By Dan Walters

The Sacramento Bee

It's an article of faith – indeed, blind faith – among those on California's political left that the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 began the state's downward spiral.

Before voters limited property taxes, they say, California was a paradise of well-financed public services, but since then has evolved into something like Mississippi, in which a tiny, selfish overclass oppresses a burgeoning, mostly nonwhite underclass.

Indeed, one leftish critic titled his book, "Paradise Lost."

The anti-Proposition 13 propaganda always becomes louder when the economy is in recession…The problem with the anti-Proposition 13 hypothesis, however, is that financial facts don't support it…

Read the entire article here.