George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 27 June 2014. As promised, here I have addended additional information and thoughts to the aired commentary.]
Our Founders were right, unbridled democracy does not work as the basis for a stable government. James Madison said it best – “Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” Democracy relegates matters of state and policy to the whims of an emotionally volatile, easily manipulable, and poorly informed electorate. That is why the Founders gave us a democratic republic built on the federal model in which laws were made by people choosing representatives based on the popular vote and geographical jurisdictions.
Over the last decades California has led the nation in rejecting this wisdom, and put in place a populist system that embodies what the world now sees as the egregious downfall of the most celebrated Shangri-la for those lucky enough to have lived in the formerly Golden State. Today, as observed by distinguished journals like The Economist (here and here), California has become a bloated and dysfunctional state. More essays and analyses appear daily about California’s downfall while the state’s government presses forward with ever more taxes, fees, and regulations that drive its residents and businesses to seek less toxic places to live and earn (more here).
Today people in California divide themselves into a majority that sees government as a beneficent leviathan, and the remainder who experience the ongoing loss of their income, properties, and liberties. The former far outnumber the latter, many of whom live in the rural counties located primarily in the Sierra and the state’s northern part. These residents, who have traditionally sought an independent way of life and resisted the growth of leviathan, find themselves in the ever-present aggrieved class of a pure democracy as they suffer the tyranny of the majority over the minority. The northern third of the state, primarily made up of rural counties, send three representatives to the 80 member California Assembly. And they also send only three senators to sit among the 40 members of the California Senate. In short, the state’s north is the recipient of the dictates, mandates, and takings of the overwhelmingly populous southern third of the state. All this without the minority having any say in how and to what extent the state manages their lives and affairs.
Our Founders designed America to have a more intimate relation between its citizens and their government representatives. In California each state senator represents almost a million (930,000) citizens, and each assembly member answers to almost half a million (465,000). These ratios are even worse for those representing us in Washington. The solution to national growth and expansion was written into our Constitution. There Art 4 Sec 3 provides for the creation of new states from the more populous ones when size threatens to disconnect citizens from their government. However, the political class decided some years back to fix the number of seats in the House of Representatives and the state legislatures so as not to dilute the power of the sitting politicians.
Today the federal model is weakened by the 17th Amendment which mandates that senators are no longer elected by state assemblies, but by statewide popular votes. This brought us one step closer to unbridled democracy. California doubled down by inviting its constitution to be modified frequently and without much understanding by a sound bite conditioned electorate. This enabled elected politicians to sidestep difficult legislative decisions, and instead extract them from poorly informed voters made compliant through special interest monies that also backed the same politicians.
In the last years there has grown a realization that California’s business as usual of taxing and regulating without effective representation can no longer be tolerated by a large number of its citizens. A movement has begun in fits and starts to exercise the Constitution’s Art 4 Sec 3 to form a new state called Jefferson from the rural counties in the northern third of California. You will be hearing much more about efforts to create the State of Jefferson in the coming weeks.
Becoming informed is the first step to participating in the heated debate we will no doubt have in Nevada County, adding to the debates already taking place in neighboring counties. Stay tuned for more about this in future commentaries.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] The best I can tell from my readings and talking to members of the NC State of Jefferson (SoJ) steering committee, the objectives of the SoJ movement are twofold – 1) to restore taxation and regulation WITH representation to the northern third of the state, and 2) to restore NorCal’s economic, recreational, and social environment. I was asked to be a member of this steering committee, although frankly I don’t know how long they will appreciate my participation. Nevertheless, I do support the above stated objectives. The sequel here should clarify.
The SoJ movement is part and parcel of other such movements across the land that see disgruntled counties wanting to separate from the states in which they find themselves, and for essentially the same reasons stated above. Some states have even floated initiatives to secede from the Union. It all comes down to how much of our nation has come to view the overreach of government in their lives and affairs – it is an unmistaken commentary on our times that was anticipated by our Founders.
Here in California there is a sister initiative called ‘Six Californias’ that is led and financially backed by millionaire Tim Draper (here). His movement includes the SoJ partition and argues that the remainder should be split up even further. Not going into any great detail, I do agree that the bottom two thirds of California also have territorial constituencies that share few interests in how the state’s natural resources should be divided and managed.
