The American Flag: Stars a' Poppin'!

Finally, a topic worthy of the title of this blog.

It's called "Six Californias". It's an initiative sponsored by Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper, and recently approved by the California Secretary of State, to split California into six separate states. Call it "government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich". (Don't try to find Tim Draper in Wikipedia. His page is blocked because a claim of copyright violation has been filed against it.)

Well, OK.  It's a free country, for billionaires. And anyway "class warfare" is a losing strategy. Just ask Mitt Romney what happened after his 47% speech. There are plenty of other reasons to question the sanity of this initiative, though.

If successful, California will have twelve U.S. Senators rather than just two, greatly increasing the political influence of Californians at the expense of the other states.

The initiative assumes that other states will take this lying down.

They won't.

New York will up the ante, splitting itself into at least twelve states with twenty-four U.S. Senators. Rhode Island will split itself into at least 3, if not more. Bottom line: at least 500 states rather than the current 50, maybe more.  Not only does each state get 2 U.S. Senators, but every state has at least one U.S. Representative, regardless of population. So the Senate would have 1,000 members or more and the House would have at least 3,000.

Each state would have a Governor, and other state offices, and a state legislature. Think of it: I could probably have a shot at being elected Governor of a state! Getting a seat in the state legislature would be easier than getting on the city council. With such an explosion of state government officials, the unemployment rate would fall to zero. Everyone would at least be guaranteed a job in state government.

Actually, I'm starting to warm to this idea.

The newly created states will need to apply for admission to the Union. Some might not even apply, in which case they would become U.S. territories, like Guam. Some might be rejected if admitting them would upset the balance of power or otherwise offend someone important.

This is chaos and it wouldn't last. Finally, everyone would be exhausted and would sit down and work out a Grand Bargain. We would go back to having fewer states, but this time, both houses of Congress would be elected strictly on the basis of population.

It's called "the law of unintended consequences".

Now I'm really liking this idea.

Go, Tim!