Heh.

Advocates who want California to secede from the rest of the United States were given the green light Monday to begin collecting signatures for their initiative. California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla announced the ballot proposal had been cleared. The latest measure would ask voters in 2020 to decide whether to open up a secession discussion. If passed, a second election would be held a year later asking voters to affirm the decision and become an independent country. Advocates have until mid-October to gather 365,880 signatures of registered voters to get it on the ballot.

I seem to remember from my history books that we fought a bloody war that decided that states can’t secede. The United States is like the mafia. Once you’re in, you can never get out.

But in this case, the rest of the nation might not fight too hard. True, California is an agricultural and economic power that the nation needs, but even an independent California would need a robust trade with the U.S. And given that a full third of the U.S.’s welfare recipients are in California, we could have the benefits of trading with California without the burden of supporting their welfare state.