Her turn: When we met, I thought he wassmart, fun-loving and charming. He charmed me with his go, go, go attitude.Now, I'm not so sure. We fight all the time over finances. I want to stabilizethe budget by cutting back, but all he wants to do is spend, spend, spend.

His turn: She's never been as flashy as Iam, but that's part of what attracted me to her. She's dependable, solid.Lately, though, she's at my throat about everything. She says I don'tunderstand her world, and I do try, but she just seems so closed-minded.

Counselor: How long has this been going on?

Both: Since 1864. We filed for divorcethen, but Congress wouldn't let us.

Thusbegins the news installment of "Can California Be Saved?" The latestedition is brought to you by a former Republican assemblyman from Visalia.

Accordingto The Sacramento Bee, under Bill Maze's plan 13 coastal counties from Los Angeles to Marinwould split from the remaining 45 counties. Maze has established a nonprofitgroup called Citizens for Saving California FarmingIndustries to push the idea.

"We'relooking at establishing a breakaway state," hetold The Bee, with a new government and a new capital. "We'd actuallybe creating a 51st state."

TheNovember passage of Proposition 2, which banned certain types of animal cages,spurred the group to start the latest succession effort. Except technically,it's not a succession effort since the group wants to keep the name "California" andevict the other 13 counties.

Maze iseven offering to take on the state's $45 billion debt, since the 45 breakawaycounties are more conservative. "I bet they these people will say, 'Wetake the debt,' and will pay it off in two or three years," hetold the Visalia Times-Delta.

The groupmakes liberal use -- that might be a poor choice of words given its leanings --of a comment it attributes to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that "the stateis ungovernable."

They'reprobably right about that, but for the wrong reasons.

California isnigh unto ungovernable because of its ridiculous requirement that budgets beapproved by a two-thirdsmajority.

The stateis in financial chaos because of an initiative system that makes it easy forvirtually any pet project to appear on the ballot regardless of whether there'smoney to pay for it -- and because voters approve the projects without worryingabout where the money will come from.

The stateis at political loggerheads because of gerrymanders designed to preserve the partisanstatus quo of 1991, the year legislative and congressional lines were lastredrawn.

The stateis a fiscal mess because of structural deficit of billions of dollars annuallythat officials have known about for years but refused to address.

The statelacks government leaders in part because of a system of term limits that throwsthem out just as they're becoming skilled at working within the system.

And noneof that has anything to do with urban versus rural, farm versus city.

While theidea of a new state is intriguing on some levels - it would be interestingacademically and intellectually to see what framers could come up with if theyblew up all the old assumptions -- it's not going to happen.

Wouldn'tit be nice if organizers would invest their time and money into working out solutionsinstead of trying to start divorce proceedings?