California’s dysfunctional politics  Help on the way  Out west,
a different supercommittee might yet do rather well  See article
Readers' comments    California is a mess of epic proportions. I
lived in California during the young years of my life, and after
moving across the country to Virginia I realized how much better
the school systems were and how truly terrible California's was.
It just doesn't make sense to me how such a big state can
struggle so greatly financially. Someone needs to step up and
act, whether it be one person or an entire committee. It's not
fair that young children should suffer through their education
because of a terrible governing body.   The author wrote: "The
Think Long Committee wants to fix this by extending sales taxes
to services, and simplifying and cutting income-tax rates. This
would be “only very slightly more regressive”, says Nathan
Gardels, an adviser to the group, because the poor would get a
sales-tax rebate and rich people tend to spend more on services
(on account