Writer Jon Coupal reports on his address to a joint tax committee of the Utah Legislature to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of various methods of taxing real property.

       For decades, Proposition 13 has been cast as the bane of cash-strapped local government, limiting property tax revenues even as California's housing market soared.  But during the current housing slump, it is seen as a revenue stabilizer.

         Writer Doug McIntyre fumes that California's vertebrae-challenged governor has taken the energy debate into a logic cul-de-sac from which it may never return.