Monday, January 30, 2017

California should be split into 4 states

I know this has been mentioned before but this is my proposal.  California should be divided into 4 states, 2 for counties south of the "line" and 2 for counties north of it.  I will call them by the name of their largest city.

1. Los Angeles aka "West California"  (Los Angeles County, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Kern).
2. San Diego aka "South California" (San Diego County, Orange County, Riverside, San Bernadino, Imperial).
3. San Francisco aka "San Francisco Bay" (San Francisco County, Monterrey, San Benito, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo,  Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin).
4. Sacramento aka "Central California" (Sacramento County, Napa, Solano, Sonoma, Yolo, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Fresno, Kings, and all the remaining counties).

The boundaries aren't fixed and of course the people in border counties could vote on which state they would want to join (e.g. Kern County, Sonoma County).

This is very similar to the earlier proposal to split California into 6 states.  The main difference is that my state of Sacramento would be split into 3 states, with Central California (including Kern county), North California (Sonoma, Solano, Napa, Sacramento, and west), and the state of Jefferson.

This would give the states more political power, with 8 Senators total vs 2 Senators now.

See also http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444384/california-secession-bad-idea-division-two-states-better-idea

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Happy New Year!

The national debt on 12/30/2016 was $19.977 trillion.  Almost $20 trillion.
One year earlier, on 12/31/2015, in was $18.922 trillion.  So it was more than $1 trillion higher.

This marks the 10th consecutive month (the first was March 31, 2016) in which the national debt was at least $1 trillion higher than the same point one year prior.

I still don't understand why the national debt doesn't matter.  We are either going to pay it back or we are not.  It seems like we are not.  Which means that we will default someday, in a hyperinflationary depression.  My last calculation for this doomsday event was 2039, and I will leave it there until the next recession, when I expect the deficit to spiral out of control again.

For all my doom and gloom, I don't expect a recession to hit this year.  I expect it to be in 2018.  So let's have a great year and see if Trump can fix this leaky boat before it sinks.

I don't expect to post very often this year, unless something really strikes my fancy.