic powerhouse accounting for 20% of the US economy. If they would secede, and bring a few like-minded states with them, it’s not the least bit implausible that the South would be doing the burning again.
All that said, the Russians and the Chinese are salivating at this idea I’m sure.
But they didn’t just go to war to stop it, they burned the south to the ground.
Do that to CA and you’re shooting yourself in the foot as the US
Destroying your most important ports and where more than 50% of your agriculture nationwide comes from is not a good idea
Absolutely nobody can accuse the right of being smart
Which is exactly why they would burn it to the ground. The federal government would never let California, let alone any state, secede peacfully. They can’t risk losing those resources and would destroy them before allowing them to be competition.
CA is already burning due to mismanagement. So…
TIL wind=mismanagement
Climate change = mismanagement on the part of pretty much the whole world. So technically correct.
Question: what things were done in the 80’s to prep for wildfires? Do they do any of those things today?
So you don’t actually know what you’re talking about and yet you commented anyway?
Fuck off you empty headed dumb fucking sea lion sack of shit.
The South was an economic powerhouse prior to the civil war. Didn’t stop the government.
Was it really? I was under the impression that they mostly were agricultural, while the north had all the light and heavy industries… (sorry, I’m not american)
You are correct. It heavily contributed to their loss. Without international support, or the industries to leverage that support they were isolated, poor and out of manpower.
If Union leadership was better in the beginning we would have seen them rolled much faster.
This was RIGHT before the industrial revolution in America. The timing of industrialization going north because the south was utterly burned to the ground was a massive shock that is still felt today. They couldn’t switch to industrialization in time
A huge reason the south lost was because they were NOT an economic powerhouse…
Much like today.
And they were right to. Sherman and John Brown are national heros and we could use them again.
Sorry California, you will have to negotiate with Colorado and Arizona for your water. So basically you have to take us with you.
The negotiating:
If you don’t give us water we wont send you the good you need to live
You’ll die well before us in that waiting game, baby
Aren’t a lot of crops grown in Mexico and imported through the Arizona channels? Because produce is way cheaper in Arizona than California.
If they just kick out the alfalfa farmers and the almond farms, they don’t need water imports.
They got desalination plants.
They cost $1m/min to run
$1,000 to $3,000 per acre-foot of water produced, which can translate to about $2,000 to $3,500 per acre-foot for smaller-scale projects .
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1 acre-foot of water = 325,851 gallons
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At $2,000 per acre-foot, the cost per gallon is about $0.0061 per gallon. Its really a range between $0.005 to $0.01 per gallon.
Of course you can just move to a state that has water. Everyone knows you can just drink river water and lake water without any treatment at all. Plus the convenience of living near a swamp, river, lake or flood plane is superb. Otherwise you would need to carry the water somewhere else than where it is. But sure, you’re right, we shouldn’t desalinate water. That’s crazy!
Oooh oooh, now do one for the AI GPU farms. Now, a lot of people would argue these are not a comparable use of vital resources, what with water being critical for the survival of all life, and AI the current billionaire snake oil.
But I mean, what’s really more important than generating capital to grow the net worth of a few people by a few percents so that we can input text to generate pictures of a sick-ass panther or stories that lose the plot less than three sentences in?
A single ChatGPT query requires 500ml of water, or let’s say one water bottle. Meanwhile, a single cheeseburger requires 700 gallons of water or 5299 bottles.
The whole “AI is wasting all the water” argument is not as significant as it seems when you compare it to literally anything else we as humans do.
Electricity consumption, on the other hand…
Sorry, I thought we were talking about the amount of power desalination uses. Didn’t even know AI consumes water.
edit: wait a minute–why the fuck does AI consume water???
Second edit: sorry, I got caught up in the original comment talking about the cost per minute for desalination, and immediately went to assuming they were talking about energy costs.
Ah, my bad, lol. Im dumb. I was stuck on water consumption ig. I shouldnt wake up and Lemmy…
Acre-foot? Fuck me that is a cursed unit. Americans really will use anything other than the metric system
Its done like that by the water authorities so that nobody knows what the ever living fuck they’re talking about. So I agree with you on this.
River water and lake water are potable with minimal input, whereas desalination is prohibitively expensive. Unless there’s a free energy source somehow, we’re better off drinking river water or small beer as our ancestors did.
Free energy?
Are you seriously wondering if California gets enough sunlight?
Did you look at the numbers I researched for you? Those numbers give you water ready to drink. Once the water gets the salt removed, you can drink it. The desalination is basically cleaning the water. If you got a water filter at home, get some pH measuring test strips and measure the pH of the water from your tap and from the filter. You’ll find that there is a significant differences. It could be like two pH levels difference, and I think each level is one order of magnitude larger than the previous. So 100 times cleaner. Plus they get salt, which is a valuable byproduct.
