Calexit

Calexit gets go-ahead to start collecting signatures

April 27, 2018 By Barnini Chakraborty 20 Comments

Advocates who want California to secede from the rest of the United States were given the green light Monday to begin collecting signatures for their initiative.

California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the ballot proposal had been cleared.

The latest measure would ask voters in 2020 to decide whether to open up a secession discussion. If passed, a second election would be held a year later asking voters to affirm the decision and become an independent country.

Advocates have until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to get it on the ballot.

Marcus Ruiz Evans and Louis J. Marinelli, co-founders of the group Yes California, said the second vote would show that Californians are serious about secession and would strengthen the case for foreign governments to recognize the state’s independence.

“We realize it may seem like a long time to wait,” Marinelli told The Times of San Diego. “But we need time to have a serious dialogue with the people of California about why they should support the independence referendum by voting yes. The voters need to make an informed decision when they go to the polls to determine California’s political future.”

Evans told CNBC that while his group is progressive, they do embrace some conservative ideals.

“Calexit is left — we are progressive, and that’s why we don’t like Trump,” Evans said. “But there are some very hardcore Republican concepts to Calexit, including the group saying don’t waste our tax money.”

Evans says his group’s membership has grown four times its size since President Trump took office. There are about 44,000 current members.

There have been multiple efforts in the past for California to break away from the rest of America. They have either been withdrawn or failed to gather the signatures required to advance.

As the Yes California group gears up, another initiative to break up California into three separate states is also taking shape. That plan, backed by Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper, would create a northern California state with San Francisco at its core, another state near Los Angeles and a third that covers the Central Valley as well as San Diego.

And if that were not enough, there’s yet another proposal in play known as “New California” that would cut out rural counties and make them into individual states.

The founders of New California describe the rest of California as “ungovernable.”

“The current state of California has become governed by a tyranny,” the group declared in an online statement.

This article was originally published by Fox News

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Alex Padilla, Calexit, Yes California

Calexit Leader: Export Middle Class To Make Room For Next “Wave” Of Immigrants

August 4, 2017 By Ian Schwartz 19 Comments

Calexit leader Shankar Singam appeared on Tuesday’s broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight to promote the secession of California from the union. Singam said California doesn’t have much in common with the rest of the country. He declared, “This is California. We’re not the United States.”
The Calexit proponent also said it is a “good thing” that the middle class is fleeing the state because it will make room for the “new wave” of immigrants. Singam told Carlson that “the United States” should be thanking “us” for “exporting” the state’s middle class to the rest of the country.

“If everyone in the middle class is leaving, that’s actually a good thing. We need these spots opened up for the new wave of immigrants to come up. It’s what we do,” Singam told Carlson.

Carlson responds to Singam’s claim that California is one of the largest economies in the world, saying that is due to the large wealth gap between the rich such as tech companies and the poor. Carlson pointed out that there is basically no middle class as they are packing up and moving out of the state.

“Your state or country or whatever we’re calling it now, there’s been a massive exodus of middle-class Californians to neighboring states. The numbers are there. You’ve lost hundreds of thousands making between $100,000 and $200,000 over the past 10 years and they’ve enriched Idaho and Montana and even Wyoming and Washington state. If it’s such a well-run place, why are the middle class leaving?” Carlson asked Singam.

“Tucker, you have to look at the bigger picture here,” Singam answered. “The fifth largest economy in the world. Just repeat that. Say it again. We are the fifth largest economy.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard that,” Carlson said. “It’s basically the economy of Mexico. You’ve got a small number of rich people, the tech people, and then you’ve got a ton of poor people and the middle class is leaving. That’s a recipe for instability. You’re aware of that, right?”

“If everyone in the middle class is leaving, that’s actually a good thing. We need these spots opened up for the new wave of immigrants to come up. It’s what we do. We export our middle class to the United States. You guys should be thanking us for that,” Singam said to a stunned Carlson.

