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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

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.

Move to Alaska.

Oops! Palin is quitting. Better not.

I'll keep this short. Most of your post merely repeats things you've already said.

You rationalize all tax increases as necessary as long as there is a sunset provision. Are you that gullible to believe that a politician will not find another crisis to divert our money to?

Reality check:

1) No "politician" in this system gets to do that, just by snapping their fingers.

"The politicians" (what a sloppy conflation!) aren't dictators- although you wouldn't know that to read the general run of "anti-government" sleight-of-hand screeds, which are somehow always so opposed to "government", while being obsessed with seizing its power to serve their own goals. (By contrast, consider the Amish, who actually have some integrity in their anti-government stance.)

As a sales tax paying Californian, I'd assent to another 1% tax increase that expires within 2-4 years. Econ 101- that's a "regressive" tax- it hits everyone purchasing goods in the state equally, regardless of income, and wouldn't raise those dreaded State income taxes a dime- thus rendering your hand-wringing over the top 10% of income earners in the state being subjected to a punitive tax increase irrelevant.

If, at the end of 2-4 years, "a politician" (what sloppy terminology! focus your thoughts, say what you realy mean!) were to try to extend the sales tax, I'd see it as someone stringing me along. And I'd adjust my views toward someone attempting that accordingly.

2) at least part of the blame for the deficit over the past six years has been due to the failure to simply confront the problem forthrightly and generate the revenue to keep from slipping backwards into the hole. That inaction, and the resultant resort to borrowing at interest, also qualifies as a crisis to which CA taxpayer's money has been diverted.

You seem to have this boundless belief in the good intentions of politicians and the effectiveness of their policies.

And I say you're simply making things up. You have nothing to support that claim, beyond my support for getting California out of the red without consigning it to junk bond status and walking away from the needed maintenance of a fairly high level of civic development and public works that's already in place.

My support for a sales tax increase with a sunset clause is designed to return the state to sufficient fiscal health that cuts aren't made under a state of panic and duress, with the result of crippling important public services that the residents will later regret. That's all it's about.

For what it's worth, I think that's the same position presently being taken by the Republican governor of Arizona, trying to talk some sense into her co-politicians ;^) in the Arizona State legislature.

We'll talk adjustments to "diet" (i.e., salaries and benefits for state government employees) after the patient is out of the ICU.