In doing my homework on the slate of state propositions for the May 19 special election, I am starting to feel like repealing Proposition 13‘s two-thirds restriction on the legislature for tax increases would be a good idea. It’s not because I think taxes should be greatly increased to get our state out of its fiscal woes, and I want to remove all impediments to doing that. It would take something stronger than waterboarding to get me to suppress my anti-tax reflex.
The reason I want to allow the legislature to raise our taxes by itself is because when revenue-raising ballot initiatives fail, the politicians blame it on us voters. Darrell Steinberg warns us that deep spending cuts will be needed if the ballot measures don’t pass. Arnold’s talking about legalizing pot so he can tax it, which he doesn’t think is right but he’ll do it anyway, if other people think it would be good. (I get the feeling his brain does not suffer the same condition as his other muscles, that one.)
The question of the ballot measures failing next week is pretty much not an “if” but a “when” now. If the polling numbers pan out in the election results, the only measure that will pass is 1F, which will restrict the legislators’ raises in a deficit year. If I was a legislator looking at those numbers, the last thing I would want is the power to create new taxes in the Capitol. The last thing I would want is to have nobody to blame for cutting $16 billion from the budget when people come calling favors. The last thing I would want would be to sink or swim on my ideas for fixing our state’s economy. (I mean that sarcastically, but also literally–I would hate this job!)
The initiatives process and Prop 13 may have saved us from a few taxes, but I think it also provides an unfair level of job security to the legislators since they don’t have to do much of the hard decision making themselves. They can feed us voters a smorgasbord of chopped up initiatives for their approval instead of learning how to fix a meal that everyone will like. They have the comfort of being able to blame us for all of our state’s woes when we vote down new financial burdens on ourselves. “You see these cuts? I didn’t like having to do this. You made me do this.”
Because even if all the measures pass, most analysts point out there will be no lasting budget reform. Everything has a loophole. Hilariously, despite Senator Steinberg’s belief that we voters have the power to stop the budget from ballooning, several of these initiatives actually borrow money we voters had already earmarked for other causes…through ballot initiatives. Even the spending cap provided by Prop 1A can be overridden by the governor.
So why not insist the legislators do the job of finding ways to increase revenue and cut spending–and that they put their own names on the line on voting day instead of a random mess of inconsequential ballot measures?
The Sac Rag 
Why not insist the legislators do the job of finding ways to increase revenue and cut spending–and that they put their own names on the line on voting day instead of a random mess of inconsequential ballot measures?
Because it won’t matter one bit in the end with the current spending/favoritism system in place. I say the State should institute draconian criminal penalties for graft/bribery, including new laws (bans) re: post Legislative-branch service employment for 10 years on all entities having ANY contact with legislators while they are in office. Start enforcing the new laws, and the laws already on the books. Eliminate all “lobbying” at the State level, including “education” and “fire fighters” and “nurses” unions. Clean up the corruption and waste in the current system. THEN come back to ask for more money.
“Effective resistance to usurpers is possible only provided the citizens understand their rights and are disposed to defend them”
Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers #28
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Prop 13 fundamentally changed the way property taxes were allocated for (atleast in part) school funding. Before Prop 13, local property taxes were collected and allocated locally to public schools. Prop 13 comes along and funnels local property taxes through state coffers and then allocates them to public schools. I’m thinking this was a bad idea. Perhaps the bad idea continues with Props asking voters to control the budget process by mandate, instead of voters holding legislater’s feet to the fire making them do the job they promised to do in the first place.
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Welcome to the anti-Prop 13 party. I’ve been saying it’s a bad law for a long time.
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Prop 13 has a long history of hurting local government ever since it was put into play in the ’70s. Unfortunately, it’s the proverbial sacred cow/hot potato/sacred potato/hot cow/(mini sirloin burger?) that nobody dares to touch.
This is why our schools and infrastructure are among the worst in the nation, AND it’s why our mortgage company was so confused with calculating our impound account when we bought our 1940s house from the original owner. Mortgage folks in Ohio simply didn’t understand the magic that is Prop 13, and how our property taxes are thousands of dollars more than the previous owner’s taxes.
It’s a similar issue with the vehicle license fee, which was only supposed to be a TEMPORARY lowering of this fee when we had cash up the @$$ from the dot-com boom. It wasn’t supposed to be anything permanent; however, it took much political wrangling to overturn (effective May 19).
These are just two elements that have contributed to the oft mentioned structural deficit.