“Not only that, when our middle class does move out to Texas and Colorado they are taking our values out to the United States. If you look at Texas, in fact, all the major cities Californians are going to they are turning blue. And soon enough Texas will be a blue state,” Singam said.

“Dude,” Carlson said to Singam.

“I’ve never met you, I’ve never heard of you. I don’t know if this is a parody segment, you know, if you’re punking me or if you’re really high and you’re just telling the truth because high people do. But you just said you’re happy to be exporting the middle class in your state. I happen to think your policy makers are happy that they are leaving but the fact that you are admitting this on live TV — bottom line, are you being serious?” Carlson asked.

“I’m only admitting the truth,” Singam responded. “There’s a middle class of people who are leaving California and moving to Oregon and Colorado and Texas, yes, there is.”

“And you’re happy about that?” Carlson asked.

“I think they’ll find out how boring it is and come back,” Singam answered.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Calexit

Why Calexit is Pure Fantasy

December 12, 2016 By John Seiler 7 Comments

I suggest those who think there’s even a one in a million chance we’ll ever have CalExit instead take a trip to Anaheim and spend a year at Disneyland’s Fantasyland. Even the objections have not gotten to the real reasons it won’t happen, which are, in rough order of importance:

1 — The more than $211 trillion (with a “t”) in U.S. unfunded liabilities, as calculated by Prof. Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University. This largely is for Social Security, Medicare, federal pensions and military pensions. Given that California is 12 percent of the USA, our share comes to $25 trillion.

If a CalExit vote makes it to the ballot, every senior citizen will vote against it. So will everyone age 50 or older, as they already get in the mail offers to join AARP.

There’s no way you could de-couple California’s welfare state for seniors and others from that of the United States. No one knows how to deal with that $211 trillion black hole. But who would trust a California People’s Republic to keep any part of its secession bargain, especially when its own pension funds for state workers already are woefully underfunded.

What about when the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and other countries went splitsville? They all were leaving a communist system that had bankrupted pensions systems, usually by hyperinflating them into penury, so the pensioners got stiffed. Then the newly capitalist countries started from scratch. That’s not the situation with the U.S. pension systems – at least not yet.

There’s a reason why tampering with Social Security is the “third rail” of politics: Seniors want their welfare and don’t want it cut. Ask ex-President George W. Bush how well he did with his 2005 scheme to privatize Social Security.

2 — Then there’s the “regular” federal debt of $20 trillion, the one we hear most often about. California’s share of that is $2.4 trillion. Where’s that money going to come from? It presents all the same problems as No. 1.

3 — The dollar. Truly independent countries have their own currencies. That was one reason Brits voted for Brexit: they saw staying in the EU might mean being forced to ditch the pound, the world’s oldest currency with close to its original value, for the Euro.

So how would California set up a californio, to give the new CalCurrency a name? The Euro might be an example. But it’s really controlled by the Germans, so it’s just an extension of the old deutschemark. Remember how Frau Merkel used the Euro’s power to short-circuit Grexit? She conquered Greece more successfully than Der Fueher.

Given how liberal California is, there also would be a strong bias toward inflating the californio, meaning nobody would want it, instead favoring Yankee dollars, which still would be circulate, much as in Mexican border towns. The main alternative would be to tie the californio’s value to the dollar. Or maybe the Chinese yuan. But that wouldn’t be real independence.

4 — Silicon Valley. The digirati in the Valley and San Francisco use all the USA as a vast testing ground for their products. What works here then is spread around the globe. As part of the USA, the Valley has the same culture, politics and finances as its major test market. If California split off, it would find itself gradually separating from the rump USA, making it harder to figure out what’s going on there.

Given that a CalExit almost certainly would need to be financed by Silicon Valley oligarchs, who now control state politics, their reluctance to do so would make it a non-starter.

5 — The NSA. Formerly called “No Such Agency,” it’s the National Security Agency. As Edward Snowden revealed three years ago, it spys on, and keeps electronic records of, absolutely everything digital that goes on in America, and the world. After the revelations, Congress did precisely nothing about this wholesale violation of the Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Snowden now is in exile in Russia.

