Splitting the State
Regarding secession - back in 1994 a split of California into two was proposed by Peter Gauvin, who was antry at the conservative south:
When there was a small legion of voices yelling into the wind a few years ago about splitting California in two, I was firmly against the idea....
Since the Nov. 8 [1994] election, however, I've reconsidered. It's time to sever north from south....
If I were going to slice California in two, I'd start right above the property line of Michael Huffington's little mansion in Santa Barbara and continue east across the Tehachapis and into the Mojave Desert--making sure all of Palm Springs and Sonny Bono's Congressional district are south of the line, and Death Valley and the other desert lands protected in Diane Feinstein's Desert Protection Act north of the line (Southern California would ruin them). Of course, the deal would be contingent on Pete Wilson leaving Sacramento and returning to his homeland....
If it weren't for the Bay Area, where Feinstein received 63 percent of the vote, Huffington would have won. In Southern California, he was winning by about 10 percentage points. (A notable exception was Santa Barbara County, Huffington's home, and the only Southern California county besides Los Angeles County that Diane Feinstein won.)
If it were up to Southern California, Proposition 187 would have won by an even wider margin. In the Bay Area, which might have been able to swing the rest of Northern California, 55 percent voted against it....
Of course, many voters made up their minds on the basis of TV sound bites and news reports too shallow for anything but reactionary logic.
I still have yet to meet anyone who voted for Proposition 187. At a dinner party, a high school history teacher told me his father voted for it: He wanted to send a message to Washington, D.C., that Californians are tired of picking up the tab for illegal immigration, the same tough-guy reasoning Wilson used to deflect attention from his own abysmal record.
Using the backs of undocumented immigrants, a population that has no political clout, to send a message to Washington is akin to amputating your foot because you've got a blister. It will hobble this state if ever allowed to take effect.
Yep, it's getting too dangerous to keep this state whole.
Peter Gauvin is still around, but apparently he didn't get the message from tough guy Kerry that Iran is bad. Granted, he wrote this in 2002 (presumably after a dinner party):
President Bush's characterization of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as "an axis of evil" is the lowest form of international political rhetoric, completely reckless and dangerously laughable....
Are we so gullible as not to recognize that what Bush is trying to do is demonize and inflate the threats these countries pose in order to groom public opinion for revving up our war machine -- with $48 billion in additional military-industrial complex spending this year alone -- in hopes of propping up our faltering economy by the next election?
Bush knows that without creating conflict via his chest-beating, Wild West rhetoric, his presidency is hollow....
PETER GAUVIN
Los Altos Hills
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