Chris' Lounge

In this post… addressed to our California state governor Brown, and to fellow states’ people, details that I have are becoming known to many of us (through personal family experience first-hand, and through private letters mailed throughout our state), that California legislators at the capital in Sacramento are obsessively taking aim at property owners and renters; launching repeated assaults against the most vulnerable and “cheap” potential revenue sources – that is private and public property use. Property is each individual and family’s most treasured asset. Small businesses can’t do without it, people can’t adequately live under roof without it, and enterprising people so too, are being punished by revenue raid attempts. Hands off! Do politicians have to be reminded not to put their hands all over us? Evidently they do need reminding.

Even completely paid-off homes continue to be taxed until death and beyond. Why would you plot to do such a thing to your own people when you know we cannot afford and while other revenue sources legitimately exist? No employer will be able to provide raises to the compensation level that a worker will require, with which you plot to raise taxes to. And any dumb person who thinks otherwise can gladly pay that tax for me, but not require others to. We have figures.

You leaders seem to have convinced dumb people these taxes won’t affect them, and that the money will be “given back to them” through programs, incentives, and other such cash schemes. Now, naive they seem to be. Not only naive, but complicit with THEFT against property owners & renters and THEFT against them too (as they remain renters, remain increasingly poor, and end up potentially incarcerated because of financial problems). Need be, later we remind the ignorant, that they willingly supported tax increases on property, supported the raid against them at the hands of “the tax and spenders”, and they will learn to regret their playing into their hand. There will be no sympathy for their resignation to tom-foolery.Meanwhile, today, we are to be convinced that we need more police? That we should be more concerned about a seasonal drought, than about the forcing of more and more families into lifelong abject poverty? We’re told that there are more wealthier families per capita, in California today, than there was 5-10 years ago? Big deal. A drop in the bucket. All this, while only some increase of families’ profit occurs as the majority rest declines? What would you do with us then? Would that really make you feel good? I fear it might, trying to figure out any reasonable rationale of why legislators in the state capitol today are pretending to have no other source of revenue now. What you seem to perceive as perhaps your ungrateful and disloyal “subjects”, by hitting us where we are most vulnerable (as property owners with high enough tax already), we remind you that California was one of the hardest hit regions after the housing crisis emerged years ago. How do you think we can now say today, that we are even so much as partially free from such burden? And you want to increase the load on our backs? Shame.

We’re even led to believe now, that the economic crisis is over; that we can afford to tax and spend wildly, even more so than in the days of past. But we residents who are a little wiser, know just how precarious a situation we are still in. Our radio ads seem to suggest that the impact of the 14 year + crisis is somehow a thing of the past. With voice actors who are portrayed as having moved beyond the plight, so portrayed as the most blindly optimistic among the minority and impoverished in our state. true there were worse times in recent past than we might feel at this moment, but it will all be short-lived if you get your way “tax and spenders”. I remind you that this housing bubble burst due to malfeasance; and it threw many people under the bus. It reminds me that you need to take this time to sufficiently earn back the people’s trust; that no, you are not entitled to delude that your people are ungrateful or unfairly demanding. We’ve engaged in the most civil “civil disobedience” with courage and valor. And California has helped places all over the world – at our citizens’ expense. You are not going to tap us for your “pirate booty” via such tax increases.

Don’t forget – California legislators did NOT sufficiently protect us from the housing bubble burst. Even if homeowners were even meager so reticent to accept virtually “no-money down” mortgage acquisition, the system was wrong and framed in a poor way from its inception. I’d like to remind you and your like-minded legislators, that vendetta now, against home owners is disgusting, a betrayal, and a tolerance for Federal mismanagement. Not to forget, totally insensitive.

There are ways of increasing revenue that require a bit more creativity – and discipline, as you would like your legislative image to be accepted and viewed as by us. You’ve had adequate time to determine what this would be and so too should you refrain from tightening your vice on Californians… who already (as it is) have higher property taxes than many other elite dwelling places around the world (tax in proportion to value by ratio). Many of these places are widely considered more desirable and more expensive than most of California. Yet, it seems still, you might very well intend to double or even triple our property taxes today. And renters, I warn you… do not feel that you will be expempt from the pain. Some of you legislators who don’t value our tax traditions, you probably would have already thrown us all under the next bus, if no one were standing in your and your like-minded legisltors’ way. We know now that those of you who vote to do this in our chambers, have your agenda ready, over and over again… that you use every time you think that we’ve backed down. We know that you use tax funded time in the chambers, to scheme and undermine the thousands upon thousands of petitions which you receive, telling you NO. You should feel shame for “representing” the people in such way and for even thinking about putting such ballot measures forward that are not even put forward by the public at large. What exactly do you want us all to do? 

I recommend that you change your minds about voting in support of property tax increases.