FREEDUMMIES.

In the latest attempt by wingnuts to make more of America as miserable as they are, some folks want to carve California into six separate states so at least a few of them will be Red/impoverished. (One of the new states would be called "Jefferson" because freedom.) This Washington Times puffer doesn't even try to conceal it:

Revenue from sales and property taxes also would be distributed unevenly among the six states. Jefferson and Central California have the lowest personal income taxes and the lowest sales and property tax bases, although Jefferson would become a net exporter of water. 

[Rich guy Tim] Draper said support for the six-state concept is highest in Central California and Jefferson because “the existing state is not working for them.” 

"Of course, we expect all six states to get richer because governments will be more in touch with their citizens,” Mr. Draper said... 

They may be smaller and poorer but they'll have responsive government, unlike those Silicon Valley statists. Folks'll naturally prefer their water-power computers to those powered by communism!

For [secessionist Mark] Baird, that’s the beauty of the six Californias proposal: bringing government closer to the people it represents. 

“When you ask people here about this, they tell you, ‘If I could live in a free state, I’d live with a few more potholes and some used equipment,’” said Mr. Baird. “We need representation. We’ll figure the rest of it out."

I assume Draper's got some land- and power-grab scheme in mind -- his home base, the Sovereign State of Silicon Valley, would become the richest in the country under this plan -- and that Baird, if he's not merely deluded, would try to use the threat of dehydration or deliberate flooding to end gay marriage in neighboring states in the name of the Lord, until a team of assassins financed by the Siliconians took him out and replaced him with a puppet regime. (Maybe by then Gary Sinise will be ready for a governorship.)

It makes sense, if you're of a cynical turn of mind, that as soon as Jerry Brown successfully un-fucked the state's finances after years of calamitous Republican rule -- and Californians decided they liked the change --  conservatives would try to flip the chessboard like this.

I'm put in mind of "Rule or Ruin," except with these guys it's always Rule and Ruin. Get a load of Human Rights Watch's report on the trend toward privatized, "offender-funded" probation services in some states -- the result of which is what anyone with a brain would expect: massive rip-offs and persecution of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

In Georgia, Thomas Barrett pled guilty to stealing a can of beer from a convenience store and was fined US$200. He was ultimately jailed for failing to pay over a thousand dollars in fees to his probation company, even though his entire income—money he earned by selling his own blood plasma—was less than what he was being charged in monthly probation fees...

Most courts do not even track and do not know how much their probation companies collect in fees from the probationers they assign to them. Companies treat those figures as a trade secret and refuse to publish them. Human Rights Watch estimates that in Georgia alone, probation companies take in at least $40 million in revenues from fees they charge to probationers

The report is mostly based on "interviews conducted with people in the states of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi" -- three states where, you may be sure, the tax bases are low but the "freedom" is high, as evidenced by the innovative ways they've found to sell out their own people.

UPDATE. Good to see Andrew Cohen of The Atlantic is getting in on the privatized probation scam story. "The perils of private probation isn't a bigger national story, I reckon," writes Cohen, "because it does not impact the rich and powerful nearly as much as it impacts the poor and powerless." No shit.