Property Taxes - A Bad Idea

Taxes have always been viewed by Americans as a burden to be controlled and limited. The imposing of taxes on Britain’s American colonies without the colonies having any input into the tax decisions and no recourse for opposing them was a major factor leading up to the American revolution. One of the earliest acts of revolutionary resistance was the Boston Tea Party in which colonists painted as Indians (Native Americans) raided British merchant ships and dumped their cargo of fine Indian (from India) Tea into the harbor, thus denying the crown and British merchants any revenue from the lost cargo.

A number of points in the U.S. Constitution specifically limit the Federal Governments power over both the states and the individual citizen, including controls and limits on Federal Taxes. The Founding Fathers intended that most taxes would be assessed and collected by the lowest levels of government, where the people have the greatest control. They would be appalled at the vast size of our Federal government and the resulting huge tax burden. They might also take issue with the tax burden from even the state and local governments, since through the years, particularly in the last century our governments have invented, or had imposed on them by Federal and State laws, a great increase these locally controlled taxes. One of the principals that was strictly adhered to in the first half-century of the nation, was that tax money was not to be used for the benefit of individual citizens, nor for charity; those were things that the community was expected to take care of by other means. Neighbors were expected to come together to aid each other with donations of both work and monetary consideration to help those dealing with misfortune or tragedy.

One of the local taxing methods that I find particularly distasteful is the property tax. Taxes based on the value of property are bad for several reasons. They add to the burden of owning a home or a business, making it more difficult to own property. It adds to the overhead cost of a business making less likely to succeed. Property taxes provide a disincentive for increasing the quality of property, since improving property increases its value, thus increasing the taxes placed on it. They also are susceptible to the fluctuations in market, making it an unpredictable source on which to make fiscal budget projections; this is a major cause of Arizona’s recent budget revenue shortfalls. In a free society ownership of homes and businesses is both one of the greatest measures of success and an indicator of a dependable future. Once a person has paid for his property, or has a meaningful equity in property, they should be able to be confident that they will continue to own that property without the government holding it hostage for taxes. Because of property tax, if an owner comes on economic hard times for whatever reason, their property can be seized and sold at auction for taxes. That means that the property never actually belongs to them, because the government can take it from them. Ones property should be free from both taxation and seizure.

The question could be asked, “Then how would such things as schools, fire districts, sewer districts, etc. be financed?” First the percentage of the total state and local taxes that comes from property tax is a fairly small percent. Most of the revenues are raised by sales tax and income tax. The property tax could be done away with by simply shifting the exact same level of taxing from property to other taxes. The net change in taxation would be zero. It would also reduce the government overhead, by doing away with the whole government assessment of property value, so by that would lower government cost.

This method of consolidating and simplifying our tax structure will help to lower government costs, so will lower the demand for taxes. The concept could be applied to the full range of taxes, bringing about a more equitable, smaller, less expensive system of taxation. In the case of the property tax, doing away with it will give a property owner actual right to his property so that even in complete economic disaster they would not lose their property. They would still own their assets, and would still have a roof over their head.

No New Law Needed for Anchor Babies

The 14th Amendment (ratified in 1868) to the Constitution includes a citizenship clause, created specifically to grant citizenship to children of former slaves, as the first article of the Amendment, “1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

There is a qualifier to the birth clause, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which has been ignored, allowing the misconstrued idea that the 14th Amendment grants automatic citizenship to anyone who happens to be born on American soil. This Amendment was authored by Senator Jacob Howard, Republican from Michigan. In explaining the 14th Amendment he said, “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the family of ambassadors, or foreign ministers...” You cannot get more specific about the intent of the citizenship clause.

An 1873 opinion of the US Attorney General validated the intent of the Senator by stating that “under the jurisdiction” does not include aliens, because “they are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States to only a limited extent.”

The 1924 Citizens Act kept the jurisdiction clause intact and unchanged, as did the 2006 Federal law. There is no basis for anyone to grant citizenship to the child of an alien, legal or illegal, on the basis of circumstance of birth.

