PROP 13

Outside of California, almost nobody ever heard of Proposition 13. It was a referendum vote that Californians voted for in an effort to keep home owners in their homes despite government and liberal/progressives. Progressive/liberal judges have not yet overturned it and dismissed it. They will.  This is what it was about.

“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year. 

“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.” 

The arrival of this year’s appraisal notices — which in Travis County showed homes’ average market values jumped 12.6 percent and average taxable values rose 8 percent for 2014 — is sparking a push for reform. Similar jumps have occurred in Williamson and Hays counties.

Anybody can disagree with Prop 13. Go ahead. Idiots vote more and more taxes and think, well, I've done my bit for civilization. They never understand why it was that we survived without these extra taxes. They'll soon approve hearth taxes, door taxes, window taxes, closet taxes and they won't even know. They don't read history. They're proud of their ignorance.

Prop 13 passed to keep retired people in their homes as property values in the Golden State skyrocketed beyond the dreams of avarice. It does no one on a fixed income justice to steal their houses of 30 or 50 years because the land values have ballooned astronomically. Look at Sterling who bought the Cripplers at $12 million dollars and sold it just last week for $2 billion dollars. It's not that the property owners don't owe anything, it's simply that they don't owe everything.

You can also look at the fraud of a California Governor who claims that the State's budget is balanced. OK, he balanced the budget and he didn't do what New Jersey or New York does and jack the property tax through the roof, only because he can't. Yet, in spite of his inability to extort money from property owners, this liberal progressive claims that the budget of California is balanced.

I don't believe him but that doesn't keep him from trying to extort home owners by jacking up property taxes. Prop 13 does that. Otherwise? 100% rises over 43 consecutive years. Liberals are like that. They ruin a place and move on. They always do it by jacking the property taxes.