FYI the pH of water is not a measurement of cleanliness, it is a measurement of the acidity-alkalinity. I am not sure if you were meaning that but it seems implied by your comment.
No, dude, I mean pH. The carbon in your filter will definitely alter the pH. PH is changed molecularly, so a filter for that must be chemical, electrical or both. Activated carbon is both. Plus all the gunk already trapped in it does like to react with the opposite charge.
This is fairly complicated stuff, its better to just give it a try.
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The remaining Blue States should do the same. Common sense should prevail and it would allow the MAGAts to create their racist neo-Nazi White Christian slave run utopia dictatorship without resistance from those who support the US Constitution.
Lots of peoole didn’t read the article
According to the text of the measure, the state would be required to create a 20-member state commission to study California’s viability as an independent country in 2027 and to publish a report the following year.
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If the ballot question is approved, the proposal would declare a “vote of no confidence in the United States of America”, but would not change the state’s government or its relationship with the U.S. The measure would also call for the removal of the U.S. flag from all state buildings.Well it’s a start I guess.
Yeah, I can’t think of a reason anyone would vote no on this. I’m excited to read their report.
Balkanization is beginning
Honestly at this point I feel the US would do great by splitting and becoming a confederation (think EU styles autonomy).
I think the differences are just too big to have a functioning state.
I also understand that the push towards these movements is often done by Russian propaganda, who want to do anything to split up the US and NATO.
If political ideologies were geography bound that would make great sense. Break it up, let the pieces govern themselves. But the problem is not everyone living in a red state is a Republican or maga fetishist and not everyone living in a blue state is a democrat or liberal.
Cities are usually liberal, rural is usually conservative. I’d personally advocate for an expanded, air tight bill of rights with a federal government capable and willing to enforce it and all remaining decisions and rules be set by the local community, either city or county. Abolish state governments and reform them into regional managers that upkeep shared resources like roads, but with no legislative power.
I live in the EU, there are some good things but also ineffeciencies living in a confederation style government. To be fair, while consumer and labour protection in the EU has been amazing, we have to admit that there is almost no innovation in R&D going on in Europe as a whole compared to the US. Aside from strict regulations, this is because there is no single rule on how to promote R&D. Each countries have their own rules and promotions. Some states are innovators like Germany, or has no R&D at all like Ireland.
Another weakness that the EU has is on production and defense. As you rightly pointed out, Russia wants the West to fragment, and Russia wants the EU to remain chaotic when it comes to military production and have a disunited, if not an incoherent, European army. But external influence is not even the main issue, the main issue is that many EU countries are neutral like Ireland and Austria, who are not part of NATO. I don’t know about Austria but it’s very unpopular here in Ireland to join any military alliance and there is a negative image of NATO after the Iraq War. Finland and Sweden used to be anti-NATO until the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And with the legacy of the horrors of the Second World War, military production in Europe has been weak. Even though the EU has outstripped the US in terms of giving aid to Ukraine, much of these are non-military because European arms industries are struggling to produce. The US is still the primary military donor of Ukraine.
With different competing values and priorities, it’s challenging for the EU to remain confederate. A lot of people advocate for the EU to federalise for this reason.
I’m austrian, we literally can’t join any military organisation, because our constitution says so, also it’s very unpopular, the party that won the last election (FPÖ) is even against being in the eu, but most austrians like the eu, they don’t wanna join nato tho
EDIT: also the somewhat libertarian party (NEOS) got over 10% of the votes if I remember correctly, so please don’t take this country serios
Your point on R&D, while true, doesn’t consider the cost of the US R&D success. I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about it creating the oligarchs we have now. I’m talking about how all that investment doesn’t go toward healthcare or generally improving the lives of the people. Personally, I think it is a bad trade.
Oh yeah, of course. That’s why I mentioned consumer and labour protection versus R&D. I understand if companies that make essential goods and services like pharma or vehicles might complain of regulations stifling innovations, but social media companies like Facebook or Twitter don’t provide anything essential to our daily lives and thus they don’t really require anymore innovation. Sure they provide communications, but there are many other social media and communications services out there who do not sell private data.
Nothing is perfect. I mean I’ve spent most my life living in the EU too. I just think it would work better than the current US system. But that’s my personal opinion.
Not unless you’re dealing with external threats and unreliable ally. Macron is right about having strategic autonomy and an EU army, as much as it pains me to say it because I dislike another heavily militarised Europe.
