Counties should secede from California tyranny

It’s time for the counties to secede from California. The large counties should do so by themselves, the counties with smaller populations should band together. Each county — or group of counties — would become a new American state.

Some news items show why this is needed now:

* Because the state government’s budget is $42 billion in the red, it’s withholding money from local governments. Now, Los Angeles County supervisors are considering withholding money from the state. They should do it.

Los Angeles doesn’t need the California government, which is a massive parasite. Los Angeles County has 10 million people, more than 40 states. That’s more than Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, or Virginia. So it should be a state.

For that matter, Orange County, where I live, has 3 million people, more than 20 states. That’s more than Mississippi, Arkansas, or Kansas. So it should be a state, too.

* California’s credit rating just dropped to the lowest of all 50 states.  That means higher interest rates paid on the state’s debt, which means an even higher deficit. Standard and Poor’s wrote of the drop:

At its current level, the rating generally recognizes our view of the lack of political progress around the budget negotiations that we believe is serving to exacerbate the state’s current and projected cash position.

Translation: The state’s broke.  In that case, why do we even need the state? Why can’t the counties — or groups of counties, in the case of the less populated areas — become free and independent states?

* The state still is refusing to pay tax refunds owed citizens. This is robbery, pure and simple. The citizens paid too much in taxes, and deserve to get their money back as refunds. But the state is keeping the money. Supposing you bought a new car for $25,000 but the dealer actually took $30,000 from your bank account — then refused to give you back your $5,000. He’d go to jail. Yet, the state gets away with this highway robbery.

* Proposition 8, which banned the joke of same-sex “marriage,”  continues to rattle around in the courts. But why should Orange County, which overwhelmingly passed Prop. 8, have to live in the same state as San Francisco, which overwhelmingly defeated it? Break up the state and let each county — now a state — have its own rules, however sensible or absurd.

* California’s population is 37 million, or 12 times the population of the whole country in 1776, when the 13 countries seceded brom the tyrannical British Empire. Well, it’s well past time for the counties to secede from the tyrannical California state empire.

A Declaration of Independence from California

So, let secession go forth. Each county — or group of small-population counties — could start a Declaration of Independence that begins something like this:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Counties; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present Governor of California is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Counties. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.