There are many people today who were born of alien parents and given US Citizenship, largely because of ignorance of the law by those completing and registering birth certificates. This most likely was not a matter of trickery on the part of the parents, nor was it collusion on the part of the doctors and state registrars. It was simply that they never thought to consider citizenship, when documenting the birth. That has changed. Illegal aliens eventually caught on to this, so that today there are more “anchor babies” than ever being born, and the parents are knowingly and deliberately taking advantage of this lack of vigilance. We now have probably millions of citizens who got their citizenship through this mistake. So the problem has two parts, those who are already citizens, and those who will be born here under these improper conditions in the future.

My opinion is that we need to enact a law (or just an executive order, because the law already makes these births non-citizen births) that declares a moratorium on registering alien births as US Citizens at a specific date, and thereafter requiring parents to prove their citizenship before a child is registered as a citizen. Our existing citizenship law grants automatic citizenship to children born in the US to at least one citizen parent. I think this would solve the “anchor baby” problem going forward, and would not punish those American citizens who had nothing to do with their improper certification as citizens. Once the “anchor baby” scam is ended, there will be one less incentive for people to come into the country illegally.

Who Would Oppose Arizona Clean Elections?

The Arizona Clean Elections Law is neither clean nor fair. It is just one more example of how the best of intentions in law making often end up with unforeseen consequences.

When voters passed the Clean Elections initiative in 1998 most of the general public was unaware of what they were passing. Since the initiative was called “Arizona Clean Elections,” most people only knew that they would like to have fair elections that weren’t overly influenced by “big money” donations and that would give candidates a “level playing field” when it came to campaign donations and spending. Most did not know that it appropriated state funds to go directly to political candidates, and that a more honest name for the initiative would be “Arizona Financing of Candidates from State Funds” initiative. Currently, at a time when we can’t balance the budget, 15 million dollars are appropriated for this purpose.

The funding for this comes from various state sources. Some of the money comes from the voluntary check-off donations on state income tax forms, and some comes from the required $5 donations raised by the candidates, though these are a relatively small portion of their funding. A larger portion comes from surcharges on court fines. The remainder comes from the State General Fund, which comes primarily from various state taxes. So with the exception of the tax form donations, it is funded with money appropriated from the public through fees and taxes.

It gives a powerful advantage to “Clean Elections” candidates over those who wish to run a traditional campaign without public money. Once a state legislative candidate is qualified for clean elections funding, they receive a check from the state for $12,000 to be used for their campaign. If one candidate is running a non-state funded campaign against two other candidates he or she is allowed to raise $12,000 through their own fundraising efforts. Thereafter for every dollar raised by the non-state funded candidate, each of his opponents receive one dollar. So the traditional candidate must spend time fundraising, while the state-subsidized candidates are getting a free ride. Worse is that the distribution of these public funds to government-created “political parasites” is based on the gross receipts of donations. So if a traditional candidate puts on a fund raising event that includes entertainment and dinner which costs $5,000 dollars, and has a “gate” of $10,000 he has $5,000 to use in his campaign, but each of his opponents will get a “matching” check for $10,000. So they each make twice as much money from his fund raising as he does. That means he has raised $5,000 dollars of funds while the state awards his competition $20,000 to campaign against him. Sure sounds fair to me (not).

It also makes campaign finance a requirement to even run in an election; to qualify for “clean elections” a candidate must submit to the Secretary of State not only the required number of valid petition signatures, but must also raise 200 five dollar donations within a certain window of time. So if you had a candidate who wanted to campaign by personally meeting people using no donations or expenditures, that candidate would not qualify for clean elections certification. In this case, Clean Elections is having the opposite effect from what the voters would expect. Furthermore these donations can come from outside the candidate’s district, and they can come from non-citizen residents.

Some might ask, “Why would a candidate go to all the trouble of running a traditional campaign, when they could get a free ride from the Clean Elections?” There are good reasons, some, certainly not all, are listed below:

· The candidate entered the race too late to qualify for Clean Elections funding. This can happen if a candidate drops out for health reasons, death, call to active duty, etc., necessitating a replacement candidate.

