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I read this and just shook my head slowly from side to side – I just couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Given this, why haven’t we all risen up in righteous indignation (er, if not a lot more) and say “no more” to taking more and more?  But at least one person did the right thing by voting…

Life in California — A Tax on a Tax

I just got a bill for some extra property tax I owe to a county in California.  The story behind it is sad and sort of hilarious.

A year or two ago I got billed in an audit for some “California use tax” on some golf carts we moved to California from Arizona.  I hadn’t thought I owed use tax on them because I paid sales tax in Arizona where I bought them.  But California sales tax is higher than that in Arizona (naturally) so I apparently owed use tax on the difference.  OK, I paid it.

Then, just recently, I was informed by one county in California that my property tax reports were wrong.

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From  Soldier Systems:

Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

On this day, some 241 years ago, John Parker, Captain of Militia, uttered those instructions to his men as they stood on Lexington Green, ready, if need be, to engage 500 British troops set to sieze the militia’s arsenal.

What may have begun as a show of force on the side of the militia soon became an active firefight as the British advance guard met a percieved provocation with demands to disperse. The fog of war set in and a firefight soon broke out. The Colonist militia quickly gained the upper hand and drove a British force, which over the course of the day had grown to 1700, all the way back to Charlestown and beyond. This action would ultimately become the siege of Boston, happened over a year before the Declaration of Independence.

Whether they intended to or not, the concept of Liberty became cause as those men stood their ground.

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And I’m betting that most of the young’uns that saunter over here have little idea of what and how big Boston was back in the day.  In fact, my favorite band (and then followed ELP) when hanging out in the dorm (in the city of Boston).  Big, BIG deal.  But now, they’ve jumped onto the “Let’s let men parts folks brazenly be able to go into the lady parts room – to heck with privacy of the vast majority (and for some, their security as well) bandwagon” simply to make 0.1% of the population feel better about themselves (re: North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.) and cancelled their three shows in North Carolina.

Well, a number of their 40 year fan base (yes, I am getting to be that old) decided to let them know, in no uncertain terms, that their feelings for the band’s music was far out trumped by the band’s decision to trample traditional mores (after all, they’ve existed for a long time for good reasons).  But before I do, it is clear that this is nothing more than the hypocriticalness that many of these self-righteous “artistes” because while they want to make a statement about NC, they’re all about grabbing the Benjamins by performing where it is far worse :

Boston’s 40th Anniversary tour will conclude in October in Tokyo, Japan, where businesses, hospitals, landlords, and other entities are not legally bound to acknowledge same-sex marriages.

Ayuh – far WORSE than NC which is only saying “use the bathrooms that fit the equipment you have” (and not the parts you think you should have or don’t have). Oh, the fans (emphasis mine)?

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Again, we are absolutely amazed and disheartened that socialism has made such a return to American politics – it is the antithesis of what the Founders stood for.  I’ve gone over why I believe it has over and over again, so I’m not going to do it here.  Instead, we mentioned on last Saturday’s show (ok, I started it) that we’ve had some of our friends on GrokTALK! (and its predecessor, Meet The New Press) that grew up and lived under Communist rule – they are aghast at what is happening.  Before, it was the inch by inch model in slouching towards Socialism – and now with the Republicans joining in and Bernie and Hillary promising to enact policies that put Government in charge of everything, what the heck is the difference?

I had come across this and tried to mention it on the show – badly.  So here’s the part that caught my eye (reformatted, emphasis mine):

SOVIET IMMIGRANTS TO SANDERS SUPPORTERS: “HAVE YOU EVER LIVED UNDER A REVOLUTION?”

• Janna Sundeyeva still remembers life in the Soviet Union, where stores in remote regions would lack meat for months at a time and toilet paper had to be snatched up quickly on the rare occasions it appeared.

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Having just sent in my taxes today (actually did all the record gathering and computations last week), where does it go?

And that is about a $4 Trillion budget.  But what would it be IF our leaders had never strayed from sticking to the strictures of the Constitution.  Well, certainly the military (Pentagon) would be in the mix as well as veterans benefits – 31.3%.  Add in paying for the Government itself – 2.9% more (34.2%).  Interest on the national debt – ayup at 13.7% (47.9%).

Like I said, strictly Constitutional?  That would be about it (roughly figuring).  I’d even shave down a couple of those percentages – shucking off all those other things that should be handled at the State level, let’s take a full 0.8% off the cost of Government (47.1%).  Given, too, would be at least half of the national debt payment – I’d go 60% less (better people in the know might have a higher percentage).  So decrease that to 5.5% – a final total of 38.9%.

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President Obama’s executive amnesty represents a “threat” to America’s very system of government, according to House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).  “The Constitution is clear: Presidents don’t write laws, Congress does,” Ryan said Monday ahead of oral arguments before the Supreme Court in United States v. Texas. “Presidents may disagree with the laws, but they are not free to ignore those laws and have unelected bureaucrats write new ones.”  “This is a threat to self-government itself,” Ryan added.

 

…“The Executive may disagree with the laws Congress enacts and may try to persuade Congress to change them. But neither any immigration law now on the books nor the Constitution empowers the Executive to authorize—let alone facilitate—the prospective violation of those laws on a massive class-wide scale,” the brief reads in part. “We have sworn an oath to defend the Constitution, and today at the Supreme Court, we will do just that,” Ryan added.

Hmmm.  true, all true.  In fact, very true – it’s all in black and white in the Constitution.  But why did you go to the bother of going to the Supreme Court?  So let me ask you this, Speaker Ryan, as you have a much better, much more powerful tool at hand – one you can do all by your lonesome:

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And I thought Socialists were against the Right to Private Property?  Seems like someone wants to defend Bernie’s Intellectual Property (a very important part of Private Property)?  From Overlawyered we see some lawyers haven’t figured out that the Internet has a vote in all this.  IMHO, this should be a flat out free speech issue, especially if in the political arena:

Daniel McCall of Liberty Maniacs has put out a parody image in which the likeness of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is lined up as the latest in a row of figures such as Marx, Lenin, and Mao.

And this is supposed to be surprising? Just LISTEN to the man and the role he wants Government in taking over ruling your life making major decisions for you AND taking most of your money in taxes for the privilege of doing so.  What policy has he enumerated DOESN’T fit in with Marx, Lenin, and Mao?  You go to the Kremlin for your honeymoon and not expect to be called “comrade”?  Stand up for avowed socialists in South America (e.g., the Sandinistas)? Hold up Cuba and Venezuela as models?  Well, he’s already set the stage.  And then a lawyer got upset at this satire and invoked the Streisand Effect:

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Here’s something that I read on the show today as we were talking about laws being passed to keep those with men parts out of bathrooms frequented by those with lady parts (even if the former are delusional about not having such) in the context of Steve’s great post here.  From This Ain’t Hell (a mil-blog I frequent) this is from Poetrooper with a great question:

Here’s my conundrum: if it is immoral, even criminal or civilly liable for these mom-and-pop Christian businesses to deny services based on their fundamental beliefs, why is it not also immoral or legally actionable for large corporations to refuse their services to the citizens of those states where those who govern choose to pass legislation to protect the religious freedoms of their citizenry?

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