Our symols and how we regard them.

[BellyTank]

Yep- Ike had some very wise things to say regarding the military and government- warnings which have been swept aside and wisdom walked all over in the name of money-

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[Feraud]

An article from this month's Smithsonian Magazine. Tocqueville's America. The article reminded me of this discussion in terms of observations made so many years ago by an 'outsider' and any potential relevance today. Observations of the good and bad regarding the U.S.

"Their points of departure are different, their ways diverse. Yet each seems called by a secret design of Providence some day to sway the destinies of half the globe." But his observations about war would likely cause many liberals (among others) to nod in agreement: "I predict that any warrior prince who may arise in a great democratic nation will find it easier to lead the army to conquest than to make it live in peace after victory...."

 

[HaraldTheSwede]

Did anyone miss this??? Have you read the decision? The GOVERNMENT can DECIDE to BULLDOZE you HOUSE to put up MORE PROFITABLE TAX GENERATING HOUSES OR CONDOS! Your Constitutonal Protections of PROPERTY have been diminished. Clarence Thomas dissented, and was the voice of reason.

The government has had this power in sweden for a long time. And I don't like it one bit. So far it has mainly been used to build infrastructure though.

Property owners are really persecuted over here. If you own a house you have to pay a yearly tax of 1,5% of what it's worth. The value used to calculate this tax follows the market but is set by the government, and usually not quite as high as what you might get if you sell it. Say about 75% perhaps. Still a very large sum of money to pay for many people.

 

[BellyTank]

Same kind of thing in NZ and another type in the UK. In NZ it's disguised as a local govt. utility charge, taken on property value.
In some countries there are definite benefits in not being freehold.
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[Biltmore Bob]

This from the Declaration of Independence...Pay attention to the last sentence.

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This is the 5th ammendment to the US Constitution...Pay attention to the last sentence.

Article [V.]
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

 

[jamespowers]

Thank God we have Proposition 13 protection in California. The property tax is based on the price you bought it for and can only increase 1.5 to 2% per year---no matter what happens to the real estate market. That is the way it should be to protect and make clear to a purchaser of property what they are getting into now and in the future. :kick:
The Fifth Amendment was just ruled to be unconstituional---particularly the just compensation part. They will give you the value they think is right but you will get nailed with the capital gains, moving expenses and an increase in your property tax. They say they will help with some of that but don't believe it. I have fought eminent domain for over ten years now. It stinks. :rage:

Regards to all,

J

 

[jamespowers]

Yep- Ike had some very wise things to say regarding the military and government- warnings which have been swept aside and wisdom walked all over in the name of money.

Maybe but the government--media complex is worse than that now. You can't believe what you read, see on TV or heard from certain sources.

Regards to all,

J

 

[feltfan]

Sweden is sounding good to me

Thank God we have Proposition 13 protection in California. The property tax is based on the price you bought it for and can only increase 1.5 to 2% per year---no matter what happens to the real estate market. That is the way it should be to protect and make clear to a purchaser of property what they are getting into now and in the future.

Of course we have a crumbling school system and
insufficient funds for basic infrastructure in California
as a result. Of course corporations, which have vast
land holdings and keep them a long time benefit far
more than home owners. Of course the California
proposition system benefits those who are most able
to play on the voter's fears.

I'd rather pay more property tax (and certainly I'd like to
see corporations pay their share) than have a home surrounded
by knuckle-dragging thugs who didn't have the opportunity to
go to a safe, quality school or have to get to my home on crowded
freeways and unreliable public transit. Instead, we get the money
for schools, roads, and transit by passing wildly expensive bond acts
that end up costing us much more than paying property tax up front.
It's just math, but Californians vote with their emotions.

 

[jamespowers]

Of course we have a crumbling school system and
insufficient funds for basic infrastructure in California
as a result. Of course corporations, which have vast
land holdings and keep them a long time benefit far
more than home owners. Of course the California
proposition system benefits those who are most able
to play on the voter's fears.

I'd rather pay more property tax (and certainly I'd like to
see corporations pay their share) than have a home surrounded
by knuckle-dragging thugs who didn't have the opportunity to
go to a safe, quality school or have to get to my home on crowded
freeways and unreliable public transit. Instead, we get the money
for schools, roads, and transit by passing wildly expensive bond acts
that end up costing us much more than paying property tax up front.
It's just math, but Californians vote with their emotions.

