California Counties Talk of Cutting Ties to State

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Natives here have long called this area the Inland Empire, a grand title for a stretch of cities about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Now, a few political leaders are hoping this empire will lead a movement to break off from the State of California.

Frustrated by a state government he calls “completely dysfunctional” and “totally unresponsive,” a conservative Republican county supervisor is pushing a proposal for roughly a dozen counties in the eastern and southern parts of the nation’s third-largest state — conspicuously not including the heavily Democratic city of Los Angeles — to form a new state to be called South California.

“We have businesses leaving all the time, and we’re just driving down a cliff to become a third-world economy,” said the supervisor, Jeff Stone, who once ran for the Legislature. “Anyone you ask has a horror story. At some point we have to decide enough is enough and deal with it in a radically new way.”

He added: “I am tired of California being the laughingstock of late-night jokes. We must change course immediately or create a new state.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/us/13secession.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha23

“I am tired of California being the laughingstock of late-night jokes. We must change course immediately or create a new state.”

Acquiring some critical thinking and abandoning the extreme rightwing stance would be a good first step.

It won't happen. How about focusing on doable solutions - like a workable budget? Just because Jeff Stone can't have everything his way, he doesn't get to take his ball and leave. Stone is part of the problem.

If he wants to live in a red state there are plenty he could move to - Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi.