martinibuster - 10:34 am on Jun 30, 2011 (gmt 0)

and that's exactly what you can do about it.

Just for the record, California's budget problems are the direct result of a Republican tax revolt in 1978, called Proposition 13 [en.wikipedia.org], which cut the amount of tax revenue collected from senior citizens who held on to their property and shifted some of the burden over to new home owners. The net result was lower tax revenue. The authors of Proposition 13 were both Republicans. They meant well (and I can't blame them for trying) but the result has been catastrophic for California.

The three subsequent Republican governors dealt with the financial crisis by issuing bonds, i.e. taking out loans. Ironically, this happened on Brown's watch, at around the beginning of his second term in office. The three Republican governors that followed have been taking out loans to make ends meet and here we are in 2011, suffering because of irresponsible Republican fiscal mismanagement. Jerry Brown is the first governor to seriously tackle the budget crisis since the passage of Prop 13 (when he was governor), but he does not really have a choice. Is going into MORE debt still feasible? Not in 2011.

Nevertheless, I still feel that Governor Brown made a mistake to balance the budget on the backs of the common citizen. Even our last (Republican) governor declined to pass this law. I will vote Republican in the next election to get Jerry Brown out of office, despite the history of financial mismanagement by the three previous Republican governors and the fact that the entire blame for California's budget problems are a direct result of California Republicans.