Firefighters and police are doing just fine in California. Indeed, public employee compensation is driving the CalPERs fiasco which is even more dangerous to the state than Prop 13 ever was.

The ugliest thing about the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Foundation's campaign was that it was almost entirely based upon the idea that old people shouldn't be priced out of their own home because of rising taxes.

Now it has made a lot of very rich people even richer (not to mention driven elderly renters out of their homes) as well as caused a budgetary crisis in California.

Jon Coupon's (current president) response to this budgetary crisis that they helped caused is to argue that California state pensions add up to too much of an unfunded liability and should be slashed.

Yeah, I've read a handful of conservatives who proclaim that the one thing that makes America great is a 'strong institution of property rights'. What I can't tell is whether they really believe it, or are advancing their own interests.