I know many of you disagreed with what I wrote in the “California’s Dreaming” post, but I think the larger point — that California voters created the mess that is the California government themselves, and they have to be the ones to straighten it out — still stands. And it’s clear that the first priority has got to be rescinding Proposition 13.

Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a good analysis of How Proposition 13 Screwed Up California. Californians may have felt their property taxes were out of control before, but the solutions they created through Porposition 13 have had a number of unintended — although not unpredictable — consequences that have created worse problems.

And you must read “The Ungovernable State” in The Economist. No other state has taken “direct democracy” through initiative and referendum as far as California has. Other states that allow I & R have limits on the system, including allowing legislators to modify or even override referenda the voters have passed. But not California. Through “direct democracy,” California has tied itself into knots. It may need to completely overhaul its constitution before anything can get done.

At the Washington Post, New Gingrich celebrates California’s recent election results as a “repudiation of the California establishment” and “a harbinger of things to come.”

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.

But the “greedy interests” mostly do their work though manipulation of the I&R system, and California’s main problem is not that government is “too big,” but that it is too hamstrung. “The states with huge government machines have basically moved beyond the control of the people,” Gingrich writes. But one can argue the government of California is controlled — well, jerked around by — voters more than that of any other state. That’s the problem.

Gingrich is, as usual, a font of not-even-half-baked ideas that add up to less than nothing. As Harold Meyerson says today, Gingrich’s “biggest idea was to close down the federal government to force Bill Clinton to slash Medicare payments.”

But getting back to California — the state has to change its way of governing itself. There’s no getting around that. Will Californians do this?