Thread: Let's Secede from California: Separate from Moocher State

Exclusive: Joseph Farah declares it's time to separate from the 'moocher' state--WND

Let's secede from California

Posted: November 27, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
© 2010

I think the United States has to secede from the state of California.

Imagine how much better off the rest of us would be without being unequally yoked to the former Golden State.

Everyone knows California is economically and morally bankrupt. That's not to say there aren't a lot of nice, hard-working, moral people in the state. There are. Millions of them, in fact. But they are not in control of their state. It's being run by people who are insane.

Imagine how good Election Day would have looked if not for California. While the rest of the country was rejecting retread politicians, California elected Jerry Brown as governor and sent Barbara Boxer back to Washington as senator. Do I need to say more?

And here's the latest from the Left Coast: The California Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that illegal immigrants are entitled to in-state tuition in public colleges and universities.

Did you hear what I said?

People who are in California unlawfully get breaks on tuition not available to citizens in neighboring states!

You don't suppose this will serve as a magnet for more illegal immigration, do you?

Or is that precisely what the elite in California want?

Do they want their state to look more and more like a Third World country?

Do they want to go bankrupt faster?

Even if such a decision were right and just, where would California government find the extra money?

The Golden State has abandoned liberalism for total insanity – read Jack Cashill's "What's the Matter with California?"

It's broke, right?

Aren't they furloughing state workers now?

Doesn't California already have the highest state income tax in the country – even more than New York?

But, of course, the decision is not right and just

It's wrong and unjust.

And that's why I say it's time for separation with California.

It was nice while it lasted, but the state has become a burden to the rest of us. It's mooching. It's a sponge. It's also oppressing the other 49 states by advancing wacky agendas that impact all of us.

Look, I think I have a pretty good perspective on this as someone who lived in California for 25 years.

America and California have irreconcilable differences. California has committed adultery by playing the harlot in its unfaithfulness to the U.S. Constitution and the principles upon which this country was founded.

I know, usually when we think of secession, we think of a state or a group of states breaking away from the union. But, in this case, remaining wed to California means the rest of us become more like her. And I don't think Americans want that fate.

There are plenty of Californians who deserve to be part of America. It's just not the Arnold Schwarzeneggers and the Jerry Browns and the Nancy Pelosis and the Barbara Boxers and the Dianne Feinsteins.

There's plenty of room for California refugees in the other 49 states – people who want to work hard, pay their dues, be entrepreneurs, take risks, invest capital wisely, be good stewards of their property.

What do you think?

Is this a movement that has legs?

I still think there's hope for America, but not if we are dragged down continuously by a state that is out of control, one that is sucking the very lifeblood from the country like some parasitic leech.

Maybe you don't like the idea of having an uneven 49 states.

I have a solution for that, too.

Even though California is overwhelmed by the populations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, there are millions of Californians living in more rural parts of the state who might just want to stay with the union – seceding themselves from the monster their state has become.

You see, I have it all figured out.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=233061

might want to add Florida's broke self to that list; we are all but there

Might as well add Massachusetts to that list; they re-elected Barney Frank and Duval Patrick. Need I say more. Yuck!

Oregon is going to be California any minute, so you can add them to the list.

"tumbles into sea, that'll be the day I go back"

Here's a line from an IA version of a famous song.

"New York, New York, if you can make there, you'll get welfare."

Even though California is overwhelmed by the populations in Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, there are millions of Californians living in more rural parts of the state who might just want to stay with the union – seceding themselves from the monster their state has become.

Shock of all shock I agree 100% with this article. This being said watch it everyone with your attacks towards California. For those of you who stood idly by all these years while we fought this battle alone, I care not to hear your comments.

As long as California was the 5th largest economy in the world and paid high taxes to the federal government, nobody cared what was going on in California.

What everyone should be concerned about is the fact as to a rich California failing under the weight of elite progressive liberal values and illegal aliens.

Sorry Sherry, you're right we can't let Cali go, they'll have to take her from all of us now!

