AKA the failed state of California
Related source » SCOTUS Makes It Official: California A Failed State
[This related source is recommended in its entirety.]
“The controversial US Supreme Court decision (pdf) that could ultimately force California to release tens of thousands of prison inmates is more than a shockingly broad exercise of judicial power. It is also an official declaration by the highest constitutional authority in the land that California meets the strict test of state failure: it can no longer enforce the law within its frontiers. […] Northern California is more like Washington and Oregon than like anything farther south. The neighborhood of San Francisco Bay has its own history, character and interests that set it off from the rest of the state. Greater Los Angeles, the Central Valley and the Far South centered on San Diego also have what it takes to be successful and happily governed states on their own. […] California is a region, not a state, and until we adopt the political institutions that match this reality, the state will continue to fail — our very own Sudan by the sea. California isn’t the only state with this problem, by the way. New York, Florida, Texas and Illinois are obvious candidates for break up; figuring out how to decentralize and localize state government is an important part of making America work in the 21st century.”
— WALTER RUSSELL MEAD, May 27, 2011 (the-american-interest.com)
Don't get me wrong, I love California. But some of the people — not so much. Prof. Mead is right, of course: California is a region, very much like an oblast of the former Soviet Union (in more ways than one, I might add). As Mead points out, "you can’t run the 8th biggest economy in the world with an institutional mix designed for much smaller, more homogenous units in a much simpler time". Nevertheless, breaking-up this mega-failed-state into five separate states seems like a virtual impossibility. These people can't decide if trees have the same rights as humans, for god's sake (which, BTW, they do, at least in bat-shit crazy Pelosi-land).
Clearly, breaking-up is hard to do. But, how about subdividing? I propose that Mead's plan be reinterpreted as an introduction of five "sub-state" administrative regions, as illustrated in the above map. These sub-states would comprise the existing counties within their proposed borders, and the five collections of counties would in turn become the super-counties of the present State of California.
Such a reconstruction of our giant states (in area as well as in population) makes sense for all the reasons listed by Mead. But by preserving all the inner structure that the state already has, and just introducing an intermediate administrative layer would eliminate much of the bewildering and debilitating quarreling that would be prohibitive for a multi-state solution.
As for those counties on the proposed borders of the super-counties, each such county could vote to either accept its initial allocation or choose to "cross the border", so to speak. It's win/win.
Post 1,648 Land of the Free Lunch and Home of the Bravado Bunch
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