· The Candidate runs as a write-in. They are already at a terrible disadvantage; Clean Elections almost guarantees that they never have a chance to win.

· Principal: The candidate is opposed to spending public money on personal campaigns of candidates. Most Constitution-based candidates and fiscal conservatives do not approve of this practice.

On March 9, 2009 the alternative newspaper (read liberal) Phoenix New Times, ran an exposé of clean elections spending of tax-payer money, in which candidates can legally purchase computers, office equipment, video equipment, other electronics, lavish dinners, and other extravagant spending, and keep the booty when the elections are over. All purchased with state money. It further mentions that the Arizona Clean Elections Commission is paying lobbyists to lobby our legislators to support their state-funded department, to give them more power and more state money. They also are paying for advertising campaigns to promote themselves to the public, with state funds.

Since Clean Elections went into effect over ten years ago, it has not reduced the number or the power of special interests and lobbyist. Look at our politicians during the last decade; nothing has changed, they are the same kind of politicians, some good, some bad, as always. All Clean Elections has given us is more state government, more lobbyists, increased costs, a new source for abusing tax money, a new kind of corruption, and a self-serving department that promotes itself with public dollars. As usual, creating more government is not a remedy, but an additional problem.

Gary Hubell on Barack Obama

Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nation

Gary Hubbell

Aspen Times Weekly February 2010

Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America’s future. He is the best thing ever.

Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America’s resurrection. Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.

That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.

Obama is the symbol of a creeping liberalism that has infected our society like a cancer for the last 100 years. Just as Hitler is the face of fascism, Obama will go down in history as the face of unchecked liberalism. The cancer metastasized to the point where it could no longer be ignored.

Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives, earning a paycheck, contributing to their favorite charities, going to high school football games on Friday night, spending their weekends at the beach or on hunting trips - they've gotten off the fence. They've woken up. There is a level of political activism in this country that we haven't seen since the American Revolution, and Barack Obama has been the catalyst that has sparked a restructuring of the American political and social consciousness.

Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world. Immigration laws were ignored on the basis of compassion. Welfare policies encouraged irresponsibility, the fracturing of families, and a cycle of generations of dependency. Debt was regarded as a tonic to lubricate the economy. Our children left school having been taught that they are exceptional and special, while great numbers of them cannot perform basic functions of mathematics and literacy. Legislators decided that people could not be trusted to defend their own homes, and stripped citizens of their rights to own firearms. Productive members of society have been penalized with a heavy burden of taxes in order to support legions of do-nothings who loll around, reveling in their addictions, obesity, indolence, ignorance and "disabilities." Criminals have been arrested and re-arrested, coddled and set free to pillage the citizenry yet again. Lawyers routinely extort fortunes from doctors, contractors and business people with dubious torts.

We slowly learned to tolerate these outrages, shaking our heads in disbelief, and we went on with our lives.

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

In the time of Barack Obama, Black Panther members stand outside polling places in black commando uniforms, slapping truncheons into their palms. ACORN - a taxpayer-supported organization - is given a role in taking the census, even after its members were caught on tape offering advice to set up child prostitution rings. A former Communist is given a paid government position in the White House as an advisor to the president. Auto companies are taken over by the government, and the auto workers' union - whose contracts are completely insupportable in any economic sense - is rewarded with a stake in the company. Government bails out Wall Street investment bankers and insurance companies, who pay their executives outrageous bonuses as thanks for the public support. Terrorists are read their Miranda rights and given free lawyers. And, despite overwhelming public disapproval, Barack Obama has pushed forward with a health care plan that would re-structure one-sixth of the American economy.

I don't know about you, but the other day I was at the courthouse doing some business, and I stepped into the court clerk's office and changed my voter affiliation from "Independent" to "Republican." I am under no illusion that the Republican party is perfect, but at least they're starting to awaken to the fact that we cannot sustain massive levels of debt; we cannot afford to hand out billions of dollars in corporate subsidies; we have to somehow trim our massive entitlement programs; we can no longer be the world's policeman and dole out billions in aid to countries whose citizens seek to harm us.