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All fees are permanent. The Golden Gate Bridge tolls were originally only to pay for actual construction, and that was paid decades ago. There are no “temporary” taxes/fees with government.
The only way to change this situation is to remove “special interests,” including lobbying activities, campaign contributions, and special favors, from the political equation. Thats right- no more million dollar campaigns- cap em all at $25,000 for a couple of ads, and then televise any debates (WTF are we paying local access cable fees for?). No commercial propeganda/ads by anyone other than the candidate- either FOR OR AGAINST. ALL contracts need to be announced and bid upon publicly. No state/county/city official should be able to work with ANY benificiary of any govt contracts for at least 5, maybe 10, years. And once a ballot measure has been voted on, no more ballot measures about that issue for 10 years.
You’d be shocked at how things would be run if politicians actually respected and answered to the public voters, rather than special interests (corporations, unions, etc.) with money.
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Turty: I agree with your assessment that special interests can corrupt, but portions of your plan would run into a “technicality” called the Bill of Rights. If you think a politician is corrupt, you could get some sugar momma to fund a series of ads urging people to vote the bum out.
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I’ll take you one further: There are no such thing as “special interests”, just people with “interests” that get together in groups to influence legislation or regulations. If we agree with the stance that a group takes, we call them “advocacy groups” and support them; if we disagree, we call them “special interests” and act like they are dangerous to democracy.
Democracy is based upon people getting together in groups to try and influence government.
If you don’t like “special interests”, then follow the money. Find out what groups you don’t like and don’t fund them, or direct your money towards groups that you consider to be an “advocacy group”.
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Ah- so my vote only matters if I vote like everyone else?
And I should not have to “direct my money” to anyone- my elected official (supposedly representing ME) shouldn’t be listening to non-voting entities like the “Teacher’s Union.” That’s because the Teacher’s Union doesn’t get to vote. If teachers think a person is doing a good/bad job, they can vote accordingly. But to allow them to gang up, and use that collective power/money to cram individual bills down our throats (notice- not electing anyone, but getting BILLS [which I don’t get to vote on] passed) is not even close to what the framers for the Constitution contemplated.
And there is no Bill of Rights issue: the Bill of Rights contemplates individual freedoms- not the “freedom” of a non-voting entity to manipulate elected officials into doing their will. And now that “elections” have become mutil BILLION dollar machines, the individual voter’s ability to either run or have any pull, compared to PACs, corporate lobbys, etc. is non-existant.
Maybe we should question why we even need the legislature in the first place. 100 years ago, yeah- the whole state can’t come together at the same time and cast votes on issues throughout the year. But now- maybe the last Friday of every month could be Vote Your State night- 4 hours of voting on the issues of the month by all taxpayers, via the ‘net. No longer need the legislature for anything. Lobbyists can pay for all the ad time they want, but can’t focus on any one person (ie; get favors), and will have much less sway. Instant decision. The individual vote matters more, and the people will be more interested in the process (plus, since I limited it to taxpayers, the people paying for the issues will actually have an interest in the cost, as opposed to letting every idiot over 18 cast a vote).
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If you are not happy, then you have every right to form your own organization, raise money, and lobby for the changes you want.
And, your vote counts EXACTLY as much as everyone else. One warm body = one vote.
PACs are made of people, exactly like you. Unions are made of people exactly like you. These groups are not made of devil horn wearing millionaires shoving money into the pockets of elected officials. They are your neighbor, the cop down the street and the teacher around the corner.
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Common Cause is a nonprofit, nonpartisan citizen’s lobbying organization promoting open, honest and accountable government.
California Forward is a similar and newer organization that is focusing on California-specific solutions.
Both are interested in reforming our political system to make politicians more responsive to voters and reducing the influence of “big-money politics”.
Do either of those organizations interest you?
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The right to petition the government is much more effectively exercised in a group, partly because a group can pool resources and concentrate its efforts on effective representation. That’s an important function in a republic, one that has been working since our country’s inception. It’s such a cop out to pretend there is something intrinsically evil about lobbying groups. As for the Bill of Rights it certainly doesn’t prohibit this method of exercising freedom.
Maybe I’m speaking out of turn here but TS are you one of those crazy pro per plaintiffs that files handwritten briefs in federal court claiming there’s no such thing as income tax and that sort of thing? I have a special place in my heart for those guys, for real.
