Mr. Kamiya has the story partially correct--that part being that California is broke and broken.

But to suggest that the minority party and the initiative processes are to blame is just flat wrong. Initiatives have historically been the peoples' only way of getting things attended to that the Legislature refused to do. And, very frequently, it has been the government's way of putting important questions of policy to the people for decision--the most recent set of initiatives were sponsored by the government and asked Californians to approve new taxes, along with certain spending controls to balance the budget. The people said no by margins of greater than 2 to 1--a clear "no new taxes" message.

Some Californians, as noted in the article, are pro-tax, pro-welfare, pro-socialism. However, the rest of California is not disinterested or dispirited--it is disgusted at its government and what it has done over decades.

The reckoning is coming--financial and political. First, the state will fail financially and adults will be summoned to take over what the government children cannot and will not do--make the state live within its means. Then the pols will be held to account. Watch and see--a tidal wave of change is coming.

Oh, as for the prisons, 35% of prisoners are illegal alien felons--you know, the same people that the illegal immigration apologists suggest are just here to make a living.

California government has so dismally failed its people, it's sad. The founders belief in the ability of the people to self-govern is undermined profoundly by what these craven cowards have done to the once Golden State.

Gawd. How mind numbing an explication can be given?

After recovering from my post-article-reading catatonia, I am moved only to say that there was NOTHING revealed about communism/Communism that I was wrong about in my understanding.

That said, I suppose it is fashionable among the hopeless liberals who long for that era in which Western Freedom and Eastern Communism clashed to wish that somehow it hadn't worked out as it did.

It is surprising that these same nostalgics don't have a similar disposition, emotionally speaking, regarding jihadistic Islam.

How totally NOT interesting.