Literally millions of Americans have had enough. They're organizing, they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring. Is there a revolution brewing? Yes, in the sense that there is a keen awareness that our priorities and sensibilities must be radically re-structured. Will it be a violent revolution? No. It will be done through the interpretation of the original document that has guided us for 220 years - the Constitution. Just as the pendulum swung to embrace political correctness and liberalism, there will be a backlash, a complete repudiation of a hundred years of nonsense. A hundred years from now, history will perceive the year 2010 as the time when America got back on the right track. And for that, we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.

Gary Hubbell is a hunter, rancher, and former hunting and fly-fishing guide. Gary works as a Colorado ranch real estate broker. He can be reached through his website,aspenranchrealestate.com

The Arizona primary elections will be interesting, at least for Republicans. Every incumbent on the ballot, including long time favorite John McCain should be concerned. The right is generating a powerful backlash against those in, or who support, the Obama administration. There is also a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Republicans who have been ineffective in Washington, often because they were willing to “reach across the aisle” on issues on which the grass root constituency are not willing to compromise.

On the other hand the general election will likely be very kind to Republicans who survive the primary. Some of the Democrats have wisely chosen to stay in the background on the immigration issue, trying not to raise the ire of their base liberal voters, nor offend the large Independent swing voters, without whom most cannot be elected. There are just under 1 million Democrats, about 1.1 million Republicans, and about 0.8 million Independents in Arizona. Polls are showing that of Hispanic voters (approximately 250,000) only about 20% support the Republican position of getting tough on illegal immigration and securing the border. That means the Democrats will retain 80% of their traditionally Democrat Hispanic votes; but it is still approximately a five or ten percent reduction in support. The real danger to Democrats comes from the much larger change in the critical Independent voters, who are shown in polls as leaning conservative by about 60%. The remaining parties, such as Green, and Libertarian, generally have little effect on the outcome of elections in Arizona because their numbers are few. Greens have around 4,000 votes and lacking a candidate will vote democrat, and Libertarians, around 20,000, and lacking a candidate will likely vote Republican.

Registered Republicans are much more activated than ever so almost all of them will vote for the Republican candidates. In a state-wide election, all they need from Independents, Libertarians, and Democrats is a total of 379, 000 votes. Polls also show that there are many disaffected Democrats, upset with immigration, upset with Democrats like Grijalva, and upset with Obama and the behavior of the current congress, so if the Democrat party runs its slate of incumbents, they may see significant loss of support from within their own party. Even without such defections at the poll, the Democrats must win at least 479,000 votes from other parties; this now seems like an impossible number with the current state of the total voter opinion.

So as John Q. Liberal looks at this, he asks the question, “How did this calamity happen?” It happened because the vast majority of Americans do not support the liberal platform of the Democrats, they didn’t even support it when Obama was elected, but they were so enraged at politics in general. This especially included the Republicans and the Bush administration for behaving like Democrats, for not making the changes in government that could have been made during the first Bush administration, for participating in the social engineering that led up to the subprime collapse, and for dumping billions into bail-outs. Many conservatives stayed away from the polls or voted for third party candidates. Independents, voted for “change”, even if they didn’t put much stock in the “hope” part of the slogan, because they were sick of the status quo and McCain was seen as status quo. On the other hand, the left, and the people who voted by race, overwhelmingly supported Obama. Those who voted by race were primarily three groups, Africa-Americans who voted about 90% for Obama, uninformed students and young adults, and progressives from across the political spectrum, all of whom were thrilled with the idea of electing the first black president, no matter what his qualifications were.

The result has been an administration that has ignored or reversed virtually every campaign promise, repeatedly made blunder upon gaffe, quadrupled the national debt, created and prolonged the deepest and longest period of both unemployment and recession in decades, has grossly mishandled international affairs, embarrassed the nation with lack of protocol, and apologized to tyrants and enemies. The disillusioned are turning against the Democrats, the swing votes are swinging right, and the silent majority has been awakened. This year’s elections will be very interesting.