Six Flags Over California
/By Bill Maher
Tim Draper appears to be a braying jackass. The son and grandson of venture capitalists, he's one of those people who thinks he has some pretty fascinating opinions on politics, economics, law, statecraft and life in general because he inherited a lot of money and put it in Skype. (See: Trump, Donald)
Tim Draper could be building a space plane or wiping his ass with Picassos, but instead he wants to split California into six different states, and he's got the money to get the signatures to put it on the ballot, and if that sounds like nonsense, meet Governor Schwarzenegger.
The states would be Jefferson, North California, Silicon Valley, Central California, West California and South California. If Draper can get 807,000 signatures by July 14, we'll vote on it in November. And then Congress will laugh at us, the President will shake his head in pity, and the Supreme Court will ask if we fell and hit our head. But that's not how Draper sees it. It's just a matter of getting used to new things. As he told TIME:
"People's identity might be an issue. But once they get over that, I think they're going to start thinking, 'What would my state look like? And what could be better? And how should it be governed?' And then it's just a matter of doing crowdsourcing on what the flag's going to look like and what the state bird is and what the state constitution looks like. The Internet has disrupted a lot of industries and it has changed a lot of things, and I think that it might be not a bad idea to have six fresh states that can respond well to this new world we live in."
We should break up California because the Internet? Why didn't you say so in the first place? Gosh! The Internet! All my arguments sound silly now, once you've said Internet! How rich did you say you were, again?
Tim Draper should endow a building at some business school called "Jackass Hall" and then punch himself to death. But that doesn't mean California shouldn't have more senators than North Dakota.