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I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to have to cut TS some slack here. Clearly there is a possibility for conflict of interest when members of Congress and lobbyists come from the same pool of people. Also, PACs plainly are not synomyous with a random assortment of voters–the cop and the schoolteacher down the street. A PAC is not really a group of people anyway. We romanticize about a bunch of folks gatherin’ at the high school gymnasium and organizin’ their own committee, but I don’t think that’s what TS is talking about. Obviously we can’t outlaw lobbying. I think we can agree that the truth is somewhere between TS’s scenario and one in which there are no restrictions on campaign finance. And I think we can all agree that it’s all about the Benjamins.
TS, I thought we were already doing that direct democracy thing, because I know I voted for Anoop Dogg like seventeen times.
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The problem is that while folks like Turty get very upset when groups of folks like teachers or workers collect money and spend it to tell the government to do things, but when groups of folks like bankers and corporations do the same thing. When it’s an opinion he supports it’s sound political advice–when it’s an opinion he doesn’t support, it’s “manipulation.”
Prop. 13 was sold as a way for little old ladies to not be taxed out of their homes, but it applied to everyone. Promote a new Prop. 13 that just says “Prop. 13 only applies to senior citizens’ property taxes” and you cover the original intent and suddenly California can pass budgets again.
Prop. 13 didn’t solve our budget problems, it created them–but watch the real “special interests” scream about how wonderful Prop. 13 is if someone tried to repeal it.
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You don’t reward the failures of our elected leaders by handing them more tax revenue to mis-appropriate. If we agree that decision making is broken in Sacramento, more money doesnt fix the fundamental issue.
Thats like the couple that has a baby to help out their failing marriage!
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Big business loves Prop 13. Why?
Prop 13 froze property taxes at 1% of the property value, with a maximum annual increase of 2%. This rate is frozen unless the property is sold.
Houses are bought and sold regularly, so very few people are still paying their original rate from the 1970’s.
Guess who does not buy and sell property regularly? Large businesses. In 2009, senior citizens are not the people who have had their tax rates kept artificially low for the last 40 years. Hell, most of the people whom this law was intended to protect are dead.
Multi-national corporations never die. If they never sell the property, they never have to pay the same tax rates that newer businesses do.
Disneyland, oil refineries, Dodger Stadium, and mega-wineries (like Gallo) will never have their property re-assessed because their property never gets sold. They are paying a fraction of the property tax that they legitimately should owe based upon the 2009 value of their property.
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“You don’t reward the failures of our elected leaders by handing them more tax revenue to mis-appropriate. If we agree that decision making is broken in Sacramento, more money doesnt fix the fundamental issue.”
But what if the failures occurred because they were given far more difficult hurdles to accomplish (the two-thirds majority requirement to pass a budget) and far fewer tools with which to accomplish them (reduced state tax revenue)? Obviously, Prop. 13 failed to prevent the growth of California’s budget–so why reward the failure of a state proposition to achieve its stated objectives by leaving it in place?
It is pretty clear that Proposition 13 was the cause of the problem–so doing away with it, at least in part, presents itself as a possible solution.
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Let me clarify — I only want the two-thirds majority requirements repealed. I would prefer the property tax limitations stay in place.
wburg- I think it’s unfair to blame Prop 13 for causing increased spending. This is where I part ways with the Blame Prop 13 crowd, and why I came to this conclusion a different way. You can’t blame increased spending on people who want to cut taxes. If you’re a regular person, spending more when you’re making less is called irresponsible. If you want to blame tax cutters for *decreased* spending, that makes sense.
However, your statement that Prop 13 failed to prevent budget nonsense is true. But I think it’s true for the reasons I outlined–the disconnect it created between the budget crafters and the people who fund the budgets. Not because it may have led to lower revenues for the state. In fact, increased tax rates have been known to lead to lower tax revenue because people don’t do the things that incur the increased taxes, like maintaining residence or open and run businesses. And by “known to,” I mean that I totally Googled the heck out of that so I’m sure it’s 100% true. 🙂
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cooldmz: I don’t blame Prop. 13 for increased spending, but if its purpose was to prevent increased spending it hasn’t done a very good job. Its purpose wasn’t to increase spending, it was to lower taxes for businesses under the guise of lowering taxes for senior citizens.
