Wednesday, April 13, 2005

we all know this

the 3% property appraisal cap was shot down last night. Check that. The discussion of a 3% property tax apprasial cap was shot down. The movement was started by tax payers who are also home owners and are fed up with being the local governments' cash cow.
The down and dirty of it is, when cities and municipalities find their budget a little short, the old tax assesor gets sent out to recoup the shortfall. Of course he skips over the judge's house, the senator and represenative and the people who sit on the city boards. Their houses obviously haven't grown in value. Some of their taxes haven't been raised in years. Of course this is assuming that any of these mark ups have anything to do with the houses' values.
The worst part of all this is that 36 republicans walked away from this issue and voted to not have a discussion on this issue. An issue that is part of their platform. They are all firmly in the pocket of their county judges' and spending lobbies' back pocket.
It makes me so disgusted that on every turn it seems that the peoples' voice gets drowned out by unelected judges and silent lobbies who have easy access to our pocket book.
On a bigger scene, Delay is being hung to dry (but he's too strong to get put down) by a party that is scared to be itself. Scared to go back to the image of the heartless Republicans who want to starve your family and take your kids lunch money. Scared to stand up to fight for itself or one of it's own.
To top of my frustration today, I read 3 lines from this article and almost vomitted. Here a "representative" obviously unaffilliated with any specific party only to the state of Vermont. Unless of course if you read the rest of the article, down way at the bottom...the democratic party defends him thereby you can guess that Sanders (rep otherwise unattached) might be a democrat. Of course the article itself glows about how his wife and daughter are so knowledgeable about Vermont politics that they were worth "every penny" that old hubby paid them. Same situation as Delay but you won't hear a word about it in the mainstream.
Sometimes I wonder (especially when trying to do my taxes) if the government really is in the business of trying to keep people from succeeding in life. Take hard working people's money and give it all to people who want to sit on their butt's. No wonder so much work is going over seas.

1 comment:

Joe said...

Except, y'know, the payments were of vastly different magnitudes. 15,000 a year? What luxury, what corruption.

Sanders looks to be an example of ethics done well (Whatever you think of the rest of his policies), something DeLay could learn from the next time he wants to hire a family member -- how to do it right, without raising ethical quandaries.