Oh come on... California is great. Best weather, great produce, ability to grow most whatever you want year around, no annual hurricane or tornado risk (and in many parts, no substantial earthquake risk), natural beauty that beats most of the world, etc. I was walking around the San Diego zoo yesterday... It must have been 70 degrees... on the 16th of January, and most people in the country are trapped in their houses unable to go anywhere because the frigid cold (ready to kill themselves from lack of sun). Last I checked, that is the definition of 'suck'. The only thing that sucks in California are the politicians.. But thats true everywhere else as well. Also: Prop 13 is absolutely horrid for CA, and the problem there is the people of CA. The prop tax system is absolutely stupid. ie my neighbor across the street with an identical priced home who has much more earnings power than me (being later in his life) pays a third the property taxes that I do. In fact, his house is worth (in today's shitty market) at least 5x what my parents' house in OH is worth, and they pay the same prop taxes. Now I've taken advantage of prop 13 myself just recently by buying some foreclosures, but I know a broken system when I see one. I'm all for a 'poor senior' property tax exemption, but 90% of the people grandfathered in with low prop tax bases can more than afford to pay their fair share. California could solve the budget problems almost entirely by fixing prop 13 by equalizing payments from within neighborhoods. There's a shitload of grandfathered wealth in CA that isn't paying their fair share of consumption. (I know of people who bought a home in 1960 in Del Mar for 30K who aren't paying more than several hundred dollars/year in prop taxes for a home that would sell today for 3-5M!!!!)
Hey, be careful talking about Cali there! What if the US didn't have all of our drugged out, screaming liberal limp wristed Hollywood Fags bitching about everything. Then what would you do?
Prop 13 was enacted when seniors were being taxed out of their homes.The politicians offered no relief so the people acted with compassion. Do not blame Prop 13. Blame the idiots in Sacramento for their partisan stupidity and unwillingness to fix the situation. They never had more money coming in and committed that trend into the future as if the housing bubble wouldn't end and would continue into the future. We have the smartest politicians and the best political system money can buy. IMHO.
Agreed that spending is out of control, but prop 13 was always broken. From Gray Davis years I've been trumpeting prop 13 is a major fault in the system. That high speed train prop is a prime example of California electorate stupidy... They passed a 10B+ spending prop in the face of this. If you gave them a prop which said 0% taxes, they'd vote 99-1 for it. If on the same ticket you gave them a prop which said decreased services, they'd vote 1-99 for it. This is exactly why direct democracy is a failure.
California will get bailed out with your tax money asshole. "Its too big to fail" We'll get high speed rail and the rest of the country will pay for it. The rest of you can sit in sub-zero temperatures and pay our way out here on the sunny left coast. I'll think of you folks while I'm drinking coronas by the pool this afternoon. Gotta love the USA.
scriabino (sp) - I normally think your posts are well considered and informative... But, here I have to wonder if you are not seeing this from some sort of screwed up perspective. You have to agree the democrats in the California legislature are the most screwed up group of bastards you know. You realize they have been attempting to give away goods and services to illegal immigrants for a generation. To build their voting base. (illegals make legals). You have to realize that 10 billion dollars of the CA budget goes to educating the children of illegal immigrants. You have to know about billions (this number I am guessing) we spend on health care for illegal immigrants. The answer is not necessarily to raise property taxes- the answer was and is to change govt. We can't afford the give aways. We area already over taxed. By the way - I am not longer a homeowner. But I did own in North County a few years ago.
crooks of wall street - willing to "rip the faces" off countys in order to get a bonus. And probably improperly influencing the politician along the way.
I'd tend to instanteously agree concerning the problem of paying for illegal immigrant services (health care, schools, etc). But I am also curious to see what the net benefit might be. ie, farm, restaurant, and landscape business owners and others pay them very low wages. How would that wage savings into the 'bottom line' by 'naturalized' employers possibly compare to what we spend extra on illegal immigrant services? An important question worth answering. BTW, I agree that most of the legislature (democratic and republican) is screwed up. I won't go partisan here - each side is a collective screw up. My angle on prop 13 is the obvious inequity in the tax system. Much of CA's wealth is founded on the real estate boom, yet those who are made most wealthy by real estate pay the least of their fair share of prop taxes. Every 'genius' california real estate holder is sitting on a few properties stuck in 80s-90s tax bases where the latest marginal buyer is getting stuck with an unfair share of the bill. I'd like to see a normalized tax basis where the old holders are brought up, the recent buyers are brought down, and the base assessment rate is the variable that gets moved depending on fiscal needs of the state (AFTER spending discipline is invoked, cutting unnecessary commitments, removing abusive pension obligations, etc). Anyone have any statistics on what % of California prop taxes are based on pre-2000 purchases ? Or how prop tax revenues are statistically distributed? etc
Prop 13 in California is a Republican born and supported measure. When Buffet told Schwarzenegger to repeal it or amend it back in 2003, the typical dumb republican in this country said no. Blame the current mess on the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.
Hope you're wearing a kevlar vest while sitting by the pool today. Should give you a 50/50 chance to survive the next drive by. Gotta love Northern Mexico, oops, I mean California.