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.

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.

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.

But the misbegotten ballot initiative idea has also been terribly abused by legislators eager to abdicate their responsibility to make tough decisions to the voters, who elected them and pay their salaries to make said difficult calls. Cases in point: the raft of propositions that failed in May that were intended to help balance the budget. Those were promoted by the governor and legislature to get them off the hook for cuts and tax increases.

But the legislature had to put those measures on the ballot (and hold an expensive special election) because the Super-Majority requirement has made it impossible for them to pass such legislation themselves.

I agree with those who say (fer Crissakes!) do away with the 75%-requirement to pass a budget; let the simple majority decide; let them pay whatever consequences (good or bad) at the next election.

Reading Kamiya and others one would believe that Californians live in a state of low taxation. Of course this notion is silly. In 2008, California ranked 6th of 50 states in total State/Local tax burden. Californians have lived with a higher tax burden than most of their fellow Americans for years. In the past ten years businesses have pulled up stakes to relocate in lower tax areas, population numbers have leveled, even declined at times and yet the legislature has continued to spend and spend. The problems Californians face are a harbinger of what the nation will soon face if the the big spenders in Washington fail to learn from this debacle. Of course, if states could only print their own money...hey, now there's an idea...competing currencies.

Don't misconstrue my comment. In fact, I was one of 5 people in the state who voted in favor of Prop A, extending the tax increase for two more years. I don't oppose taxes to pay for what society wants or needs. But unbridled democratic control is not the way. Case in point: remember last January while trying to balance the budget, some democrat was proposing a new program to give health insurance to all children in the state, in essence arguing that it was not going to be so expensive, and on top of an already colossal deficit, we would hardly notice it.

I also heard that almost 17 million people in the state (about 40% of the population) qualify for some form of medicaid. I have not been able to verify the figure, but if true, it would be an example of social services gone amok. Again, I do not oppose taxes, but I am not sure that the democrats in Sacramento recognize any limits.

If the Republicans as Kamiya says are "walking oxymorons", that makes the big government Democrats even more oxymoronic, as big government has failed California and he's calling for more failed government. There is a big government winner though in California, the Mexican Government has won under Fox and Calderone, and Schwarzenegger and Co have been proven to be the cheap change chumps that they are as the American and Californian tax dollar vaporizes out there in Shangri La La land. To get ones house in order one must be in control of, be sovereign over, their house. Chaos isn't a plan of governance no matter how Progressive it sounds.

It's both ideologically pure and simple.

Interesting article, right up to the end, where, for reasons probably having to do with the knee jerk reflex of journalistic "balance," Kamiya has to attribute blame to starry eyed leftists who. . . what? I have no idea, except that maybe they don't participate in fighting the fight? But what of all of those who do? And is alienation something limited to "leftists," as though there is much of left left in California, or in the US for that matter?