And yes, the legislature has been hamstrung with too many mandates that leaves little room for providing for anything not mandated. I think it’s up to about 80% of the budget which does not leave much wiggle room. With the crisis at hand, the sickest and the weakest will have their services cut as usual.

Arnold has not lived up to his billing. The recall of Grey Davis was a waste and an abuse of the process. In the end, nothing is going to get better until the voters take their responsibilities seriously and make an effort to inform themselves.

You are also right that nothing is going to improve as long as there is an attitude of cutting taxes and expanding expectations of services.

Heterosexuals: boycott marriage. Opt for Civil Union, instead.

Here’s an article by Ralph Nader arguing in favor of an initiative process at the national level:

National Initiative (http://www.votenader.org/issues/national-initiative)

Moving commercial property out from under the Prop 13 shelter would have been enough to do it, for sure.

The oddest thing about the whole covenant marriage thing is that as nearly as I can tell, the extra-sticky glue only works in the State that issued the license.

I predict that if covenant marriages become very popular, Las Vegas and Reno will regain their cottage divorce industries. I think that’s a bad thing, myself.

I was an undergrad in SoCal at the time Prop 13 passed. The problem was recognized by the State Legislature, there was a referendum on the ballot in the same election that passed 13. It would have taken care of the problem of people on fixed incomes being taxed out of their homes, without shifting the primary property tax burden onto homeowners.

The results of Prop 13 were completely forseeable, and indeed were predicted at the time. Private homes turn over (on the average) about every 5 years. Commercial property changes hands much less frequently, not even every 20 years. Often when commercial property changes hands, it is shifted by one corporate entity buying another corporate entity. The property never changes ownership as far as the county assessor is concerned.

Changes in corporate structuring (the rise of Limited Liability Corporations, LLCs) have exacerbated the problem. I don’t know about things in California, but here we have corporations that are an organization of lots of little LLCs. I would expect that large landlords have reorganized their business as a separate LLC for each property. If you want to sell the property, you sell the LLC, and hey-presto, there’s a new owner but the transaction is transparent to the county assessor, because the same corporate entity owns the property.

Wouldn’t you love to be able to inherit your parent’s home in Palo Alto that way? Ain’t happening, sport. You aren’t an LLC and you can’t play that game.

I got the same indoctrination in the Bakersfield City Schools that you got, esseff44. The citizen initiative is wonnerful, wonnerful, wonnerful, it’s what makes the California Constitution superior to all others. The ability to recall miscreants in government is another wonnerful, wonnerful, wonnerful thing.

Well, look what the citizen initiative has gotten you. You have a legislature run by a small minority. You can’t get a budget passed, because it requires a 2/3 supermajority to pass a budget. You can’t rationalize your tax structure (which is increasingly shifting onto the poor and the middle class, by the way) because it takes a 2/3 supermajority to pass a tax increase.

You once had a K to Doctorate education system that was the envy of the world. Because I had the grades and the test scores and I came from a middle class family, had I chosen to go a private school in California as an undergrad, a California State Scholarship would have paid most of my tuition. If I were applying to college today with the same grades and test scores I couldn’t get into the University of California at anyplace.

California by itself has one of the world’s largest economies. There is no excuse for the current budget crisis in the State, except that the citizens of the State have so hamstrung their government that it cannot govern.

I had hopes that when Schwarzenagger became Governor that he’d tell the people of California the truth. He might have done it, because he didn’t need the job and there is no place for him to after he leaves Sacramento. The truth is this: there are high tax, high service governments (think the upper midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin), and there are low tax, low service governments (think Texas and Mississippi). I suppose it’s possible to have a high tax, low service government but you can’t have a low tax, high service government unless it’s based on a extractive economy and you tax the hell out of the extractive industries (think Alaska, although I think of Alaska is a better example of a high tax, low service government.) You don’t want a tax system based on an extractive economy — they seem to be invariably corrupt, and the government ends up being owned by the extractive industry. Look at Alaska, Montana, California in the late 19th C, Nevada, the African nation of your choice, Siberia…

There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. If you want it, you’ll have to pay for it somehow. If you want to operate four world-class universities, you’ll have to pay for them. If you want a social safety net, you’ll have to pay for it.

That little bit of direct democracy that you think you have left is gone, because the monied interests have figured out how to game the system. Jarvis and Gann were just the first shot in that game. If you want to keep the citizen initiative (I think you should, but it needs to be revised — not amended, revised) you have to take the monied interests out of the game:

1. Ban paid signature collectors.
2. Require all signature collectors to be registered voters in the county where they are collecting signatures.
3. Increase the signature requirement. Currently it stands at 8% of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. That should be raised to 16%.
4. Rather than passing an initiative with a simple majority, require a 3/5 supermajority. Initiatives do not go through the legislative hearing process, and plenty of bad ideas come before the voters.

Perhaps I’ve become jaded after 8 years of BushCo and watching Prop 8 pass last November, but I’ve decided that generally speaking voters are stupid. Making it more difficult for demagogues to convince them to make silly changes in the Constitution and statutory law is a Good Thing in my book.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Think about it: if corporate person never die, commercial property will never, ever be subject to re-assessment. It will always be taxed at 1978 rates and assessments. Tell me PG&E, the railroads, and the timber companies wouldn’t do anything — including lie about the number and extent of old people affected by escalating taxes on their homes — to get a sweet deal like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C…..sition_13_(1978)

Here is a link to the inaugural speech of Hiram Johnson in 1911. He was the governor of California…a noted progressive…that is credited for getting this system in place. He gives the reasons for it in his speech (which sounds a lot like one we would hear now). The big business of the day was Southern Pacific. They more or less ran the show and the legislature. There was very little democracy and he was trying to give some power back to the little people.

I would really hate to see us give up that bit of direct democracy and hand it over to the best legislatures money can buy.

http://www.californiagovernors…..al_23.html

Prop 13 has been amended a number of times and it can still be amended to make it more fair. But to undo it would put many more people out of their homes and exacerbate all our economic problems and inequalities.