And yes, you can blame increased spending on people who want to cut taxes. Decreased taxes don’t necessarily result in reduced spending–look at the federal budget and deficit for 2001-2008, for instance. If they cut taxes but also increase spending, they’re not just irresponsible, they’re dumb. Remember, the options provided by our leaders are either “tax and spend” or “borrow and spend.” While there are problems with “tax and spend,” at least it doesn’t leave you with a debt load.
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Tax and spend sorta removes the incentive to work or start a business though. Isn’t the point of a democratic capitalist society to encourage economic growth? You stiffle that just a smidge with higher taxes. While the lower end of the economic spectrum doesn’t mind (they don’t pay taxes and suck up most of the “budgeted social resources”), those who own a home, don’t rely on “the government” for their economic needs, and work every day are the ones who pay the price. The problem is NOT income (don’t our schools get the second highest amount per student in the nation?). It’s government spending. Period.
This discussion is pointless without an acknowledgment that govt spending in certain sectors is unsustainable at the current level. The fact that those sectors do not give back into the economy makes the problem worse:
Prision spending- pointless
Education spending- good, but not when the money goes to administration and teaching classes in Spanish, so the kids can purportedly learn English to function in society (and the Spanish/English efforts last the entire lenght of the kids’ educational experience)
Insert your own opinions aboiut sector spending…
But the point is that the Prision Guards’ Union, the Teachers’ Union, etc., have gained enough power to prohibit the meaningful changes that are needed to become more efficient, and do more with the same budget. Try to pass a law mandating connecting teacher pay to their performance? WHOA NELLY!
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Lots of businesses rely on “the government” for their economic needs. If there were no taxpayer-funded roads, car dealerships wouldn’t sell many cars. There are many examples of government spending that encourage business–namely, the kind of projects that are uninteresting or unfeasible for private industry, but once they are done, make private projects far more practical. Examples include transportation infrastructure, irrigation/water projects, land reclamation projects, electrical infrastructure, fire protection, etcetera.
Education gets mighty inefficient because there are so many different funding streams it becomes a bureaucratic nightmare to untangle them all. The problem is, simply cutting their budget doesn’t solve the problem, it just ensures that the bureaucracy guards their share more closely while the students get less. Simplifying the funding streams is a more complex problem than just cutting the budget through a “drowning the baby” strategy, but it would end up providing more funds for actual things like textbooks and classroom facilities and teacher salaries.
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wburg – I am in total agreement with you about what we’re actually experiencing, the sad options of “borrow and spend” or “tax and spend.” I was talking more theoretically–it should be possible to lower taxes on the one hand, and demand better accounting and less waste, and cut programs where possible on the other, to reduce spending. Fiscal responsibility among our elected officials seems in short supply.
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Whew! At least California’s pain will be imposed upon the rest of the Country’s taxpayers now. SUCKERS! Ya’ll can house & treat our convicted illegals* on your dime now!
* While having to pay $28.69 for each head of lettuce.
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IF 2/3 vote is removed from the budget and it goes majority, you will see california’s start revolting again once they learn how much money is being spent.
2/3 votes makes the governement streamline not tax and spend.
you like paying taxes leave california, i dont want to be paying for illiegals, homeless, drug addicts screw them. either work, leave or die.
shesh….
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Is there a petition out there yet to repeal 13? I sure would love to sign it, pass it around and do something other than talk about it!
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Jay, I have not seen anyone collecting signatures for it yet, but you can be sure that someone will be doing so soon.
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r kozar, many of your fellow conservatives that i have spoken to want to repeal the 2/3 requirement because it will force the Democrats to be accountable for their actions in the Legislature. As it stands, people are pissed at the Legislature as a whole for their inability to pass a budget, due to the Republican stalemating/tough negotiation stance/whatever you want to call it. If the vote goes back to a simple majority, the Republicans can point their fingers squarely at the Dems for any and all future budget messes and have a clean conscience, as they had nothing to do with it.
And, just to play devil’s advocate, if you don’t like paying taxes to support homeless, illegals and drug addicts, maybe you should be the one to consider leaving California? And, once again, simply for argument’s sake, what state in the union would you recommend that is free of homeless, illegals and drug addicts, and why haven’t you moved there yet? There must be something keeping you here. I am guessing that you are like the rest of us who, despite the problems that our state faces, thinks that this is the best damn place on Earth to call home and could not imagine leaving.
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If Prop 13 had not passed, I would have been on the street. It can still happen if my property taxes rise to market rate. No way I could pay them. What would I do? Where would I go?
