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Anti Federalist
07-18-2018, 08:46 PM
You're not going anywhere, prole.



Splitting up California: State Supreme Court takes initiative off ballot

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Splitting-up-Calif-State-Supreme-Court-takes-13085880.php

Bob Egelko July 18, 2018 Updated: July 18, 2018 5:12 p.m.

The state Supreme Court decided Wednesday that California will remain intact geographically, at least for now, while it decides whether the voters can consider a proposal to divide the Golden State into three new states.

The three-state initiative, Proposition 9, had gathered enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Nine days after opponents filed suit, the court issued a unanimous order removing the measure from the ballot and ordering further legal arguments on whether it should be placed on another ballot in 2020 or struck down altogether.

The court said it usually allows ballot measures to go to the voters before considering constitutional challenges. But in this case, the six justices said, “significant questions regarding the proposition’s validity” and the “potential harm” of allowing a public vote before those questions are resolved “outweighs the potential harm in delaying the proposition to a future election.”

Those questions include whether California voters’ broad authority to enact laws by initiative, established in 1911, include the power to break up the state, and in the process abolish its Constitution and existing laws, to be replaced by lawmaking bodies in three future states.

The narrower legal issue is whether Prop. 9, drafted as a change in the laws that define California’s boundaries, would actually amount to a “revision” of the state Constitution. That cannot be done by initiative, but instead requires approval by two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature to be placed on the ballot.

“We believe it is clear that a ballot initiative may not revise the Constitution by making changes in the basic framework of government,” said Carlyle Hall, a lawyer for opponents who sued to take Prop. 9 off the ballot. “And there can be no greater change in our framework of government than the total abolition of our existing Constitution.”

Howard Penn, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, said Prop. 9 would have caused “chaos in our public services including safeguarding our environment ... all to satisfy the whims of one billionaire.”

The billionaire is Bay Area venture capitalist Tim Draper, who drafted Prop. 9, qualified it for the ballot and has represented himself without a lawyer in the court proceedings. Draper argued that California had become ungovernable — its taxes too high, its schools and public services in disrepair, its 39 million-plus residents far too numerous to be represented democratically by 120 elected legislators.

He reacted indignantly to the court order.

“Apparently, the insiders are in cahoots and the establishment doesn’t want to find out how many people don’t like the way California is being governed,” Draper said in a statement. He said the six justices “probably would have lost their jobs” under the three-state plan.

“The whole point of the (state’s) initiative process,” he added, “was to be set up as a protection from a government that was no longer representing its people. Now that protection has been corrupted.”

Prop. 9 proposed creating three new states: Southern California, running from San Diego and Orange County north past Fresno to Madera County; California, from Los Angeles along the coast to Monterey; and Northern California, covering all areas from Santa Cruz north to the Oregon border.

If the measure appears on a future ballot and a majority of voters statewide approve it, the state would forward the plan to Congress, which would have the last word. Establishing three states in place of one would also authorize the election of four additional U.S. senators. California’s current 55 electoral votes for president, reliably Democratic in recent decades, would be divided among the new states, and the contours of the proposed Southern California state suggest that it could swing Republican.

California lawmakers, meanwhile, would apportion current state funds and facilities among the new states.

Draper had proposed in 2014 to divide California into six states, but was unable to collect the 585,000-plus signatures needed for a measure to amend the state Constitution. By drafting Prop. 9 as a recasting of state laws, he needed only 385,880 signatures to make the ballot. He submitted more than 402,000 valid signatures in April.

The measure was challenged in a lawsuit July 9 by opponents led by the Planning and Conservation League, which said it feared the environmental consequences of discarding current state laws and constitutional protections. They contended Prop. 9 was, at the very least, a constitutional revision that could not be enacted by voter initiative.

The court has considered similar arguments on other issues in the past. In 1990, it overturned a provision of a prosecution-sponsored initiative, approved by the voters, that would have barred California courts from interpreting criminal defendants’ rights more broadly than the U.S. Supreme Court. The state justices said it would have required “far-reaching changes in the nature of our government plan.”

The lawsuit challenging Prop. 9 said it “would not simply ‘revise,’ but would abolish the existing state Constitution” and all state laws.

Draper put it differently. Prop. 9, he told the court in a filing last week, would result in “nullification of the California Constitution, not its ‘revision.’”