In the recent national plebiscite, a decisive factor in Hillary Clinton’s defeat was the drip-drip-drip by Wikileaks of damaging emails from Hillary, her staff and the DNC. Suspected leakers include staff members, Russia and anonymous hackers. But the likely source is elements in the NSA itself worried about her constant warmongering and the need to rein in the unsuccessful Clinton-Bush-Obama hyper-interventionism.

Also notice this. On the campaign trail President-elect Donald Trump promised fresh faces in his administration. But so far he has appointed as National Security Adviser Gen. Mike Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and as CIA Director Rep. Mike Pompeo, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Both appointees have been strong critics of the Obama-Hillary foreign policy of recent years, but strongly back the national security state. Pompeo also has attacked Silicon Valley’s stances on strong encryption.

Yet the Valley itself, including Google, long has enjoyed strong ties and even funding from the intelligence agencies.

There’s no way the NSA, CIA and FBI would let Silicon Valley and the rest of California leave. If it ever came close to happening, CalExit’s major backers and funders would get anonymous threats to release their private emails. And how about a little federal anti-trust action against what have become monopolies or duopolies, as Trump threatened during the election?

6 — President Schwarzenegger. Guess who would be an independent California’s first president? The Austrian muscleman who always wanted to become U.S. president but was barred by his foreign birth. A California People’s Republic’s new constitution would take out that plank in the U.S. Constitution. Would Arnold’s run be impossible? That’s what people said before he was elected governor in 2003. And similar things were said before Trump was elected president on Nov. 8.

Arnold, learning from Trump, would be even more formidable than in 2003. What about all Arnold’s scandals? Brushed off, like Trump’s, with humorous tweets.

As Hillary liked to say, “This is not who we are.” So there will be no CalExit except, to use another theme park analogy, maybe as a ride at the Disney California Adventure Park.

Longtime California columnist John Seiler now writes freelance. His email:writejohnseiler@gmail.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Calexit, Donald Trump, John Seiler

What would California be like as an independent nation?

November 29, 2016 By Jon Coupal 16 Comments

California breaking off into the ocean as a result of the “Big One” is science fiction fantasy to Hollywood, credible urban legend to citizens of Los Angeles and San Francisco and, perhaps, the secret hope of many Americans residing on the other side of the Sierras. However, backers of a just filed initiative, “Calexit: The California Independence Plebiscite of 2019,” want a different sort of California breakaway. They envision the state as a “free, sovereign and independent country.” Although the effort began several years ago, secessionists have been bolstered by those suffering Trump Derangement Syndrome – a condition where “alt-left” adherents lose their minds over the thought of a Trump presidency.

A spokesman for the movement cites California’s different culture, different set of priorities and different plans for the future as a justification for breaking away from the rest of the country.

While efforts to establish California as a separate country may be a farfetched idea – the issue of state secession was settled in the small town of Appomattox, Virginia when General Lee surrendered to General Grant, 1865 – it is an interesting mental exercise. What would California be like as an independent nation? Who would govern and what would be the impact on taxpayers? And if California could establish independence, would the break-up end there? Drive anywhere in the Sierra foothills or north of Sacramento and “State of Jefferson” signs are ubiquitous.

If California were an independent country, the precedent would be set for further fracturing, with other regions, where dissatisfaction with the established order is intense, seeking to break away.

Today, California’s political direction is dictated by the upper income elites living in coastal enclaves and Hollywood. Here, the Starbucks generation is consumed with issues like climate change and bathroom access and they are not shy about telling others how to live. This explains why Sacramento seems to be constantly making war on those not part of the coastal, protected class. But travel just 25 miles from the coast and you’ll find a different world. Here, people are concerned about finding a job or keeping the job they have.

After speaking to a group of politically active Californians a few years ago, pollster Scott Rasmussen responded to a question about the size of government saying, the average person does not walk down the street thinking about limited government, they are thinking about how they are going to support their families.