I am past feeling anger at the ignorant people who call low-income retirees “rich geezers”. They don’t know what they are talking about. I exist on the bare edge, with pension and Soc Sec barely enough to pay my various insurances and payments on loans I have to take out to keep afloat. And I am an old-fashioned, frugal person who does not splurge on the toys that the critics of Prop 13 treat themselves to.
If the 2/3 majority requirement to raise taxes could be repealed without putting me out on the street, that would be fine. I actually did not realize that element was in Prop 13; I was so terrified at the time of losing my home. We all know that Prop 13 largely benefitted business, but we “rich geezers” NOT !!! had to vote for it or be on the street.
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Fredonia, you are exactly right. Prop 13 was completely necessary at the time to prevent people from losing their houses due to skyrocketing property taxes. It did not pass because the voters were stupid or duped by slick marketing, the need at the time for property tax protection was very real, most particularly for people on fixed incomes, like the retired.
The problem is that, today, there are many unforeseen consequences from this policy, which is the reason why reform is needed to update the laws, not to do away with it altogether. People with fixed incomes still need property tax protections, especially today, when disposable incomes are dropping and property values are crashing. Our entire tax system in California needs to be overhauled in order to make it as fair and progressive as possible. So, please, when people talk about repealing Prop 13, make sure to read the fine print. If it is done correctly, it should not screw over the people that it was originally intended to protect.
On the other hand, I need to deliver some bad news. Looking at the larger picture, there are people in California who have had their tax rates practically frozen for 30 years. Two families on the same street who are neighbors might have exactly identical houses, but they may pay dramatically different tax rates. Is it fair for a 70 year old who has owned a house for 40 years to pay 20% of the property taxes that a 30 year old who has owned the identical house for 2 years? No, it is not fair, even though the 70 year old is on a fixed income. These are the difficult decisions that need to be worked out in this process.
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Fredonia – I am only interested in repealing the 2/3 budget/revenue requirement, not the property tax cap. But as a headline, that didn’t have much of a ring to it!
I’m not sure it is unfair to tax an asset at the value it is bought at rather than reassessing the value every year. If you really own the same house for 40 years should you really be assessed at the current value of the house? I don’t know enough about this to know if it is done that way in other states where property values have not been so up and down. It is probably impossible to change it here at this point, as it would screw millions of people.
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I, too, would be homeless if they reassessed us every year. But the property tax cap also protects commercial/rental property. I would have no problem with taxing it at a higher rate that reflected fair rental value, so long as homeowners were protected. I think I would be okay with repealing all the rest of prop 13.
I’m just barely old enough to remember when California got all the benefits of being a ‘high-tax’ state: top-notch schools, including virtually free college for everyone, good roads, you name it. Even when I was in college, well after that time, I paid $100 a semester in fees (until my last year, when they tripled them). No college loans needed. Only the poorest students got aid, and that was mainly for housing and books. (What does it cost to attend CSU now? I don’t know, but it went into four digits quite a few years ago.)
Sales taxes are regressive, but are the only local tax communities are permitted to impose…perhaps something needs to be done about that, too.
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Fredonia people like you are half the problem. You can not afford to pay your way and instead require others to pay your share of taxes. Without the subsidy/shelter/crutch of prop 13 you would not be able to afford your current living status. That’s right you are living beyond your means.
If you can not afford to live in California then you should move somewhere less expensive. Don’t like it? Wahhh TFB! Everyone needs to pay their way!
I’m sick of the inequality rooted in legislation. As many other hard working, hard saving, sweating and struggling individuals here in California are.
The other half of the problem is that we (CA) buy into stupid legislation (with the best of intentions) to assist others so that they benefit from living way beyond their means at our expense.
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Chris Reed from the San Diego Union-Tribune :
According to the newsrooms and editorial boards of the L.A. Times and the Sacramento Bee — heck, even according to the Bee’s cartoonist — Proposition 13 is the devil. The 1978 voter initiative limiting increases in property taxes has so reduced revenue that it has hollowed out vitally needed public services and played a key role in the state’s descent into utter dysfunction, blah blah blah blah.
The Times and the Bee folks aren’t just saying this as yet another rhetorical salvo in their never-ending push for higher taxes, right? Surely they have hard proof on their side, right?
Wrong. Dead wrong. Utterly wrong. Mind-bendingly wrong. So wrong as to be downright mendacious.
Remember, Prop. 13 is not a hard cap of property taxes. Levies are adjusted to current market value when property changes hands. And that happens all the time.
