Move to Alaska.

Oops! Palin is quitting. Better not.

CA public employees, state and local, make far more than the U.S. public employee average and reap benefits far greater than the private sector.

If CA leaders simply matched the U.S. average public employee pay and private sector benefits, there would be a budget surplus. Perform your own research. The details are sad and absurd.

It is false that only "hard line right wingers" support Prop 13.

A third of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are self described Democrats.

Also, CA spends gobs on Education. It's why the teacher next door to me earns 72 plus grand a year, with full benefits and retirement and total job security.

You can't tell me they are not paid enough. She is paid more than anyone who has ever lived in that unit. Most get by on HALF that (so you can't say it's a "rich" area).

In fact, teacher benefits are so good that even if you are incompetent, many will not let go because they have it so good.

In an otherwise intelligent piece, I must disagree with the following statement:

"Some citizens who voted for Prop. 13 and other anti-tax measures are hard-line right-wingers who are ideologically opposed to government and don't care if state programs die. "

First, because read at a glance, as most articles are, the statement suggests all supporters of Prop. 13, as right-wing ideologues. Second, as a resident of the state when the Proposition was passed, I believe many, if not most voters, saw the 13 as a way of preventing government from taxing its way out of its difficulties. It creators were, in a way, visionaries who saw that government programs and regulations would continued to grow, and that those who benefited from that growth, largely their Democrat opponents, would continue to assail the notion of no taxation without representation. In this case they would be a minority subjected to the lazy whims and ambitions of a tyranny of the majority.

In simple terms, what Prop 13's supporters demanded was that their government be inventive, innovative and imaginative enough to serve its citizens and support growth without excessive taxation.

When are you left-wing, socialist, Trotsky loving idiots going to wake up!!! The state of California is BROKE!!!!!!! And the Democractic party pinko wackos don't care a dime about anyone else but their own butt!!! I am convinced that all politicians are crooked, cheat, and would sell their mother if they could. Thousands of people will lose jobs, children will lose health insurance, and state services will be revoked. But at least the Delta Darter a fish will be safe, as irrigation water has been cut off to the San Joaquin Valley, the breadbasket of the nation. This state SUCKS!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait to get out of this hellhole! Sound like I am rambling, but the answer is pretty easy to heal the state, do exactly opposite of what Comrade Obama wants!!

California recently moved from 47th in per-pupil spending to dead last among the States of the Union. The things that you believe about spending in California are false.

This is a laboratory for what happens economically when right wingnuts run an economy. And make Grover Norquist move there and partake of the "opportunity."

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Roger, I have to wonder if you, and if many others on this board actually *read* what is going on. Because from this comment, you don't know.

CA IS run by left wing liberals. Look at the legislature. COUNT them...they have been running (and spending) CA. They are the ones who created this.

Yes, Republicans have some power but only veto power, which they are using now, but they didn't spend us into oblivion.

Some of you have said things like "this is what you get when libertarians run the state", "its the Republican's fault"! ad nausuem.

I'll tell you you are wrong. This state gives HALF it's total money to education. HALF! I don't think a libertarian run state would be so generous towards education. Not only that, we have given welfare to the eyeballs, even if you are a non-citizen. Literally, it doesn't matter if you are not a citizen, pregnant foreigners can come to CA, give birth and get loads of help (food stamps, free medical care, WELFARE, etc etc) simply for giving birth here. This is not conservative, this is our liberal government at work.

Please people...read up on the issues...like not biased ones. You will see CA is run by the left.

I like the way you think RaisinToastie. The war on drugs has militarized our police forces and created perverse incentives for law enforcement to seize our property. Innocent citizens are forced to fight their way through the court system to reclaim their property. Human beings have been medicating themselves with drugs and alcohol for millennium and it will never change. We need to treat addiction as a health issue and decriminalize recreational drug use. Our prisons are overcrowded and too many poor and young people have had their lives ruined because of drug convictions. Our drug laws have helped to create the black markets that violent drug gangs exploit. I have a choice to smoke pot or not and therefore I can avoid the tax if I choose not to smoke. This is how a free society should operate.

It's a good start towards solving Cali's budget woes. I'm surprised I read a lot of these letters and only a few people mentioned it.

Tax & regulating the lucrative cannabis crop would earn an estimated $1.4 billion in revenue. $170 million would also be saved in expenditures for law enforcement.

These figures are the tip of the iceberg, as a legal market would create as many as 100,000 jobs and spin-off industries totaling up to 12 billion in total economic activity.

Surely a commonsense solution such as this could be agreed upon by liberal and conservatives?

Check out Tom Ammiano's Assembly Bill 390.

writes: "Imagine buying a home for $100,000 and paying about $1,200 a year in property tax."

That's a very low tax rate! In my area, you'd pay about three times that in property taxes for a $100,000 house.

"Suddenly, that house, on paper, is worth $1 million and your $100 a month property tax bill is now $1,100 a month."

Hold on a second.

First off, did property prices REALLY increase by 10 times "suddenly"? Or was it over a number of decades?

A Californian I know paid $30,000 for a house near Burbank way back about 1960. At the peak, it was priced at almost 20 times that. But it took more than 40 years to get there. Of course he pays ridiculously low property taxes because of Prop 13.

Second, how often do appraisals change? Is every property reappraised every year? That alone is an enormous amount of paperwork, all done by paid govt. employees.

Perhaps reappraisals should be only be done every 5 or 10 years, or whenever the property sells or is significantly changed. There's a big dollar savings right there.

Third, maybe what's really wrong is the high RE prices and the expectation that RE will appreciate much faster than inflation.