If they have so much money why do they need Emergency Federal Funds to bailout their failing dam and handle their infrastructure issues caused by all the recent storms . Maybe they should ask their Hollywood buddies for a loan . Or better yet start an Immigrant Service Corps of volunteers who work toward citizenship by contribution rather than you owe me .
I'm not sure if that is a serious question, so I'll answer as if it is. They don't "have" a bunch of money, but they would if they stopped paying the feds. See, the federal government extracts via income, excise, and misc taxes approximately 1.5 trillion dollars a year from the citizens and businesses of California. The feds then send back (through grants and allotments) roughly 900 billion, and disperses the remaining 600 billion to other states and federal programs. If CA were to secede, the citizens would no longer be US residents and therefore would not be sending 1.5 trillion to the feds. If the state government the altered its tax system so the money they once sent to the feds was sent to the state instead, the state would now bring in an additional 1.5 trillion in tax revenue. This means that even if they still fully funded the commitments that the feds once paid, they would still have an additional 600 billion in revenue. For perspective, the entirety of debt the state of CA now carries is ~450 billion (including: retirment debt for state employees, bond debt for cities, infrastructure, differed payments, inter-fund borrowing, etc.). Which means that the state could wipe out 40+ years of debt in the very first year they stop paying the fed and still have a 150 billion surplus. The CA state current fiscal year deficit is only 1% of that at 1.6 billion. So very year after the first They would have a surplus of ~598 billion, which is roughly equal to the annual US defense budget. So while they may need bailout* money from the feds to fix the damn as the situation currently is, they sure as hell wouldn't need to if they succeed (*technically, they are asking for more of their own citizens money back if you followed the above info).
Look at it like this; if you could stop paying your mortgage/rent but still got to keep your house and current income level, how much better would your annual finances be?
And last I checked they were United States Marines at Pendelton and the United States Navy in San Diego and at Coronado just to name a few.
And of those soldiers, how many are CA residents who would defect to the new country of CA with whatever equipment they could steal? I don't know, but I'd lay 20/1 odds that it isn't 0. And the CSMR is a citizen militia organized and trained by the state government, not beholden to the feds on an organizational level. It is comprised largely of US veterans, so again I don't know how many would stay in CA vs move back to the US, but I think I demonstrated above that the state could afford to build a military of whatever size they want. I also don't think they would have much difficulty in finding willing, highly trained, and motivated men willing to train and build such a force.
On a side note have you ever contemplated that this may be one large effed up plan to get us to kill each other off so as to thin the population and cement the Elitist positions at the top ?
Weekly at the least. But for some reason, people call me a paranoid cynic whenever I rant about it