According to the latest info from the Board of Equalization — look at it here — total property taxes collected in 2006-07 were $43.16 billion.
The oldest property tax stats I could find were for 1980-81, from caltax.org. That year, property tax revenue was $6.36 billion.
So since shortly after Prop. 13’s adoption, property tax revenue increased by 579 percent. That is not a typo. It went up 579 percent.
During the same span, population went from 24 million to 38 milion — an increase of 58 percent.
As for inflation, as of January 1981, the rough midpoint of the 1980-81 fiscal year, the Consumer Price Index — which gauges inflation — was 88. As of January 2007, it was 202.4. That is a 133 percent increase.
So property tax revenue has increased by more than triple the combined rate of inflation and population growth — 579 percent versus 191 percent.
Oh, yeah, Prop. 13 is the devil. Prop. 13 is our biggest problem — not the state’s inability to live within its means. Why? Because we say it. Who cares what the numbers show? Numbers are for nerds.
All right, let’s bring in some “context” — the favorite claim of those who dismiss plain facts is that the numbers are not being discussed in “context.” According to LAO’s wonderful searchable budget database, in 1980-1981, the total of all general and special fund revenue for the state of California was $22.1 billion. For 2006-07, it was $120.7 billion. Here is an Excel spreadsheet documenting this. That is an increase of 555 percent.
You follow? PROPERTY TAX REVENUE WENT UP FASTER THAN OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE!
If this doesn’t bury the Prop.13-is-the-devil lie, nothing will.
But it won’t. The L.A. Times and Sac Bee are committed to this narrative, come hell or high water. The former is what taxpayers face if they get their way.
Posted by Chris Reed at June 3, 2009 12:17 PM
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Those sure are some numbers, Jason. At this point I feel compelled to point out once again that my reason for wanting Prop 13 is cynical — I hope it would lead to accountability in the legislature and an end to the shell game budget process. I would in no way want to remove the cap on property tax adjustment and as I said above, I believe property taxes should be lower on a property held longer without reassessment than a property recently purchased or reassessed.
I’m still resisting changing the headline of this post to Repeal the language in Prop 13 requiring a two-thirds majority in both legislative houses for future increases in all state tax rates or amounts of revenue collected!!!
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I would like to make prop. 13 retroactive so old people could pay back for the last 30 years and ease my tax burden. I pay 3,000 per year in property taxes and my inlaws (with the same home) pay 300 per year. Let’s make things really equal and see how people like it.
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Why stop at property taxes? Why not make everybody pay the same amount of income tax as the richest person in the world?
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any person who is in favor of repealing prop 13 either doesn’t own property in the state of california or is a state payroll employee scared to death that they are going to be let go from their job or fit into both scenarios. to ftb, i do pay my fair share in taxes in this state and i have no kids in the countries worst schools here in california. if you want to really solve the “budget crisis” then someone should tell the legislators to repeal all the entitlement programs such as section 8, welfare, wic etc. do you know how much section 8 pays a recipient for a house with 4 bedrooms? $2200 a month. that is free money that comes out of all the hard working taxpayers wallet. if you all want to fix the budget then succeed from the union and then you will be able to print all the money you need to close the budget gap from now on. arnold should have thought twice before he opened his mouth on the campaign trail and made fun of overlord obama seeing as how 3 months later he would be begging him for bail out cash. whos laughing now arnold?
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jason, you effectively destroyed the entire argument to repeal prop 13, i noticed none of those previous posters had the sack to argue their insane point any further. numbers don’t lie people, take note and learn or were you all educated in a socal school too? you are my hero jason.
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jobu – Is there evidence that Prop 13 has helped keep taxes and spending low?
also please grab this for your gravatar: http://americancrow.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/jobu.jpg
I’m definitely re-titling this post…
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Why does everyone discuss Prop 13 when there is a simpler solution? 11% of our budget goes to incarcerating criminals. Some of their facilities are unfairly nicer than schools! Let’s move them all out to Death Valley and run a prison camp like Sheriff Joe Arpaio where they can eat baloney sandwitches, wear pick undies and move rocks all day..living on $.87 per day.
Next, cut off ALL services to anyone who broke our laws by entering our country illegally. This will free up schools, prisons, hospitals & welfare funds for American CITIZENS who deserve it. Send them back!!!
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I think you meant pink? Pick undies are something else. And screw cutting off services. Cut off thumbs so they are easy to ID.
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