Legal groups representing low-income Californians also argued that the three new states, while relatively equal in population, would be financially unequal — the new Northern California would have far more revenue available from income, sales and property taxes, and less need for spending on public assistance, than the other two new states.

“California’s state government now equalizes these disparities based on need, not geography,” Bob Wolfe, attorney for Public Counsel and the Western Center on Law and Poverty, told the court. “Once the state is divided, such a needs-based allocation no longer would be possible.”

The court’s order leaves 11 propositions on the Nov. 6 ballot. After Prop. 8, a proposed regulation of kidney dialysis clinics, the next on the ballot will be Prop. 10, which would expand local government authority to enact rent control.

The case is Planning and Conservation League vs. Padilla, S249859.

Swordsmyth
07-18-2018, 08:53 PM
CAL3 was a bad idea, it would have just given the Demoncrats 4 more senators and EC votes, we want CALExit and keep the red counties or some CALSplit that gives us 2 R Senators and some R EC votes.

RonZeplin
07-18-2018, 08:54 PM
Secede X 3. All Cals exit.

AuH20
07-18-2018, 08:58 PM
Did they get cold feet?

FvS
07-18-2018, 09:46 PM
CAL3 was a bad idea, it would have just given the Demoncrats 4 more senators and EC votes

Yikes.

jllundqu
07-19-2018, 10:57 AM
CAL3 was a bad idea, it would have just given the Demoncrats 4 more senators and EC votes, we want CALExit and keep the red counties or some CALSplit that gives us 2 R Senators and some R EC votes.

I was actually really hoping this would happen for precisely this reason. Imagine the fallout if word got out that California was getting 4 more Senators... Red states would rush to do the same thing to counter the move! Texas would break up, Colorado, Arizona... it would be a race to decentralize and set the precedent that smaller is better and that it can be done. This would have been a great thing, imo

TheTexan
07-19-2018, 11:19 AM
They should vote harder next time.

heavenlyboy34
07-19-2018, 11:48 AM
I was actually really hoping this would happen for precisely this reason. Imagine the fallout if word got out that California was getting 4 more Senators... Red states would rush to do the same thing to counter the move! Texas would break up, Colorado, Arizona... it would be a race to decentralize and set the precedent that smaller is better and that it can be done. This would have been a great thing, imo
Nah. No other state has the same issues as California that could justify being broken up into 3 states using US constitution logic. You could get there with Anti-Federalist or some other type of extra-constitutionalist logic or principle, tho.

TheTexan
07-19-2018, 12:21 PM
I'm not sure why they think they can just vote to determine who governs them. They would need a state constitutional amendment, and also US congressional approval, if thats what they want to do.

If they are serious about this, they should really start to call up each and every congressman in the country to start asking them for permission to vote on this.

Swordsmyth
07-19-2018, 12:35 PM
I was actually really hoping this would happen for precisely this reason. Imagine the fallout if word got out that California was getting 4 more Senators... Red states would rush to do the same thing to counter the move! Texas would break up, Colorado, Arizona... it would be a race to decentralize and set the precedent that smaller is better and that it can be done. This would have been a great thing, imo

The Rs might be dumb enough to let the Ds do it but the Ds would never agree to let the Rs do it, especially if the Ds got to do it first.

heavenlyboy34
07-19-2018, 01:50 PM
I'm not sure why they think they can just vote to determine who governs them. They would need a state constitutional amendment, and also US congressional approval, if thats what they want to do.

If they are serious about this, they should really start to call up each and every congressman in the country to start asking them for permission to vote on this.

Damn straight. :up: Call up the governors and mayors too.

TheTexan
07-19-2018, 02:00 PM
Damn straight. :up: Call up the governors and mayors too.

And if they say no, they should start a petition to request permits to protest their decision

EBounding
07-19-2018, 02:06 PM
I'm not sure why they think they can just vote to determine who governs them. They would need a state constitutional amendment, and also US congressional approval, if thats what they want to do.

If they are serious about this, they should really start to call up each and every congressman in the country to start asking them for permission to vote on this.

:heart: this

You have to follow the rules to change your Government!

TheTexan
07-19-2018, 02:14 PM
:heart: this

You have to follow the rules to change your Government!

Indeed. If only the South had nicely asked permission to secede, many lives could have been saved.

The blood of that war is on their hands, for not filing the necessary permits.