As an American, I’m growing more and more scared of my country, so from that perspective I’m all for a more militarized Europe to keep the US in check if only for the next decade or two.
That’s what the Articles of Confederation were, and they were a disaster that only managed to keep the union alive for 8 years because people could hold their nose until the Constitution was ratified.
confederation
… odd choice for a term … Nobody in the EU would define themselves by it …
Well, trying to use terms to justify the US confederacy post-Civil War aside, it would actually be better for a lot of states. The rest of the world can no longer trust and increasingly bipolar schizophrenic US, whereas that’s not the case for a certain number of states. You can’t overcome the deeply flawed and corrupt two party federal system, and it’s rapidly becoming even worse. If you can’t fix the problems from within, you will only be able to fix them from outside.
But… it is a confederation. Is it not? Why wouldn’t they? Even Wikipedia mentions confederation in the first paragraph of the EU entry:
The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation.
I know they’re not in the EU, but that’s exactly what the Helvetic Confederation (Switzerland) do.
Something that might work out better and would be a lot easier to do (thought still not very easy), would be to split into 3 (or 4?) states.
California has almost 12% of the US population concentrated in that one state! By far most of the states contain about 2% or less of the US population each.
By splitting, the population would be better represented in the Senate with 6 senators between them instead of only 2, and there might be a net gain in some other benefits that are given on the state level.
edit: I see that someone had already brought this idea up, but IMO it’s a good idea that they should seriously consider!
The State of Jefferson would have started this process, but WWII got in the way. Except that was all predicated on being super racist.
I think if you get a legit Cal3 proposal, you might end up with a Cal4 where they pull from the six-state version where “Silicon Valley” is its own state shows up so that there can be some technopolis with custom laws and insane cost of living. Essentially, turning SFO into another Manhattan.
I would never move back to CA as it is, but if there was a breakup, I might actually go for it.
The racists all wanted to leave the US because it wasn’t racist enough. However now the racists are in power and they don’t want to leave anymore.
The right wing has wanted this for years because California is very conservative outside of its cities. Splitting the state up would guarantee a Republican Senate.
Depends on what you do with the cities. The Central Valley doesn’t want to be its own state.
Careful. Texas has some long forgotten provision where they could easily do the same thing, into 5 states. and they’d all be red.
If they split California into 3, the northern state might be red (or swing) but the other two would definitely be blue because of SR and LA. Look at a map of election results by county.
With Texas, at least a couple of them would have to be blue because some would contain the blue urban areas. Same with FL, at least one new state would be blue. if CA, TX, and FL all did it. If they divided into 5 states it might even out. Of course there would have to be negotiations to get enough people and the parties to agree to the boundaries, which should prevent too much of an advantage to one side or the other, especially if people don’t want their cities be split between two states.
But regardless of the results for the Senate, the point is that the people in most populous states of this country are not getting their fair representation in our federal government and that needs to change.
Then of course as long as we’re altering our makeup of states, we have to give the citizens DC representation and make that a state. And Puerto Rico should be able to decide if it wants to become a state as well.
German here, so excuse my ignorance, but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff? Last time I checked you’re no longer riding horses to Washington…
but wouldn’t it be easier to change the voting system to one that counts each vote as equal on a state level and get rid of the voting people stuff
Country wide that requires a constitutional amendment, which requires 2/3 of all states to agree. It’s been tried, the cuckservatives rage and bitch like the children they are because it would mean they’d never win again, so it never goes through
There’s an effort to make it so that individual states will ignore the EC called NAPOVOINTERCO that would basically force the US to use a popular vote system, but it’s not got enough individual states signed on yet to activate itself
When it comes to the US, this is a simple rule to follow: federal change is nearly impossible because of the babies in the GOP, while states are easier but can change a whole lot less overall
Can we coordinate with Oregon and Washington to join Canada?
That aside, California leads the US in many ways, but we have a tendency to go too far and do really dumb things. We’re pretty good at self congratulations even when other states stare, slack-jawed at our blunders. It’s nice to have perspective.
CASCADIA NOW!!!
i freaking love the idea of Cascadia becoming autonomous and independent. I’d love it if New England did that too.
It’s an interesting idea, but it can’t possibly happen. The federal government has too much military infrastructure in different parts of the US, especially nuclear material. They’d never let anyone secede with it.
ha, if cascadia and new england both seceeded simultaneously.
LOOK. LOOK AT US. WE ARE THE NUCLEAR POWERS NOW.
[Crimson 1] has entered the chat
We also have the top two ports in the US. And if we took the PNW with us nearly all trade from Asia would pass through this theoretical new country before reaching the US.
