In other news, tomorrow marks the culmination of my four years of college (aside from my May 23 graduation, of course): my final day of classes (all two of them ;-) and the due date for my thesis, which I plan on fine-tuning throughout the night and into the final minutes before the deadline. I always work best under pressure.

Have a great week, and wish me luck as I complete the final mission of my undergraduate years.

-Gabe

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Former Gov. Brown and former Lt. Gov. Curb hailed from different political parties, and their divide over policy and ideology carried little surprise, such as when Curb tried to appoint judges while Brown was out of the state campaigning fruitlessly for president.

But Democrats Davis and Bustamante are from the same party, and therein lies the rub: Any fight between the two will cost one of them votes. There's no question who that loser is going to be -- Gray Davis.

Two key constituencies that carried Davis to victory last year in his campaign for governor were organized labor and the Latinos. Latinos, angered at the immigration politics of Pete Wilson, flocked in droves to Davis, who repeatedly promised an end to so-called "wedge-issue politics."

But at Davis' first opportunity to display his support for the Latinos' core issue, he waffled. Facing a chance to derail the voter-approved Proposition 187, he asked instead for mediation from a federal appeals court on the controversial initiative, which banned most social services to illegal immigrants, including some to which they were hitherto entitled.

The move deeply angered Bustamante, normally a cautious and low-key politician, who felt that Davis had sold out the Latino community. And Bustamante said so publicly, and has even gone to court on his own to thwart Proposition 187.

The most rapidly expanding population group in California is Latino. In the last election, they comprised about 13 percent of the vote; in the next, they are all but certain to vote in larger numbers. This is a constituency Davis cannot afford to antagonize, but he's done exactly that with his handling of the appeal of Proposition 187, which has been largely blocked by the courts.

If Latino Democrats have to choose between Davis and Bustamante, there is little doubt they will go with Bustamante. Such a shift could only work to Davis' detriment and weaken Democrats in 2002 when Davis seeks re-election.

Thus far, California's Hispanic voters have not had a statewide champion.

But Bustamante is quickly filling that vacuum. And his position also has raised questions about other Latino politicians in the Legislature, including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa who, however tepidly, came to Davis' support.

Villaraigosa would like to be mayor of Los Angeles, the home turf of the state's Latino community. How will his handling of the Davis-Proposition 187 issue play in his presumptive mayoral bid? Probably not very well, as other potential rivals -- Supervisor Gloria Molina immediately comes to mind -- will surely point out as they take Villaraigosa to task for not assuming a more definitive stand.

What started as an insignificant split between the state's governor and lieutenant governor is steadily snowballing into a major political divide.

And in that divide, Bustamante is quickly becoming the state's most influential politician, perhaps even more so than the Assembly speaker, who until the onset of term limits was regarded as California's second-most powerful state politician.

Your recent editorial on Proposition 13 was the best analysis of its true effect I've seen. Just to add to our misery, the voters, after being denied bank loans for months in California that same year, voted also for Proposition 10.

What was Proposition 10? It brought an end to the 10 percent usury laws of California so the lenders could charge higher interest rates. Money dried up because lenders could get more return in non-usury states, and desperate Californians took the bait.

I was a real estate syndicator at the time and used to figure a large apartment house for 19 percent of the operating income to taxes, five percent to vacancy and 20 percent to operations. The balance went to debt service and a five to seven percent net cash flow. Thousands of four-plexes were built then for retirees to take their home equity and buy a property with an owners unit up front and the 3 in back supporting the debt service.

After 10-13, taxes went to nine percent, expenses stayed the same, but interest/debt service went to 60 percent on large apartments and the self-supporting four-plex went to $1,000/month upside down if the owner didn't live in the front unit. Of course the effects of lower tax revenues were well explained in the 4/26 edition [of Capitol Action Weekly: http://www.capenq.com/newsletter/archives/1999/april99/0242.html].

Today, the moneychangers have learned to keep commercial and home loan rates down to keep the economy alive and get it back through horrendous credit card interest and check-cashing schemes. What a country!   Jerry Todd Bakersfield, Calif.

To the Editor,

A problem with your analysis [in the 4/26 edition of Capitol Action Weekly] is that you forgot to mention one of the primary motives behind the initiative. That is, to protect older folks who were being taxed out of their homes. During that period, real estate inflation was pushing up assessed values so fast people of fixed or slowly escalating incomes were being forced to sell out.

Local government could have dealt with the situation by lowering tax rates so the impact of increased assessments wasn't so Draconian. However, they continued to take all tax money they could and do everything everyone wanted. A lot of us said enough is enough!

The concept of differential tax rates was and is based upon the concept that a person knows what his/her tax rate will be when he/she buys and they will never, in the future, have to worry about it getting out of hand.

The concept of "property tax" was initially a form of income tax when most people farmed, but that is long gone. Property tax is obsolete and should no longer be used for general government services; it should be used only for property-related activities.

Respectfully, Ronald R. Lowry

P.S. I love reading your weekly observations. Keep up the good work.

To the Editor,

Can you imagine what our property taxes would be like now if Prop. 13 never passed? I shudder to think. I'm tired of hearing all the whining about a proposition that passed 21 years ago -- let it go. If politicians were truly concerned about the counties, roads, education, etc., they could have spent a lot more valuable time working on worthy solutions instead of playing their power party politics.

How many bonds have the people passed in the last 10 years in favor of education and where does that money go? If politicians and upper management spent as much time working toward viable solutions to problems than they do trying to stab each other in the back for another chunk of more power, then we might not have the problems that some folks want to blame on a 21-year-old proposition. The only free lunch sits on the tables of the people in power at the Capitol.

The rest of us feed them.

Scott Vice

To the Editor,

I have found your editorial musings to be insightful and well-reasoned. Your latest (4/26) meets that standard. I do have a difference in basic perspective, which usually stays unresolved by any (ir)rational discourse.

I have no disagreement with the objective facts related in the current editorial; the difference is in the perspective. As I interpret it, you believe that the more government does for the people, the better. As a card-carrying Libertarian, I believe that the less government does to the people, the better. And those perspectives translate directly into attitudes about taxes: The more government does for (to) the people, the more it must extort from somebody. I say "extort" because, for any given program, the section of population that pays the most has little overlap with the section that receives the benefits. To put it more simply, the main function of government as it now exists is the redistribution of wealth.

I agree with your apparent opinion that the resulting shift of power to Sacramento was a bad thing, but I blame the local politicians for that. Rather than reform operations to live within the reduced inflow, they chose to feed off the "obscene surplus" dangled from Sacramento. And when that source dried up, they found themselves "dependent creatures of the state." Now they have the worst of both worlds: Reduced revenue and (mostly) unfunded mandates from the state.

Voters could do something about the centralized power if they really wanted to. Our Assembly members and Senators are elected locally, and in theory represent their local areas. If they injure the local interests by legislating more state control, they should be replaced.

Since the passage of Proposition 13, my wife and I have purchased three homes (and one between the rollback date and the passage). In each case, I have been thankful that the base rate was limited to one percent of the purchase price and that future increases, as long as we owned the home, were limited to two percent annually. And I am quite happy for those people fortunate enough to remain in the same home for the past 21-plus years.

I agree there's no such thing as a free lunch. It's too bad that so many people feeding at the public trough [seem to think otherwise].

Lou Jones San Diego, Calif.

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