I suppose you do not remember the effectsw of a tax crazy system that preceeded Proposition 13. Senior citizens could not pay the outrageous property tax that amounted to thousands of dollars in 1978! I suppose you would have liked it better if people were thrown out on the street if they couldn't pay their property tax bill but I would not. It has saved thousands of Californians from bankruptcy resulting form the free spending state we have.
This state has enough money. What we do have is too many fools in the California legislature who do not know how to stop spending money to payback their backers and other special interest groups.
Remember you can always pay more if you like. Just write the check and send it off to Sacramento if it bothers you so much. I love our Proposition system. It has saved our state fromt he stupidity of the legislature and it will do so in the near future as well.
Here is a perfect example of the fools we live with in the state house:
An example of why state Legislature is a dysfunctional mess

By Dan Walters, Bee Columnist

When Arnold Schwarzenegger says the Legislature is insular,
ineffective and beholden to special interests, he's absolutely
correct.

Senate Bill 792 is a perfect microcosm of legislators' utter
disconnection from reality and common sense, and their penchant for
wasting their time and our money on favors and trivia.

Briefly, SB 792 would let an obscure entity called the North Coast
Railroad Authority use $5.5 million in state funds, originally set
aside to repay a federal loan, for operational purposes. But to
understand its utter absurdity, one needs some history.

For 70 years, beginning in 1914, the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, a
subsidiary of the Southern Pacific Railroad, operated a 300-mile-long
line connecting the San Francisco Bay Area with Eureka, mostly
carrying lumber. But NWP was a very expensive line to maintain because
much of its track paralleled the Eel River, subject to damage from
heavy winter rains and the region's notoriously unstable geology. As
freight business declined, Southern Pacific finally concluded that the
NWP was a loser and in the 1980s, sought to shut it down. A private
company was formed to buy it in the mid-1980s, but it went bankrupt
two years later.

A local assemblyman, Dan Hauser, persuaded the Legislature to create
the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA) in 1989 to take over the
northern portion of the line, contending that public ownership could
make it viable. But NCRA experienced exactly the same problems that
previous owners had seen. Seven years ago, federal officials shut down
the railroad for poor maintenance. Ever since, its roadbed has
continued to erode, its tracks have continued to rust and it has not
functioned as a railroad in any rational sense. Nor could it function,
any objective appraisal would easily conclude.

NCRA has become, instead, a pretend railroad, existing primarily to
garner federal and state funds as those involved, including Hauser
during his brief tenure as NCRA's chief executive, insist that an
operating railroad will emerge someday. Meanwhile it soaks up
taxpayers' money to pay the salaries of those whose only real purpose
is to get more taxpayers' money to pay their salaries. And local
federal and state legislators, eager to deliver pork, keep seeking
more, including regular injections of federal "disaster relief" funds
to pay for storm damage on the fallacy that it really is a railroad.

Tens of millions of dollars have vanished down this rathole, although
in 1998, as he was ending his governorship, Pete Wilson vetoed one $2
million appropriation that supposedly would be spent to clean up the
NCRA's hopelessly tangled accounting system.

"His (Wilson's) staff told my staff that the railroad was
ill-conceived, bankrupt and not worth throwing good money after bad,"
the legislator who had gotten the $2 million approved, Sen. Mike
Thompson, told the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. Truer words were never
spoken.

Thompson went on to Congress and has diligently sought more federal
bucks for NCRA. His successor in the Senate, Wes Chesbro, has
continued the tradition in Sacramento, pushed by local lumber and
other business interests, which use the nonexistent railroad to
bargain for better freight rates from truckers. After some of those
interests contributed $60,000 to then-Gov. Gray Davis' campaign
treasury in 2000, he allocated a whopping $60 million to NCRA as part
of his "congestion relief" program - money that was never spent
because the state soon found itself in deep financial trouble.

One of the boondoggle appropriations was a $12 million federal loan
that Thompson now is trying to have forgiven. If he succeeds,
Chesbro's SB 792 would allow $5.5 million set aside for repayment of
the loan to be used, instead, to underwrite NCRA's overhead.

Sacramento Assemblyman Roger Niello asked some pointed questions about
NCRA and its tangled finances when the bill reached the Assembly
Transportation Committee the other day, but Chesbro's fellow Democrats
didn't hesitate to approve his measure - thus agreeing to pump another
$5.5 million, money that could be used for vitally needed real
transportation projects, down the rathole.

And that, in a nutshell, is why the California Legislature is
dysfunctional.

Regards to all,

J

 

[feltfan]

Check out this response to the Supreme Court ruling

http://www.freestarmedia.com/hotellostliberty2.html

Never thought I'd care much if O'Connor left the
bench, but she did have this dissent:

"The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result."

 

[Leporello]

Red Herring Exactly!-
-more of the same old public distraction and manipulation serving to reinforce the hollow flavour of 'Patriotism' required to keep things safe.
The word's meaning has been bankrupted.
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Patriotism, "the last refuge for a bounder."