California's spineless legislators ain't doin' their jobs again. Rather than passing their laws, they're requiring us citizens to do their job. Thus far 11 initiatives on the fall ballot. And possibly more -- there's still 18 petitions circulating around out there and the deadline hasn't arrived yet for November. Gah!
My policy on ballot initiatives is a flat “NO” to all of’em. I don’t have the time or a paid staff to research the economic effects of all these damned things. I already pay someone who does have the time and paid staff, whose job is to say yay or nay on laws, I’m talking about my legislator of course. I damn well expect him to do his job and resent mightily every goddamn time those bastids try to make me do their jobs.
The only time I make an exception is when the new ballot initiative overturns an old ballot initiative. When overturning Proposition 13 comes on the ballot, I will vote for it in pride — that’s the main reason why California has such a housing shortage, Prop 13 basically sets it up so people can’t afford to move because then they’d get a new property tax assessment based on current value, not one from 20 years ago. So you got old farts stuck in properties too big for them but they can’t afford to move because they’d end up paying too much property tax if they did… or else they move out-of-state, but then ya gotta live amongst the heathen. Ugh!
Anywho: I pay my legislator to pass laws. I ain’t gonna do his job for him, and I wish he’d quit sending me these goddamn initiatives and askin’ me to do his job for him. As for the ones put on the ballot by special interests paying signature-getters... fuck'em all. Not a single one of them is good for the people, only for the rich fucks who put them there. ‘Nuff said.
– Badtux the “It ain’t my job” Penguin
Wasn't Prop 13 the one that capped property values for the wealthy? The funding cap to prevent wages from rising due to better education?
ReplyDeleteGee, with all the cheap migrants at the teat of MammyCalifornia, why would citizens retain the device that halted their meteoric growth?
Mold
Pretty much so, Mold. It was sold to Californians as a way to keep outsiders from moving to California by making them pay more property taxes than folks who have lived in California for years. The net effect, however, is that you end up with multi-million-dollar ocean-front condos paying $1700/year in taxes because they've been grandfathered in by Prop 13, while some poor sod who just bought a new $700,000 1200 square foot townhouse in Santa Clara is going to pay $8,000/year in property taxes on his condo.
ReplyDeleteHow is that fair? It isn't. But god forbid that you suggest changing it. Because that person in that multi-million-dollar ocean front property has a right, a RIGHT I say, to have taxes only 1/4th that of the poor sod in the 1200 square foot townhouse in Santa Clara...
- Badtux the Tax Penguin
also, the ballot initiatives have taken the budget process in california into pure ass marx brothers territory. as they try to figure their way around a process that limits the amount of budget they can manipulate to a mostly inconsequential percentage.
ReplyDeletemeanwhile, there are over a thousand fires burning, no way to raise the money to fight them, except of course, by begging.
our schools suck out loud.
they do, however, remember the biggest guiding light of politics.
if you rob peter to pay paul, you can always count on paul's vote.
MM yeah. Unfortunately some of those rich fucks are creating ballot initiatives also, and then there is the occasional ballot initiative that is actually sponsored by an activist group that actually wants progressive change.
ReplyDeleteFiguring out which is which is the chore.
Gah is right!
Well, California's tax codes not only rob Peter to pay Paul to get Paul's votes, but then rob Paul to pay Caesar just because. But because everybody is getting robbed in one way or another but also getting paid in one way or another, everybody thinks they're coming out ahead, even though they really aren't. It's a dishonest shell game but that's politics today.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Cynical Penguin
I hear your pain, Badtux.
ReplyDelete