Outside of Malibu, Santa Barbara and the Bay Area, most people are still searching for the answer to the question of how to feed, shelter and clothe their families. If given the option of breaking away from the Prius driving, chardonnay sipping, kale chip nibbling elite, they would likely vote yes.

California will not become an independent nation, but the divide between the coastal and inland areas is real and we are about to experience another clash of these cultures played out on the Sacramento stage.

A special session on transportation, called by Gov. Brown last year, has just concluded without lawmakers imposing new taxes. But when the new Legislature convenes, one with even more pro-tax members elected in November, the top priority will be a significant increase in the gas tax and other auto-related charges. Once again, inland residents who need their cars for work will find themselves pitted against the “Let them drive Teslas” coastal elite.

If the price of fuel heads even higher than it is now, we are bound to see a multitude of working class Californians filling their tanks one last time as they leave the state for a foreign land called America.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

This piece was originally published by HJTA.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Calexit, HJTA, Hollywood, Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, Jon Coupal, san francisco, State of Jefferson

As U.S. Moves Right, Will California’s Outlier Status Accelerate Exodus?

November 15, 2016 By Jon Coupal 7 Comments

After recovering from the shock of the presidential race, California pundits began absorbing what all this actually means. There is broad agreement that the rightward movement by the rest of America has only increased the political divide between the nation as a whole and California.

This divide has widened so significantly that Governor Brown joked about building a wall around the state to protect it from nasty conservatives. And a handful of ultra-progressives, distressed at the thought of a Trump presidency, are planning an initiative they hope will lead to California seceding from the United States. (Newsflash for backers of this “Calexit” effort: That a state can’t secede from the Union was resolved in 1865 when General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox).

Putting the jokes and unrealistic fantasies aside, there are real world implications for the increasing chasm. First, if it were evident prior to the election that California has “go it alone” policies on climate change, it is even clearer now. Sure, Washington will continue to pay lip service to greenhouse gas reductions, but broad, draconian laws and regulations perceived to be damaging to the economy will be shelved.

Second, the High Speed Rail project might have just graduated from being a mere pipedream to a true fantasy. Already Congress had shut the spigot of federal money and the project has been on life support using cap and trade revenue which doesn’t generate a fraction of what it needs for the train to become viable.

Third, perhaps the biggest hit to California will come in the area of health care. While other states have resisted full implementation, California has been held up as Obamacare’s shining example of “success.” But a Republican Congress is likely to repeal major parts of the law, including the funding for Medicaid expansion and elimination of the federal tax credits that lower premiums for most California enrollees.

This enormous gap between right America and left California will result in the state no longer being able to rely on the federal government to finance its left-of-center policies. And that’s bad news for taxpayers.

Without federal support and California’s majority party wanting no slowdown in their agenda, the pressure to raise taxes will grow even stronger. So even though California will have the highest income tax rates in the nation until 2030 – thanks to Prop. 55 – and the highest state sales tax, expect the alligators of the left to be searching for their next meal. No doubt, they will put Prop. 13 on the menu.

The non-stop pursuit of an even higher tax burden has already resulted in millions leaving California. The growing fissure between the rest of nation and the state’s pursuit of destructive progressive policies is giving millions more Californians an excuse to bail out.

It’s not just the hard data from the IRS and the Census Bureau that confirms this. We all know people who have made the choice to escape California’s hostile tax and regulatory environment. A neighbor of mine just left to visit the multi-acre parcel he bought in Texas. When he retires in four years, he will build a home on the property. He is currently an attorney with the state.

A close family relative and her husband left the Bay Area for Oregon in large part for tax reasons. This is especially ironic given that they are both liberals who, as California residents, voted for every tax increase on the state and local ballot.

Another close relative who was visiting her mother on the Gulf Coast of Florida tells of miles and miles of white sand beaches with homes on the ocean that can be purchased for what a 1,200 square-foot condo would cost in San Francisco. Derided as the “Redneck Riviera,” the Gulf Coast is now a favorite of former Californians in large part because there is no income tax.

