A frightening problem with California today, as well as most of America, is the woeful ignorance of the population regarding issues. The article is correct in it's description of the situation, but how many Californians vote for any proposition or even in an election? Those who do vote have little understanding of the ramifications of their vote. Deregulation of our media brought the collapse of investigative journalism with the rise of "infotainment" which is just SO much more profitable ~ so it must better....

Politicians of every party spend little time trying to explain anything to voters. The sound bite rolls over us like a wave, leaving only ignorance in it's wake. No one tries to explain not only why we NEED to pay taxes, but just who, exactly, isn't paying them (which is much more interesting). The real issue isn't about raising taxes, it's about who is being exempted from paying them.

How many know that California removed the sales tax on luxury yachts about 10 years ago? Or that Prop 13 was really intended to shift, over time, taxes from corporations onto wage earners? How many know how very little corporations pay in property tax now? How many know how much State revenue was lost when Arnie dumped a small tax on vehicle registration? A LOT. That spoiled Hollywood star is an abject failure, as I expected.

Democrats should make the effort to show the public facts to make voters interested/outraged enough to learn more. Commercials could simply pose questions: "Did you know" followed by a quick statistic on who is paying tax on what, compared to ordinary folk. Why haven't they done that?

For politicians, voter ignorance may be bliss for them.

The majority of Californians are acting as if putting off the expense of regular maintenance and tuneups is going to allow the car to fix itself.

Hopefully, more of them will get alarmed over the upcoming year at the sputtering and backfiring, before serious permanent damage is done.

One more thing: strictly in financial terms, if the disproportionate hit that California has taken over the past 30 years or so as the result of the government and social costs of the Endless Failed War On Some Drugs were to be factored in- this state would have a surplus on its hands instead of a bankruptcy.

But I suppose that's blood under the bridge now...nothing to do but face forward. And some policy changes are overdue.

For all the reasons you stated, I think this is an excellent summary of the problems. In essence, Prop 13 killed California in 1978. I fled California 20 years ago when it became apparent to me that California, and Californians, were simply too stupid to live. They had an amazing ability not to be able to draw connections between things.

The "Three Strikes" law is a perfect example.Yaay! We're locking up criminals! Huh? We need to build more prisons? The Californians I came to despise can run that through their minds a million times and never figure out what went wrong with their perfect plan.

Then there are people like Brightstar 2, the "whatever happened to self-reliance" morons. Many of my friends in California were like him or her, their response to the inevitable collapse of the aging infrastructure was to become Libertarian assholes. The Freeway system is overloaded and useless? Hey, exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, get a gun and shoot the moron who cuts you off... but in no case will we ever get together and actually develop public transportation, or rebuild the freeways to fit the traffic needs of 2010. That's just the government stealing "all my money!" Every highway construction project that got funded nearly always seemed to come along ten years too late, and seemed doomed to be outdated the minute they were completed.

My sister still lives in California and works for the L.A. School District, teaching kids. Or, as Brightstar 2 might say, she's a parasitic leech on the taxpayer's back. By her reports, the district seems in total chaos. Does she have a job in the fall? No one seems to have thought that far in advance.

The tragedy is, I remember as a child how much nicer California was before government became "the enemy." The schools seemed well-funded, you could go to summer school if you needed, or wanted, plus we had Physical Education AND music and art programs, and a city-wide orchestra for kids; the library was open at night, there were parks to play in, with supervised activities, public swimming pools, oh yes, it was hell on earth for a kid. And so much of all that is gone, utterly gone now, a victim of 30 years of budget cuts. Thanks Prop 13 tax rebels! Things are ever so much better now that all that stuff is gone. But, oh well, Californians do have a lot of prisons and prisoners now, so that's good, I guess. A good trade.

He isn't that bad, and Davis would have had the same problems. The main thing is, no one in Cali wants to grow a pair and repeal prop 13. It sets property taxes at a basically fixed rate from the time you buy a place. California needs a constitutional convention to repeal prop 13 and get rid of citizen initiatives.

The great irony is that I read a similar discourse of this same subject on the Washington Post website earlier in the day by former L.A. Weekly writer Harold Meyerson. The state of journalism obviously mirrors every aspect of business and governmental affairs these days.

The bitter irony is that these oppositional Republicans have been the recipients of taxpayer largesse for so many years, products of a middle class that provided them education, parks and recreation, police and fire services, and unprecedented subsidies of roads and *public* utility infrastructure systems often at the peril of their inner-city counterparts.

And for all the apoplectic trolls clamoring to sink the ship ever further, (your Grandmother is Barbara Coe), stop using said services and stop complaining until the budget is balanced. Oh, dumbed-down masses from the Reagan era, kneel down before your empty suit, and pray for the deep pockets of trickle-down theory. And let us know how that's workin' out for ya!