California's Tax Woes

California has been known as the Golden State since the 1800s; however, it turns out that sometime during the last few decades the special interest groups supporting thinly-veiled propositions and our legislators have substituted cheap gold plate for the gold.

While our partisan legislators cannot get out of each other's way enough to come up with an acceptable budget, the state runs out of cash every year now. Why? Because the state's system of collecting taxes is too dependent on income tax collections, which can fluctuate wildly depending on the state's now boom-or-bust economy.

The answer to this problem is a constitutional convention to completely redo the state's financial architecture to create an equitable system that provides cash flow to the state throughout the year. A secure cash flow means California does not have to borrow money each year while it waits for income tax revenues, which may or may not arrive depending on how the state's taxpayers are doing economically.

We as Californians deserve better, so in order to support this new constitution we also need to eliminate term limits, which have only served to create a revolving door of leadership at the state level, and eliminate gerrymandered districts that only guarantee one party or the other will control that district until the district's boundaries are redrawn. Good leaders should be able to serve as long as their voters choose to send them to Sacramento and bad legislators should be voted out by a fair mix of voters.

Speaking of voters, why is voting not mandatory? If everyone is required to vote, then nobody can complain they didn't have anything to do with who got elected. Even if "None of the Above" is a choice on all ballots, everyone should be required to make a choice. Why are we letting a smaller and smaller minority of our population decide what happens to all of us?