Proposition 13 requires a 2/3 majority vote to eliminate programs and cut spending in those left?

A large contributor to Proposition 13 was the sentiment that older Californians should not be priced out of their homes through high taxes.[3] The proposition has been called the “third rail” (meaning “untouchable subject”) of California politics and it is not politically popular for Sacramento lawmakers to attempt to change it.[3]

You beat me to the point I was going to make in reply to flit. I would only add that, in addition to the fact that our infrastructure problems are very real (approx 90% of all tunnels, bridges, sewer & water systems and dams east of the Mississippi were built between 1890 & 1920 and are rapidly approaching bloc obsolesce)
spending on such projects induces a far more powerful multiplyer effect than spending on teachers for reasons which are intuitively obvious to most save flit. The demand for the sort of costly industrial goods and services and the high-paying jobs that go to produce/procure them are far more powerful than the multiplyer effect HS teachers have when they buy groceries and clothes and the occasional new car.

Yep, the two-days-ago Republican candidate in the contest, who is pro-choice, pro-public option and very liberal, has endoresed her previous adversary, the Democrat nominee for the House seat.

It turns out she is truer to her political ideals than to those who would have her occupy a seat in Congress just two days ago. Politics does make strange bed-fellows… and loyalties.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/01/politics/main5486589.shtml .