Jefferson State Recruiters in Town

So the Jefferson state recruiters came to town and gave a short informal talk at the county supervisors chamber on Tuesday. They are trying to convince the voters in this county that we would be better off.

While initially I felt positive about the potential in separating from California, they have not developed a viable economic plan. Bland assurances always set off the warning bells and mine are ringing rather loudly now. And as was pointed out in the ensuing debate this county is better off than the rest of the poor counties to our north and west who want to form Jefferson state.

It looks pretty unlikely this county will leave California and join Jefferson state, and I'm not sure that Jefferson state is rational about its economic plan. I'm pretty sure they aren't, actually. Taking 33% of the tax base here is more than all the other counties combined because they are just that poor. Realistically speaking, if you are going to form a state you NEED to know what everything costs, very specifically, and any cuts need to be listed, as well as what you're going to do about them.

If Jefferson state is really just a cry for help, as "Keep It California PAC" puts it, wouldn't the energy be better spent documenting and publishing the specific ills to shame the governor and legislature into doing something useful about it? The individual counties DO have valid grievances and the state isn't fixing what's wrong either. The big problems are that the counties in question are victims of being agricultural in a time of drought, and drought hurts California pretty badly.

The catch is that the drought might be ending this summer. It is MAY and we're getting snow up the mountain from here, for the last 3 days. The wind is icy and damp, very much like a normal February. This is the opposite of WARMING. Its more like what you'd call "COOLING". MAY, and snow. In prior drought years it was in the 90's and 100's this time of year. Just saying. Despite the usual weather patterns of snow falling into the Blue Canyon gap, up where 20 and 80 join, above Bear River. And if the drought ends, there's suddenly jobs for all the farmers to plant crops and most of the financial support behind division ends and the entire point of the exercise evaporates.

It is somewhat unfortunate because those counties, and this one, would benefit by spending the taxes on things with more local value. People are poorer. That's not going to be fixed immediately, but once we get rains again things will improve.