Replies

Californians, are we going to do this? Hint: You will have to get out of bed to do it.

To effect real reform you need to...

1) Thrash and burn most of the courts. Any voter imitative that puts the state on a diet will be ruled unconstitutional (even if it is a constitutional amendment) because (insert someone)'s rights have been infringed.

2) Throw out most of the legislature. Keep a few good guys around to teach folks how to run the government.

3) Cut Sacramento down to 3 months a year - these long legislative sessions give them too much time to figure out how to spend more of our money.

4) Make all budgets last ten years - yeah, you'll only get this through once, but this alone will cut the state deficit into pieces.

Try this on for real change. When California was admitted to the Union Congress also approved the state being split in two, if the citizens of California approved it. That takes care of one of the requirements under the US Constitution for forming a new state from an existing state. Congress has already approved the split.

The US Constitution also requires approval of the state legislature. Our California State Constitution grants citizens legislative powers by way of the Constitutional Amendment process, better known as the initiative.

I've been involved with some preliminary discussions about splitting the state in a manner never proposed before. Eight counties, Alameda, Contra Costa, Los Angeles, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Santa Cruz would form one state. The remaining 50 counties would form the other state. Both states would retain the current state constitution with two years to have voters vote to retain it, or hold a constitutional convention to present the voters a new state constitution.

The larger of the two states would be the most conservative on the west coast, fill two new vacancies in the US Senate, and elect a conservative state government.

Ironically, faced with the social spending in the smaller of the two states, the small state would also make a dramatic shift to more conservative policies once it can no longer bleed money and resources from the rural, more conservative counties.

The vast bulk of natural resources like water, oil, forests plus power generating plants would be controlled by the larger, conservative state.

Any interest here? Help is needed. I'd like to get more people to stop trying to work within the state we have now, and start working toward a new free state. With the conservative voters of Orange, San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties coupled with the voters in the rural and inland counties, passage of an initiative splitting the state is assured.