[vbmoneyspender]

California having gone into the toilet has nothing to do with the initiative process. If anything, the initiative process held off the statists for a generation - think Proposition 13 which Ronald Reagan supported, with his support subsequently convincing many voters to support him for President.

What has caused California to go into the toilet are the leftists. When attempting to take over a place, they first attempt to drive out as many productive members of society as possible. Their purpose is to reach a tipping point where the parasites outnumber those who are self-reliant. In California, during the late 90s and afterward, literally millions of conservative voters emigrated to more business friendly locales such as Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Texas. That left the leaches who have turned the formerly red California state into a deep blue state.

The same tactics the leftists used to turn California into a deep blue state, they are now attempting to use to turn the United States into a deep blue nation. So if we want to stop them, we should be clear on what has led to their rise - and trust me - it ain't the initiative process.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I beg to differ. I used to be a staunch supporter of Prop. 13, but I have come to realize that it has been more a curse than a blessing.

Before Prop. 13 each city could set its own property tax rates like in almost every other state. This allowed some cities to be more or less attractive than others. Republicans could run efficient governments and have low property taxes. Democrats would run inefficient overly "compassionate" governments with high property taxes.

People could then vote with their feet and move out of the high tax cities to the low tax cities. If the people who moved to the Republican run cities wanted to continue to have low taxes they would have to register and vote Republican. The mayors of these cities would become natural candidates for statewide office.

With Prop. 13 all this went away. We could all have our cake and eat it too. Every city was "Republican" taxwise, and so the only things of importance that people could vote on were more goodies from the inexhaustible government trough. One-by-one the cities and counties turned Democrat. One-by-one potential sources of statewide Republican officeholders went Democrat.

Now the state is run by Democrats. Now they have voted to take some local money for themselves and have voted to send some state money to cities they like. Now if you are a citizen of a particular city or county and want your roads fixed you pretty much have to vote for the Democrat to get any chance of having it done.

It would have been better in the long run if most decisions were made locally. With Prop 13 the decisions and the money moved to the state where the Democrats reign supreme.

Even the 2/3rd majority for raising taxes clause in Prop 13 turned out bad. For years Democrats could allow just enough Republicans to win office to prevent taxes from going up and getting blamed for it. Meanwhile they could vote for more and more goodies knowing that eventually they could get the funding they needed through the initiative process without getting the blame.

It's become a complete racket that we now have less ability to control because all important decision are now made at the state level.