California Prepares Ballot Measure for Vote in 2018 to Secede

The West Coast of America, as well as the states in the Northeast, are where you’ll find the highest concentration liberals or progressives.  Further, that concentration is highest in the cities.  A quick look at that familiar map showing the voting by counties will reveal that.  Needless to say, those “blue” counties are where you are going to find the greatest frustration as well as unbridled anger over Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.  As we’ve observed, some of this has manifested itself in rage and violence.

Yet there are others who, while not moved to violence, are so unhappy with the direction of the country that they are organizing to do something that might be assumed to be unthinkable:  secede.  Unlike those who are protesting and even rioting in the streets, the secessionists are calmly, if no less intensely, focusing on their goal of creating a new nation out of what is currently the state of California.

Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general’s office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.

Marcus Ruiz Evans, the vice president and co-founder of Yes California, said his group had been planning to wait for a later election, but the presidential election of Donald Trump sped up the timeline.

“We’re doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention,” Evans said.

It is true that if California were a separate nation, it would be one of the ten largest countries in the world as measured by the size of its economy.  The loss of California would be a real blow to the US economy.  However, not all the results would necessarily be negative.  As long is this is all hypothetical at this point, here are some of the reasons why California’s departure might benefit the rest of the country.

California cannot pay its debts and will inevitably come looking to the federal government for a bail-out.

California officially has an unfunded pension liability of approximately $300 billion. Yet this is not a true reflection of the amount taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for, as it assumes unrealistic rates of return on pension investments. When accounting for more realistic rates of return, California’s unfunded pension liability is closer to $1 trillion.

The rest of the country will not be on the hook for California’s failed high-speed rail project.

California’s high-speed rail project has become a comedy of errors that will certainly be a major part of Gov. Brown’s legacy, though not in the positive way that he envisioned. Projected to cost $30 billion when it was first approved by voters in 2006, it’s now optimistically estimated that a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco will ultimately cost in excess of $60 billion.

The negative consequences of California’s expansion of Medicaid will stay in California.

Calexit would mean that California taxpayers are responsible for the remaining 90% of Medicaid expansion costs the federal government is supposed to pick up, as well as the 50% of traditional Medicaid that is currently funded by the feds. Some Californians may want to secede from the U.S. But should they do so, lawmakers in Sacramento would need to significantly raise taxes, cut services, or both in order to fund existing programs.

California’s tax burden is becoming so high that only the very rich and very poor can afford to live there.

Some of the highest taxes and costliest housing in the U.S. has made California a difficult place for middle and working class families to survive and thrive. As a result, many are voting with their feet by uprooting themselves and their families for greener pastures. In the decade from 2000-2010, California experienced domestic net outmigration of over 1.2 million people, who took more than $29 billion in income with them to low-tax, red states like North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.

Is California likely to vote to secede in 2018?  There’s some big money behind the push.  And there are plenty of Californians who hate the idea of Donald Trump being their president.  (Although they apparently have no trouble with the idea of a President Jerry Brown of the Nation of California, which tells you something right there.)

But talking about seceding, and even filing ballot measures, is a long way from it actually happening.  Then there is the hope of getting all that money from Washington to bail out California’s massively over-indebted economy that would be lost if the state were to secede. And we haven’t even discussed Washington’s likely response to a vote to secede.

On thing is for sure — without California’s block of electors, it is difficult to see how a Democrat could ever become the president of the US again.  And that is sort of enjoyable to comtemplate.

Source:  Forbes

Source:  LA Times