Can California change course? As long as those interests which rely on government largess own the Legislature, the prognosis is not good. With trillions in public debt of all kinds, an unresponsive and arrogant administrative state and high cost of living, California is bound to see the exodus that has already started to accelerate quickly.

This piece was originally published by HJTA.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Calexit, Cap and trade, high speed rail, Medicaid, Obamacare

Why #CalExit Will Never Happen

November 14, 2016 By Tim Donnelly 6 Comments

California will never leave the United States.

Neither will most of these Hollywood actors who swore to flee America if Trump became the president.

They don’t need to. They’ve created their own country already, which is heavily dependent on foreign aid (i.e. your tax dollars) from Washington, D.C.

But that didn’t stop California leftist elites from expressing how horrified they are at the election of Donald J. Trump as America’s 45th President.

So much so that the Marxist Progressives who control California’s Legislature issued a joint statement on how much they fear our newly-elected president, Donald J. Trump (emphasis added):

California will defend its people and our progress. We are not going to allow one election to reverse generations of progress at the height of our historic diversity, scientific advancement, economic output, and sense of global responsibility.

We will be reaching out to federal, state and local officials to evaluate how a Trump Presidency will potentially impact federal funding of ongoing state programs, job-creating investments reliant on foreign trade, and federal enforcement of laws affecting the rights of people living in our state. We will maximize the time during the presidential transition to defend our accomplishments using every tool at our disposal.

While Donald Trump may have won the presidency, he hasn’t changed our values. America is greater than any one man or party. We will not be dragged back into the past. We will lead the resistance to any effort that would shred our social fabric or our Constitution.

California was not a part of this nation when its history began, but we are clearly now the keeper of its future.

They might do well to heed a warning from FDR: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.“

Or, more accurately — when you read the implied threats — they have become the very thing they claim to fear.

It’s not Trump supporters that are issuing death threats via Twitter. (Last time I checked, that was illegal, but don’t expect Obama’s Secret Service or FBI to do anything about it.)

It’s not Trump supporters that have worked themselves up into a frenzy in the streets over the peaceful transition of power from one president to another.

It’s not Trump supporters advocating violence all over social media and in the streets.

We’re all at work — working to pay taxes so these loafers can spend the day advocating our murder.

Someone needs to tell them.

No one died.

No one was deported overnight.

No one lost the right to pay for their own birth control.

If you read the fear-laden headlines about women stocking up on IUDs and you don’t read the entire article, you might think Trump was going to ban all birth control, and shut down all the Rite-Aids and Walgreens nationwide.

When the reality is that it’s not Trump’s election that upsets them.

It’s that the election was clearly a referendum on the socialist direction of the past eight years under Obama — and as the beneficiaries of all the “free stuff,” they’re just mad that the party is over.

So like spoiled children, they’re throwing a tantrum.

I guess it’s a good thing that all the angry protestors live in “gun-free” blue sectors of the country, where they can’t easily get “access” to guns because they seem to lack any self-control.

Maybe that’s why they hate guns so much — because they don’t trust themselves.

Maybe it’s a good thing they’re terrified of guns.

Because when they compare those of us who believe a country should have borders to restrict access, and a Constitution to restrict government, to Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, calling us fascists and Nazis, what they’re really doing is dehumanizing their “enemy.”

It’s a classic Alinsky tactic. You don’t debate your “opponent”; you destroy your enemy. The enemy isn’t wrong, they’re evil.

They’re so brainwashed, they don’t realize that they and their leftist idols are the incarnation of all the very things they claim to fear.

Why #CalExit will Never Happen?

The weather’s great, the water’s warm, and these protestors love their Marxist Progressive Utopia

With Donald J. Trump in the White House, maybe it’s possible to take back California for Americans. Now, there’s something worth discussing.

Tim Donnelly a former California Assemblyman.

This piece was originally published by Breitbart.com

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Calexit, Donald Trump, Hollywood