Governor Moonbeam Hoisted on his own Petard

Jerry Brown promised to send all tax increases to referendum, in keeping with California's culture of direct democracy. But it's California's culture of direct democracy that  produced Prop 13, which requires all tax increases and budgets to have two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature, which allows the permanent Republican minority (in a fit of extraordinary anti-tax fanaticism) to block putting an extension of already existing taxes to a referendum.

The part of Prop 13 that everyone associates with it is the property tax cap, but the more important part is the supermajority requirements. That's what helps make California ungovernable. Warren Buffett, while he was an advisor to Arnold Schwarzeneggar during his first run for governor, got blasted for suggesting throwing out the property tax cap (he said it "makes no sense"). Maybe the thing to do is keep the stupid property tax cap, no matter how little sense it makes, and restore majoritarianism to the California budget so that a permanent minority only interest in winning primary elections can't gum up the works constantly. Add in the abolition of the initiative process (with all initiatives in the past repealable by the legislature) and add in effective anti-gerrymandering laws and California (the legislative membership is incredibly static; not a single State Senate seat has changed parties in nearly a decade) might become a functional state again.