Everyone is talking about personal property taxes, but don't forget that Proposition 13 applies to businesses as well.

The effect is that a new business is harder to start up. An old business cleans up. Disneyland, for example, is not taxed at nearly the value of the property.

Another effect of proposition 13 has been that a greater and greater percentage of property taxes are paid by home owners. Before the proposition, about two thirds of all taxes were paid by business, about one third by homeowners. Now the proportions are reversed.

One more effect: because cities get more bang from the buck for new housing which generates a lot more tax revenue than housing under proposition 13 protection, city councils have been motivated to not stand in the way of too much development.

Earlier this week, 250 Californians packed a hearing room in the state capital Sacramento, in a court-ordered hearing on the state's proposed new lethal injection process. Over a hundred speakers objected to the state's death system on many grounds: it's cruel, inhumane and degrading; it violates international treaties, compacts and standards on human rights and torture; it deprives the condemned prisoner of access to spiritual counsel of his or her choice, and appropriate end of life rituals; it treats the prisoner's family in a disrespectful and inhumane way; innocent people have been sentenced to death; the system is racially biased; the death system doesn't deter new crime or keep us safe; it's so crushingly expensive that is keeps us from spending money on programs that can actually keep us safe, not to mention education and health care and other basic services.

During a rally on the Capitol steps, a small delegation went to the Governor's office to ask him, or any member of his staff, to step outside to receive a check for a billion dollars from California citizens. That's how much money we'll save in five years by getting rid of the death penalty now and converting the sentences of the 680 people now on California's death row to permanent incarceration -- death in prison -- life without parole.

But not one member of the governor's staff had the time on Tuesday to save a billion dollars. Too busy counting the deficit.

"...highest taxes..."

California ranked 17th in tax collections as a percent of income in the 2006 census.

"...highest spending..."

California ranked 26th in state spending per capita in the 2007 fiscal year.

In spite of how persistent it is, I am still temporarily surprised at the blindness of liberal minds like the one exposed in this article.

There have been "republican" labels applied to a very small number of your past and present governors, and fewer (in percentage) applied to your legislators over the past 50 years. In case you missed it, Arnold is not a conservative nor a right winger.

Blame the right wing as you may, it is left wing politics as usual in California. Right wingers, wish as they may, have not been in charge or control of the Left Coast for a long, long time. (Why is it referred to as the LEFT Coast... Duhhhh!

Even Reagan was a barely converted Union Boss for the most liberal organization on the planet, not a hard nosed right winger. He was just so far right of you and your cronies that you thought he was a reincarnation of Genghis Khan.

Whatever mess you are in at present (and my home state of Washington is following closely behind you) it is due to LEFT WING radical thinking.

If you want to see who is ruining the State, look up while brushing your teeth tomorrow morning. If you haven't smashed your mirror in anger yet, you might want to consider it.

Dann-Dee

Two words: term limits. These horrible, anti-democratic laws not only require California to systematically purge its government of all its institutional wisdom and experience every 8 years or so, but they have also destroyed the networks of trust and friendship that any organization needs to reach compromise and move forward. Thanks to them, California has consigned itself to be governed by just the kind of amateurish warring factions that never can, and never could, make the concessions necessary to get anything done. Our legislators don't know each other, don't care about each other, and have no incentive to look out for each other in the brief time that they are allotted to make their mark - which, of course, is every politician's first priority. Prop 13 may have put some difficult limits on government, but it was term limits that made it impossible for California to accomodate those limits and make ends meet.

Government by amateurs - that's what term limits amounts to. And every state that has enacted them can look forward to a fate similar to ours.

is that the state spends like a bunch of drunken sailors on shore leave--as do most blue states. That is why blue states dominate the budget shortfall list this year.

Perhaps if California took a page from Texas's playbook things wouldn't be so grim.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/17/us/20081117_budget_graphic.html

I'd submit that most of the letters I've seen from "Conservatives" so far are a symptom of the problems we are seeing in this state.

I'm willing to consider ideas from the right (I consider myself a liberal), but please don't tell us that we are blind or idiots because we are not willing to agree entirely to your point of view.

Your unwillingness to find some common ground is mirrored by our State Legislature's Republican minority.

As for those of you outside of CA, consider the letters you see here a warning of where the Republican Party as whole is headed.

go &%$* yourself.

Maybe you could come up with some references for these "facts" because the U.S. census bureau thinks you're wrong...

""Rounding up the usual suspects

"...highest taxes..."

California ranked 17th in tax collections as a percent of income in the 2006 census.

"...highest spending..."

California ranked 26th in state spending per capita in the 2007 fiscal year""

We have had exactly 5 years with a Democrat in office out of the last 29 going on 30. So don't try and tell me this is the fault of the Democrats. Unless you want to stipulate that Republican governors are so worthless and incompetent that they have to capitulate to the legislature to lead the state. This is republicans taking advantage of the stupid 2/3 requirement to pass a budget hat they railroaded through. But not to worry, this too shall pass.