Edit; also there’s a lot of division between the urban and rural areas of all west coast states. It’s fun to think about, but I don’t see it happening without a major conflict
And we would have border taxes in those goods.
AND A WALL!!!
That’s an argument for leaving PNW behind. Cannon fodder so they let us go peacefully with access to the coast and manifest destiny preserved
The US can manifist my ass. If CA leaves the PNW sure as shit is leaving too. We’re far more liberal than CA.
Can’t hear you over the sound of me cutting the rope below me mwahahaha
Yeah like what would happen to institutions like the Presidio of Monterey, the Naval Postgraduate school, Camp Pendleton, 29 Palms, etc if CA secedes?
Starter military for the new country
well, there is a grassroots movement I’ve seen in seattle to get all nuclear armaments out of the area, so I feel if cascadia existed as an independent country there’d be at least a little bit of support to return any armaments back to the us.
Fuck that, I’m not getting Ukraine’d.
So did the Brits. Ghandi still got independence
I’m pretty sure there were no nuclear weapons in India before their independence.
Can we leave out the non coastal Jeffersonians?
Can we get hawaii too for our corrupt politician’s vacation homes
Alaska can come too
Fuckin kangaroos
West Coat Re-Union
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For all of the reasons given, secession from the United States is a bad idea. But I’m going to keep banging this drum: The metropolises need to secede from their states, while staying part of the United States. Heck, Los Angeles County alone has more people than 40 of the states. It’s about time that they got fair representation.
That’s an approach I’d never considered - is there wiggle-room in the state constitutions to split into smaller states?
Article IV Section 3 of the US constitution
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
If a state agrees, a new state can be formed in its territory, effectively splitting it.
And there is the rub. Conservative legislators won’t allow it in most states, because it would mean more Dems in congress.
Same in California for much the same reason. There has long been a Republican proposal to split it into 5 states so there are more Republican senators.
We could follow an approach like in the slavery days. Balance each new slave state with a free state.
NY is a very blue state on the strength of NYC. But I grew up upstate, and there were just so many differences. ITs not just that it was a conservative rural area, but it was hard to find anything in common with the city and it always felt like the city dominated and we were afterthoughts. There was definite resentment and I’m sure it hasn’t helped as upstate economies and population dwindle while NYC strengthens. At the time you could split the population pretty evenly between conservative upstate and liberal city: there’d be a new red state to balance the new blue state of Los Angeles, and everyone could more closely elect their preferences
For the record, we in NYC have unique needs that are sometimes time sensitive, see funding for tunnel doors after Sandy as an example. There was no intention to override or co-opt funds meant for people outside the metro area, we all live the beauty of the Hudson valley and so forth.
That need for expedience generates ill will nonetheless, I forgot how many politicos from the state area would purposely slow down city requests or legislation unless a deal was attached.
I’m a huge fan of high speed rail and always hoped that could bring us together.
- Currently, spending on rail is a divider since nyc has a huge rail system and rail effectively doesn’t exist in the rest of the state. Why should we spend money on a project that only benefits the city (forgetting which direction the money actually flows)?
- if we all came together to build high speed rail to Albany, then up to Montreal and across the Mohawk valley to Buffalo (perhaps to be extended to Toronto), then the entire state benefits from rail. Upstate gets a much needed infusion to resurrect dying cities, we build a greater economy together, and NYC is the hub of a greater network. We can also all benefit by closer ties to our brothers up north and be part of a greater high speed rail network if their HSR gets off the ground
The “forgetting the money” is one of the parts we city people grumble quite a bit about amongst ourselves whenever the upstate politicos play games with our funding needs.
Look, the goal of govt is supposed to be benefit as many as possible, though for some that seems to also mean ignore the few, which I strongly disagree with.
If we build an HSR system within the city e.g. by replacing metro-north tracks, city people immediately benefit… but then the system can expand from there out to Schenectady, Albany buffalo etc. There’s no reason we can’t build your idea in a sensible, phased manner. We could go backwards too, start in buffalo and build south since the metro-north system is already fully functional.
I no longer live in NYC, but the years working for the MTA showed me a lot of the difficult, non-engineering problems to balance. Maybe there are ways to avoid the human problems associated with any large engineering project, but I don’t yet know if any such shortcuts exist or ever existed.
I think it’s probably neither allowed nor disallowed in state constitutions, but I’m just a dilettante constitutional scholar. Whether it’s allowed or not under the current system, that system is broken and can’t be fixed within the limitations of the system, and it needs a disruption. Disruptions tend to be unpleasant, so this is the least-disruptive disruption that I’ve come up with. There’s even historical precedent for it, in the form of the free imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire.
Texas could split in five smaller states iirc.