Originally Posted by MontereySherry

Shock of all shock I agree 100% with this article. This being said watch it everyone with your attacks towards California. For those of you who stood idly by all these years while we fought this battle alone, I care not to hear your comments.

As long as California was the 5th largest economy in the world and paid high taxes to the federal government, nobody cared what was going on in California.

What everyone should be concerned about is the fact as to a rich California failing under the weight of elite progressive liberal values and illegal aliens.

I agree MontereySherry. Instead of giving up California, we should send the military there and take over the State and force out all of the politicians and their illegal alien friends out of this country.

Let the failing States go bankrupt

By MICHAEL BARONE

Last Updated: 4:47 AM, November 29, 2010

Posted: 10:34 PM, November 28, 2010

We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge hikes in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit-reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same."

Bowles is talking about what the business press calls bond-market vigilantes. People with capital are willing to loan money to the federal government, by buying US bonds at low interest rates. That's because interest rates are generally low and because Treasury bonds are regarded as the safest investment in the world.

But what if they aren't? What if investors suddenly perceive a higher risk and demand a higher return? That's what Bowles is talking about, and there are signs it may be starting to happen. The Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing -- QE2 -- was intended to lower the interest rate on long-term bonds. Instead, the rate has been going up.

The federal government still seems a long way from the disaster Bowles envisions. But some state governments aren't.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Washington earlier this year to get $7 billion for his state government, which resorted to paying off vendors with scrip and delaying state income-tax refunds. Illinois seems to be in even worse shape. A recent credit rating showed it weaker than Iceland and only slightly stronger than Iraq.

It's no mystery why these state governments -- and those of New York and New Jersey, as well -- are in such bad fiscal shape. These are the parts of America where the public-employee unions have been calling the shots, insisting on expanded payrolls, ever higher pay, hugely generous fringe benefits and utterly unsustainable pension promises.

The prospect is that the bond market will quit financing California and Illinois long before the federal government. It may already be happening. Earlier this month, California could sell only $6 billion of $10 billion in revenue-anticipation notes it put on the market.

Individual investors have been selling off state and local municipal bonds this month. Meredith Whitney, the financial expert who first spotted Citigroup's overexposure to mortgage-backed securities, is now predicting a sell-off in the municipal-bond market.

So it's entirely possible that some state government -- California and Illinois, facing $25 billion and $15 billion deficits, are likely suspects -- will be coming to Washington some time in the next two years in search of a bailout. The Obama administration may be sympathetic. It's channeled stimulus money to states and TARP money to General Motors and Chrysler in large part to bail out its labor-union allies.

But the Republican House isn't likely to share that view, and it's hard to see how tapped-out state governments can get 60 votes in a 53-47 Democratic Senate.

How to avoid this scenario? Law professor David Skeel, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggests that Congress pass a law allowing states to go bankrupt.

Skeel, a bankruptcy expert, notes that a Depression-era statute allows local governments to go into bankruptcy. Some have done so: Orange County, Calif., in 1994, Vallejo, Calif., in 2008. Others -- perhaps a dozen small municipalities in Michigan -- are headed that way.

A state bankruptcy law would not let creditors thrust a state into bankruptcy -- that would violate state sovereignty. But it would allow a state government going into bankruptcy to force a "cram down," imposing a haircut on bondholders and rewriting its union contracts.

The threat of bankruptcy would put a powerful weapon in the hands of governors and legislatures: They can tell their unions that they must accept cuts now or face a much direr fate in bankruptcy court.

It's not clear that governors like California's Jerry Brown, who first authorized public-employee unions in the 1970s, or Illinois's Pat Quinn will be eager to use such a threat against unions, which have been the Democrats' longtime allies and financiers. But the bond market could force their hand and seems already to be pushing in that direction. As Bowles notes, when the markets come, they'll be swift and severe.

The policy arguments for a bailout of California or Illinois public-employee-union members are weak. If Congress allows state bankruptcies, it might prevent a crisis that's plainly looming.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/op ... z16jS6aPEZ