It will certainly generate a huge new collection of bureaucrats, administrators, and politicians…just what is needed for efficient governance. Then there would be new construction for state capitols, new elections to decide state trees, flags, flowers, birds, and mottos. ‘Like, dude, awesome.”

All of this activity will guarantee to increase the amount of rainfall.

Governor Brown wants to send water from Northern California to Southern California.
Can you imagine how that picture changes if the state is split in such a way that said water would have to travel through 4 states?
I know as a Jefferson State resident, I would oppose that.

edit: “guarantee an increase in…”

We could always let Northern California into Cascadia. The U.S.A. can keep everything south of Stockton. It all smells like cows living in their own shit waiting to be slaughtered for Burger King south of that.

P.S.: We have guns, hands off Oregon’s water.

I think we would be in more trouble than we already are. Each of those states would get senators and equal representation. Most of the new representation would come from smaller rural areas and would send more right wing loonies to the senate.

There isn’t a chance in hell of even a hint of its passage. LA with the huge bulk of the State’s population is not about to have separate states controlling its water supply. Moreover, the proposed “rural” states would drop to third world status the instant the taxes collected from LA, San Francisco and Silicon Valley by Sacramento and redistributed rurally vanished. Nope, the regions of the Golden State are stuck with one another.

I agree 100% with: “It’s certainly fun to talk about,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles. But “its prospects are nil.”

It’s a valuable way of promoting pride within California, but a pipe dream otherwise. Rah, rah, shish boom bah!

Although, as a resident of the state of Illinios, I would like to discuss the possibility of making Chicago an independent governing body!

I think it’s a horrible idea. Two or three divisions at most.

I like the idea of redrawing the entire country, much better.

And I like the names better, too.

Honestly, someone is always talking about splitting some state up, because it’s “too big too govern.” I think that is simply a euphemism for “I’d like it better if part of my state shared my ideological purity, because that’s where I’d live.” We already have states for that!

Sounds good to me. How could California be any worse than it is now.

“Plan” ? Idle speculation and fantasy, really.
@ibstubro‘s quote sums it up ”... prospects are nil”.
That sort of ‘plan’ usually ignores how expensive it would be to set up new seats of government and have elections and get a government rolling from scratch. And they usually overstate the ‘benefits’ of such a plan for the individual states.

This is a terrible idea. And, yes, as a Southern California resident (who would reside in West California, but still), the water situation terrifies me. This initiate also reeks of gerrymandering.

Our Representatives in Congress would be the same. Senators Feinstein and Boxer would stick with Silicon Valley, as would Governor Brown and AG Harris.
So, the new states would have to elect new Senators, a Governor, and an Attorney General, but there would be no change in the amount of Congressmen we would have.

They made a movie about it in ‘74. California Split

There are exceptions to this, but I don’t really see a benefit to balkanization. For the most part, breaking up states just means creating new inefficiencies, not eliminating them. Is there really a benefit to having six attorneys-general overseeing six states’ laws? Six new sets of rules to follow for big companies which small ones won’t be able to do as easily? Six new states fighting over things like water rights? Liquor laws? Will six new, less rigid governmental cultures really be created? The only tenuous benefit I can see is maybe there will be the better part of 10 more senators to resist the Republikans in Washington (which is reason enough to think this will never, ever be allowed).

Personally, I don’t see the point in having states exist at all, but if you’re going to have them it makes little sense to make them into postage stamps.

Even wee Maryland wants to ditch its western end for being ideologically incompatible.

The secessionists seem to be holding their caucuses in local pubs.

“Plan”? Lol. This reminds me of the yokels in southern Illinois who want to split off from the northern (ie: Chicago) part of the state, never realizing that without getting the benefits of Chicagoland’s large tax base the southern counties would choke and die as they have absolutely nothing going for them in terms of economy or development.

Never gonna happen.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of any state with San Francisco in it being named for the South Bay.

The plan will create more hot air of which there is more than enough already in California. I would name the new states: Smoke, Smog, Faultline, Drought, Google and Beach.

How is the states debt to be broken up?

@talljasperman THAT is a terrific point!

Simple. The blue states keep it.

I’ve lived most of my life in L.A. County California (now live in Washington State) and frankly I don’t care what happens to to California. We can give it back to Mexico for all I care.

Tim Draper…ugh…I think my dad worked with that guy or at least knew him. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Two states, maybe. We could make it illegal for people to name a highway without prefixing it with “the” in “South California”.

While California is usually represented as Liberal, I can see at least 2 of these states going hard Red.

I think the end result, @filmfann, is a soft purple.

@filmfann: which ones? The only one I can see doing so is the interior “red” one without a coastal population, and even that one probably would only lean red. But I only did a cursory look at the populations and based that on presidential votes in 2012. (Except for the two current senators, nobody would have the advantage of incumbency.)

The whole Central Valley would be red.

Central Valley, Jefferson State, and possibly South California.
Much of California is Conservative, but their votes are overwhelmed by the high population areas in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Again, I only looked sorta closely going by vote tally (not population), but none of the lines he drew actually seemed to make a single decidedly Republikan state. The Central Valley is split at least three ways.

OK with me… I don’t have pay those silly ‘roaming’ charges on my cellphone.

Bad idea in my opinion. Same as the lunacy of Texas seceding from the Union.

Any time you put up barriers, new borders, you inhibit trade and growth.