The Drive To Split California in Two

Self Described Hound Dog

The Times this mornig has a fascinating piece on the efforts of Virgil Rogers to cleave the agriculture section of California away from the more liberal coastal areas. Basically they are tired of idiot liberals passing rules and regulations not based in reality:

But Mr. Rogers’s newest source of consternation, he says, is some fellow Californians.

“Those Hollywood types don’t have any idea what’s going on out here on the farms,” said Mr. Rogers, a retired dairyman from Visalia, the county seat in a Central Valley region where cows far outnumber people.

So it is that in recent weeks Mr. Rogers, whose previous political involvement amounted to little more than writing a check to a favored candidate — has suddenly become a leader in a secessionist movement bent on cleaving California in two......

“They think fish are more important than people, that pigs are treated mean and chickens should run loose,” said Mr. Rogers, who said he hitched a ride in 1940 to Visalia from Oklahoma to escape the Dust Bowl, with his wife and baby son in tow. “City people just don’t know what it takes to get food on their table.”

To be frank this whole story contains a micro-cosm of many the political divides that occured in this country. Apparently this is not the first effort to split California:

Since statehood was granted in 1850, “there have been more than 200 serious-minded calls for the division of the state,” said Kevin Starr, a professor of history at the University of Southern California and a former state librarian.

Agitators in northern California and southern Oregon have been angling to establish a state, which they would call Jefferson, since 1941. In 1993, the California Assembly passed a proposal to split the state in three, though it later died in the Senate. Under the United States Constitution, any such plan would require Congressional approval.

Anyway its not like this is going to happen anytime soon:

The secessionists have a long way to go. The group has raised only about $12,000, a meager sum in a state where ballot campaigns come with multimillion-dollar price tags. Still, since the group unveiled its Web site, www.downsizeca.org, in mid-February, at least 150 people a day have signed up to receive information and offer their services to the cause, Mr. Maze said.

I suppose the collapse of California's budget has played a role as well.