Anti Federalist
07-19-2018, 03:43 PM
I was actually really hoping this would happen for precisely this reason. Imagine the fallout if word got out that California was getting 4 more Senators... Red states would rush to do the same thing to counter the move! Texas would break up, Colorado, Arizona... it would be a race to decentralize and set the precedent that smaller is better and that it can be done. This would have been a great thing, imo

Exactly...could have blown the lid off the whole stinking mess.

ALLExit!

That's why the system had no choice but to shut it down...even if only symbolic, the repercussions to the superstate were too great.

Maybe a few people will wake up to who is really running the show here.

oyarde
07-19-2018, 04:04 PM
Indeed. If only the South had nicely asked permission to secede, many lives could have been saved.

The blood of that war is on their hands, for not filing the necessary permits.

It is . Had they refrained from invading the north and kidnapping and jailing free people my state would never have invaded them . They just cannot be trusted .

euphemia
07-19-2018, 04:21 PM
If California divides, maybe they ought to be forced to reapply for statehood.

In the bigger picture, I think some states need to consolidate their governments a bit. There is no reason for Tennessee to have 95 counties. There is no reason for Georgia to have 159 counties or Kentucky to have 120.

Swordsmyth
07-19-2018, 04:25 PM
If California divides, maybe they ought to be forced to reapply for statehood.


This is a good idea as long as we deny their application, they can leave or be a territory.

euphemia
07-19-2018, 04:59 PM
In the meantime, cut off the money.

oyarde
07-19-2018, 05:33 PM
If California divides, maybe they ought to be forced to reapply for statehood.

In the bigger picture, I think some states need to consolidate their governments a bit. There is no reason for Tennessee to have 95 counties. There is no reason for Georgia to have 159 counties or Kentucky to have 120.

Kentucky counties were formed to allow travel to and from the courthouse in one day on horseback . I doubt you could ever get them to give any up .

Danke
07-21-2018, 04:00 PM
They should vote harder next time.

6048

DamianTV
07-21-2018, 04:50 PM
If Voting made any real change, it would be Illegal.

Keith and stuff
07-21-2018, 10:17 PM
I was never a fan of this big government idea anyway.

Swordsmyth
08-10-2018, 02:01 PM
“Whether you agree or not with this initiative, this is not the way democracies are supposed to work,” billionaire Silicon Valley VC Tim Draper said in an email, after the California Supreme Court decided unanimously last month to remove from the November ballot a measure aimed at dividing California into three states.
“This kind of corruption is what happens in Third World countries.”
As a reminder, Draper had gathered more than 402,000 signatures when he submitted Prop. 9 in April to qualify for the November ballot. He argued that California had become too large to govern and would better represent its population by dividing into three separate states.
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/2018-08-10_10-01-06.jpg
On July 9, California’s Supreme Court pulled Prop. 9 from the midterm ballot because of “significant questions regarding the proposition’s validity.”

Cal 3 was originally drafted as an amendment to the state constitution, but the environmental group Planning and Conservation League filed a lawsuit, maintaining that Draper’s proposal amounted to a “revision” that would require support from two-thirds of the state Legislature before appearing on the midterm ballot, the San Francisco Chronicle (https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Billionaire-gives-up-campaign-to-split-California-13145572.php?t=4472df104b)reported.
Draper was given a 30-day window to argue whether the proposal should be placed on the 2020 ballot.

Draper contended the court’s decision to remove the measure meant “the desires of hundreds of thousands of Californians who signed the initiative petition have been disregarded because of some ‘potential harm’ that would befall the voters if they were even presented an opportunity to discuss the failings of their government.”
And now, in a letter to the court dated Aug. 2, Draper said the court's decision last month (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/07/18/california-supreme-court-blocks-proposal-to-split-state-in-3-from-november-ballot.html) to remove Cal 3 from the 2018 midterms, “effectively put an end to this movement,” and that he does not intend to appeal the decision, the Sacramento Bee reported (https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article216415560.html), adding that “the political environment for radical change is right now."
https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/1533871708877.jpg
The letter was made public by his opponents Thursday, who gloated that Draper’s decision not to appeal as evidence “that (Draper) has no serious interest in the policy implications of his foolish idea, but that he just wanted to piggyback on what he thinks is a political trend.”

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-10/billionaire-vc-abandons-three-californias-plan-blames-court-corruption