From the “Things that Ain’t Gonna Happen” File
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
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5 comments
Via the LAT‘s Top of the Ticket: ‘South California’ proposed as 51st state by Republican supervisor.
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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From the “Great comebacks to things that ain’t gonna happen” file:
“If you want to live in a Republican state with very conservative right-wing laws, then there’s a place called Arizona,”
That’s it, then… So. Cal. can avoid the messy ’51st State’ thing by joining AZ!
Of course, that’ll leave the No. Cal and East Cal folks jealous.
I think that Doug (or maybe James?) posted on this earlier. There are lots of political reasons that it won’t happen but there is a very solid practical reason that it won’t happen: water. The water that comes from the Sierra is vitally important to the rest of California and the north of California is vitally important to the south.
While it’s fun thinking about dividing the Golden State up and doing so would probably have some benefits, it would also cause tremendous problems for the new states that resulted.
What? Redistricting wasn’t good enough?
Also, as Jerry Brown’s spokesguy pointed out, these counties all take more in state money than they pay in. They’ve got no industry, no jobs, no money. No wonder they want to call themselves South California — they’ll be economically the same as Mississippi and Alabama.