Many will remember that Prop 13 was taken to the courts some years ago -- the Calif. Supreme Court passed it, and the US Supreme Court refused to consider it. Both of these were thoroughly chicken moves in my opinion. If my next door neighbor in the identical type house is paying 1/3 the property taxes I am only because he's been there longer, how is that not a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment?

Prop 13 and other similar measures elsewhere should be re-litigated in the courts. They are outrageously discriminatory. Maybe if everybody had the same property tax burden, there would be more citizen interest in a budgetary solution in California.

It's not that Californian's are being under taxed: In some counties the sales tax is going to over 10%. At the time proposition 13 was passed it was only 4.25%. There is a trend toward regressive taxes and away from progressive taxes.

But the real problem is that we are spending more for the health and education of illegal workers imported from Latin America to work on corporate farms and construction projects of the rich. It has been estimated that over ten billion dollars a year goes to paying for the health and education of the parents and children of illegal aliens in California. That is over half the deficit. When this fact is brought up the opponents of illegal immigration are call racists.

The rich exploit cheap illegal labor and the ordinary tax payer pays for their health and education.

You describe a couple of technical issues that have ensured that the extreme right retains a completely unwarranted veto power. Then you proclaim: "But in the long run, to overcome its structural problems, it must transform some of its most cherished values."

Rather, the only way to overcome structure problems - as in architecture - is to repair the structure. The anti-democratic reality of "citizen" initiatives is notorious in my state, too. Restrictions should be placed on such initiatives such that special interests can't ram through insane mandates. And a 2/3 budget rule is a guarantee of gridlock.

The CA legislature should drop all other business - which it obviously can't complete anyway - and revise these two rules. Perhaps there are others.

The problem has nothing to do with "values". Fix the laws, fix the government.

For starters,

Illegal immigrants pay sales taxes, they are impossible to avoid, and in that, makes a valid argument for the shift you describe away from income taxes to sales taxes.

Secondly, Illegal immigrants pay property taxes in the same way most americans do. If they own property they are assessed, if they rent property they pay the taxes as a portion of their rent.

Thirdly, Although many illegal immigrants do file taxes, most however do not make enough money to qualifiy to pay taxes. Which also means that most do not get the numerous rebates that other workers can and do file for, inclusive of property tax rebates which many renters get.

Finnally, the way to solve the illegal immigrant problem is simply to legalize immigration. If they had access to courts, and labor laws, and didn't fear deportation for asking for a raise, there would be no economic insentive to hire illegal immigrants, who would there by stop getting hired, and would eventually seek their fortunes in a differnt location.

No body wants to shovel shit for a dollar a day and all you can eat, the only way you get illegal immigrants to do this is because they have limited ways to advocate for themselves. You remove the blocade against self advocation and unionization, and they will demand just as much a fair days pay for a fair days work as any native born son. They will pay full taxes on their fair pay, and budget gets balanced.

Problems, in total, solved.

Did all these right-wing Republicans beam down from the mothership (no, not the one run by George Clinton) and suddenly appear in the California legislature?

Californians elected them. There was little real "ilberalism" that sought to elect candidates to change the situation. Or those "liberals" were just simply incompetent hacks who had no connection with, or ability to understand, the constituency.

Seems to me that the Democratic party might as well admit that they are really not all that liberal, and really aren't all as interested in the poor and troubled as they like to claim. Certainly no more than the Republicans. And those people who don't agree with this may need to buckle down and fight hard to change the Democratic Party, or replace it with some political organization that works better.

Of course, by then, the fabled beauty and hedonism of California will be transformed into something resembling the poorest sections of West Virginia. Poverty and right-wing religious fanaticism will rule. Schadenfreude rules.

Prop 13 should not benefit commercial or rental property owners that have the ability to adjust the rental rates they charge tenants.

Prop 13 should not benefit property owners of second homes acquired through inheritance. More often than not these homes are kept and used as rentals.

Pensions paid to retired state employees are far too generous, often amounting to full pay plus extensive healthcare benefits.

Until now I had no idea the level of chutzpah you stinking liberals had. Blaming California's budget demise on Conservatives takes the chutzpah cake. Sorry liberals, YOU own BLUE California and everybody in the U.S. and abroad knows it. This article is pathetic attempt to divert blame for the disaster known as California from the people that created it, the liberals. When California wasn't run hock and stock by liberals, it truly was a shining city on the hill. I lived there in the late 70's and early 80's as a youngster, and it was a decent place to live back then. Sometime between then and now, liberals achieved a stranglehold on the state pulse and have had their positions and ideas played out at the state level to failure. Yes liberals, this is what happens when we let you have your collective way......you run it into the ground with your 'new ways of doing things' while consciously ignoring basic human nature in favor of stupid liberal ideas. Note to liberals: Your stupid ideas only play out to fruition in your own minds and in academia. When applied to the real world, they fail miserably.