Shame on You, Mother Jones...

for buying into the meme of California being broke because of Prop 13. Prop 13 was meant to save seniors from being kicked out of their houses due to skyrocketing land taxes. While anyone can debate the effects of Prop 13, the fact is that seniors on fixed incomes were much more vulnerable to this than before. Prop 13 should remain in spirit, even if it needs to be reformed, and any tax law that old would likely need to be reformed.

I would dare suggest a progressive land tax, where millionaires and people who own multiple properties pay a higher rate.

However, this isn't the problem California has. The problem we have is the same that the rest of the world has: money fleeing offshore to the tune of $21 trillion. Some of that money obviously came from California. Then there was the huge economic damage inflicted by Enron which Governor Schwarzenegger settled for pennies on the dollar. The other, big problem for California was the real estate meltdown that hit us in 2007-2008. Property tax losses from the 2008 crash might have actually hit California even harder had we been reliant upon high property taxes - which would likely be the case without Prop 13.

Anyway, here's the MoJo article I'm talking about:

For the past few decades, making fun of California has been a favorite pastime of conservatives and, for that matter, just about everybody. We're either the Libertine State (Ganja! Gays!), the Nanny State (Eat your fruit before you get your Happy Meal toy!), or a redoubt of ecofascism. (AB 32: the horror!) But more than anything, we're just perpetually broke—the governmental equivalent of Annie Liebovitz or Mike Tyson. And regarding that Ann Coulter actually speaks the truth. Well, except for the part about blaming government by Democrats.
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Anyone passingly familiar with the nation's most populous state knows that our budget woes trace back to Proposition 13, a ballot initiative that cut and capped property taxes and required a two-thirds vote to pass any future tax increases. This, in turn, kicked off a nationwide tax revolt that ended up installing former California Gov. Ronald Reagan in the White House. Since then, California has trended more Democratic than the rest of the country, but that hasn't mattered: A minority of Republicans in the state legislature have held up all efforts to patch the gaping revenue hole left by Prop. 13—and more recently the foreclosure crisis and recession. As Kevin Drum noted yesterday, in 2007 California spent $3,100 per resident out of its general fund. Today that's down to $2,400.

MoJo usually does more in-depth research than this. They should know it was more than about Prop 13. Prop 30 is a great law but we've got problems in California that are larger than California. People slam California's finances without good reason. If we're at fault for anything it's electing Arnold Schwarzenegger. We had little control over the offshore tax havens, housing speculators and Enron, all of which were the real causes of our debt.