SoJ and other such secessions like to advertise themselves as having non-partisan objectives. But I believe that to be a hopeful myth. Polls and even casual conversations quickly confirm that it is mostly people of the Right that back these movements, and folks on the Left see it in their self-interest to oppose them and continue their support of bigger and more comprehensive government (for all intents and purposes as covered in the Agenda21 objectives and here).
The major mover and big kahuna of SoJ is Mark Baird, a gentleman who hails from Siskiyou County. He has been going around NorCal giving talks to various support groups and appearing before county boards to lobby for the regional counties to pass SoJ ‘Declarations of Support’. Such declarations will have no force of law, but they will convey the sense of the people’s representatives for continued examination and debate about such a secession. (more here)
For SoJ to become a reality will require a sufficient number of NorCal counties to adopt Declarations of Support so that the resulting region makes some geographical sense to become a new state. Armed with these declarations, the SoJ committee (formation body?) will approach the California legislature to have it write and pass appropriate legislation that makes the state level de juris case for the founding of SoJ. The idea being forwarded currently is that the SoJ committee can make the case that such a secession will be a win-win for both NorCal and the remainder of the state.
Assuming success in Sacramento, the proposal backed by such enabling legislation, clarifying the purposes, intents, and methods of parties involved, will be taken to Congress, presumably (hopefully?) by one or more of California’s supportive congressional representatives. There Congress has to dust off its understanding of the Constitution’s Art 4 Sec 3 and proceed to approve creating what then would become the 51st state of the Union. No doubt, all this will proceed within a blizzard of pro/con lawsuits that SCOTUS will be asked to hear and rule on.
Anyway, as you can see, this will be a thousand mile (multi-decade?) Long March on which the first courageous steps have been taken by the various counties that have already declared their support for SoJ. Here in Nevada County the kick-off event will be a y’all come ‘town hall’ affair on the theme ‘the time has come for 51’ to be held at the Western Gateway Park on 2 August 2014 that will feature Mark Baird and other speakers (more here under Nevada County)
The scary part of all this to many people, and definitely to reigning politicos, is the loss of state funding that presumably cannot be made up by the rural counties assembled in the new SoJ. That money tit has become so implanted in lower jurisdictions that the mere mention of doing anything to lose/lessen such manna from heaven sends a cold chill up the spine of a politician who cannot imagine alternatives, but can vividly see himself being pilloried in front of constituents while trying to explain secession.
And make no mistake, the problem is a real one to be solved with a very sharp pencil and see if the SoJ can generate sufficient revenues to maintain critical government functions until its business friendly laws and regs attract enough new commerce, jobs, and residents to make the whole thing a going concern. Right now there are too many unknowns in what post-secession income can be generated from keeping Sacramento bound monies in SoJ, selling water and other natural resources to California under renegotiated agreements, and initially becoming a cash importer from a supportive Washington DC (as are many other states currently).
So what’s my takeaway on all these goings on? Well, as years of commentary on these pages attest, I am in full support of the country becoming more governable through smaller, more ideologically and geographically homogeneous, jurisdictions. Do I like the strategy as currently envisioned? Not really, because considering the knowns, it has a snowball’s chance in hell of succeeding. But then again, the strategy has not been really fleshed out and is most certainly not cast in stone. The real solution to SoJ will require adept broken field running that takes advantage of future political events as they happen. Is the now-or-never attitude and ‘maintain momentum’ schedule realistic? Not at all. I don’t think that you need to begin running a marathon by taking off from hastily placed starting blocks.
A better approach would be to educate, build a real and principled NorCal constituency that is akin to the national tea parties, which would serve to accrete support as it continues to illuminate the egregious impacts of leviathan’s overreach, elects supportive politicians, and lobbies the various naturally recalcitrant and entrenched institutions in California and Washington.
In the final analysis, I don’t see any win-win solution for the north and south to separate. The obvious reality is that the separation will be a loss for southern part, and it will fight tooth and nail to prevent it. SoJ will come to pass only if the residents of NorCal can communicate to the remainder that keeping them in the clutches of Sacramento will create and maintain what outsiders will perceive as an unbelievably toxic California. Short of that, ‘Let my people go!’ will be but the poignant lyrics in a hymn about slavery in biblical times.
I believe we are here launching a starship in which the first generation will most likely not live to see its destination. But it is a feasible destination and a much preferred alternative to America going through a wrenching Great Divide.
rebanesruminations.com 
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