As a thirty year transplant from Colorado, I must agree. When I first arrived, my hippie friends tried to explain Prop 13. There was always a sense of sad resignation. Libraries, museums cut back open hours. People shrugged. Oh, well. Now it is assuredly going to get worse. Does anyone care? No, not really. Flippantly, I ascribe it to the climate. In Colorado it snows. People have to drive on icy roads. One learns how to do that. Here, it is nearly always spring. Why think about snow tires?

Senator Feinstein is the pox which you have inflicted upon the rest of this country. So I guess you're on your own with Arnie and Di. Good Luck.

governor just says "the following voted against tax increases."

then he says, "until the taxpayers are willing to fund services, there will be none. phone your representative if this is unsatisfactory."

then he sends the teachers, cops, firemen and garbage collectors home.

Remember that when you're tempted to accuse Californians of "sucking on the federal government's teat." Californians are helping their neighbor states.

Although I spend summers in Cali now that I'm no longer chained to a desk, I bought my house in Clearwater, FL in 1991. About that time (just before or just after) Florida instituted a property tax arrangement which set the 'tax appraisal' value of a homestead at the purchase price. Future tax value can only increase by a small set percentage (much below the market increases during the boom years). My understanding is that this is basically just the same thing Prop 13 did in California.

On problem it creates is one of great unfairness to the generations. Old codgers like myself, who are (relatively) affluent and have our houses bought (at a very low price) and all paid for many years ago, are sitting pretty. Our tax basis was the original low purchase price plus a small annual increase. HOWEVER, a young couple, just out of school and having children were buying their first houses a few years ago during the boom years at very inflated prices, and paying taxes based on those inflated prices. To give you a concrete example, if I had sold my house at the peak of the boom, the new people would have been paying AT LEAST 2 and one half times as much property tax as I was paying in the same house!

The idea was that during boom years when housing is unreasonably inflating, existing owner should not have their taxes unreasonably inflating. BUT the Prop 13 clone in Florida that kept MY taxes rock bottom put all the additional burden on those who came to the real estate party later and had to pay a high price for their homes.

Secede? Break the state in half, North and South California, and reap the benefits of your fruits of labor, or some such crap.

Frankly, this nation is DONE. FINISHED.

I have no faith in America or Americans to comprehend just how they fucked themselves this past decade. So I go into my shell and bark from the shadows. All that is left to do. Nobody listened to the Ron Pauls and Alex Joneses of the world. They were supposedly CRAZED. Yet they and only they accurately described the crisis and its origin.

I'd get the fuck out myself and move to some nation where the education system still teaches kids to THINK FOR THEMSELVES and where the food is not nutritionally DEAD and poisonous, but I'd be abandoning my big shiny, UNSELLABLE house which I am underwater on.

Frankly, I am delighted as shit that California and the rest of the country is going through this junk. THERE IS JUSTICE. God punishes IDIOTS.

Not one mention of the cost of illegal aliens in our state. Arnie admits it at least five billion but in all likeliness it's two or three times that. Even at five billion just think of the health care we could pay for all the legal children. Get them out of our prisons and save even more. Ah but no one wants to hear that.

Why did Californians think that an action movie star was going to make a good governor. The terminator needs to be terminated.

I lived in San Francisco when the voters decided they'd rather yank the existing dull Governor and go with the exciting Hollywood movie star. People came out of their trailers in Central CA to vote for that badass Terminator over that wimpy Gray Davis. They were all about kicking ass!!!!!!! Ugh.

How'd that work out, Californians? Was it exciting and fun for you to have Terminator as your Gov? What has he done for you? You behaved like kids on a candy high, kept voting yourselves childish wishes (no tax increases ever!), basically swallowed the FOX News pill whole .

And look at the wreckage. Terminator indeed. Between Prop 13, Prop 8, the recall of Davis to install Schwarzenegger to preside over CA's rape and ruin- behaving exactly like a Republican who could not care less about the people, duh- Californians are just as stupid as the stereotype. Maybe all these damned Propositions might need to be re-thought, because clearly the state 's voters are shallow idiots. They've got what they asked for.

No to gay marriage, Yes to letting an Austrian-born Republican fuck them over and not do a damned thing for them, catering to business and slashing the hell out of every social service, calling teachers, cops, nurses and fire-fighters "special interests" that he vowed to fight. Bravo, California voters wanting that movie star. Well done. I feel no sympathy for you when you're evicted from your bungalow, you brought this disaster on yourselves.

Who owned the govt ???? That can't be ...... not in American .... we are a democracy ....

back in 1978 would so impact my state today? Excuse me? This Californian has always believed that if you want a model state, you must pay for it. I would vote for any meaningful reform measures before me -- whether to hold a constitutional convention, reform the initiative process, repeal the two-thirds majority requirement and the recall provision, etc.