I’ve been talking for years now about how Californians would be better off if we split up the state. Why should those of us who want to live in a civilized society be held hostage to a small cadre of right-wing nuts who have paralyzed the Legislature and are interested only in destroying the public sector?
And now, one of those wingnuts seems to agree with me. A Riverside County supervisor named Jeff Stone wants to take 13 conservative counties from the south and the inland empire and create a new state of South California. I say: Why not?
Those counties vote for Republicans who vow to cut taxes and spending — and, of course, those counties also get more in state money than they contribute in taxes. That is, San Franciscans and people in Los Angeles are subsidizing with our tax dollars counties that elect people who don’t want taxes.
Fine. Leave us. Without those counties, California would have a two-thirds Democratic majority in both houses, easy. The state would be able to raise taxes to balance the budget. California’s credit rating would improve and the cost of bonds would drop. A Democrat could run for governor without pandering to the conservatives. Maybe we could even get rid of the death penalty.
South California would be an economic basket case — but it would still be part of America, so the Democrats and sane people who are stuck living there would be able to move north without worrying about ICE. I’d even propose setting aside a state fund (maybe equal to some percentage of what California now spends subsidizing the tax haters) to help pay relocation expenses for low-income liberal refugees.
Seriously: They want to leave, we don’t want them here … why not make everybody happy and let South California go?