The Hermanator telling it like it is!

[sirs]

states that find themselves massively in debt to the tune of 78 billion dollars in Illinois case need to look at the reason for the debt, why the funding mechanisms in place did not work, why the obligations were undertaken in the first place and if the funds were diverted to whom and why.

Simple stewardship of the public purse.

Not to mention the abuse of the tax payer, when not looking at all the above 1st.  Just raise taxes...whalaa, everything fixed??  Taxes in CA are arguably the highest in the country already, and the left's answer.....higher taxes?

I think not

[Plane]

MT perhaps you didn't know .

Prop 13 is people power, it is one of the most democratic laws in the nation, by its origin.

[Michael Tee]

<<Prop 13 is people power, it is one of the most democratic laws in the nation, by its origin.>>

I didn't say it was undemocratic, I believe it's the primary reason why California's all fucked up.  There is no account of the state's financial woes that doesn't devote a lot of ink to Prop 13.  It was a fucking disaster for all concerned.  And foreseen as such from its inception.

[Kramer]

<<Prop 13 is people power, it is one of the most democratic laws in the nation, by its origin.>>

I didn't say it was undemocratic, I believe it's the primary reason why California's all fucked up.  There is no account of the state's financial woes that doesn't devote a lot of ink to Prop 13.  It was a fucking disaster for all concerned.  And foreseen as such from its inception.

at least most of us can afford to our property taxes because they are not priced completely out of most homeowners abilities. $3,800 a year is still doable for me. If not for Prop 13 I'd be living on the street by now.

[Michael Tee]

How do you know how much your taxes would have gone up without Prop 13?

And couldn't you apply for a program of tax relief whereby the portion of the taxes you can't afford to pay can just be added as an encumbrance to your title, payable when you sell or die?

[Kramer]

How do you know how much your taxes would have gone up without Prop 13?

And couldn't you apply for a program of tax relief whereby the portion of the taxes you can't afford to pay can just be added as an encumbrance to your title, payable when you sell or die?

don't know and don't care at this point. fuck the state of california!

[Michael Tee]

Wow.  Never heard THAT before.  I still remember when it was everyone's dream to live there.  It had magic.

[sirs]

Not any more....thank you Liberals and Democrats

[Plane]

<<Prop 13 is people power, it is one of the most democratic laws in the nation, by its origin.>>

I didn't say it was undemocratic, I believe it's the primary reason why California's all fucked up.  There is no account of the state's financial woes that doesn't devote a lot of ink to Prop 13.  It was a fucking disaster for all concerned.  And foreseen as such from its inception.

   This is one of the troubles with people power, getting government to take it seriously.

    If Daddy puts your allowance at a limit you should not spend more than daddy allows.

     California politicians have been like naughty children thinking that if they spent the money anyway the people woudl pay the money any way!

       This needs to be placed right on the neck of the freespending politicians who ignored the limit the people placed on them.

[Michael Tee]

I think plane's got a very simplistic view of Prop 13 and "people power."  Prop 13 is not an example of "people power," but of "people malleability."  The vote for Prop 13 was influenced heavily by a slick and well-funded campaign which produced a narrow victory for the proposition at the polls.  Had the campaigns for and against Prop 13 been equally funded, Prop 13 would have died at the ballot box.

Prop 13 is actually a textbook example of what the OWS movement is protesting - - government of the rich, for the rich and by the rich.  It was a godsend for the rich of California and a disaster for the people.  The limitations on spending were unrealistically restrictive and the consequences are apparent all over the state.

To all those who think that a modern state government can function and provide a full range of services that people in this century have come to expect from their government in any civilized community, yet not expect to have to pay for these services the current going prices:  wake up, people!!!  There's no free lunch!!!  The state is YOUR state and it runs on money, not on hot air.  Tax the rich!

[Plane]

  You are in severe paradox MT.

    How can you believe in "people malliability" and also beleive in "revolution"?

     Manipulators eschew revolutions for some reason?

[Michael Tee]

<<How can you believe in "people malliability" and also beleive in "revolution"?>>

No paradox at all, plane, but it's a good question.  Because the people are malleable, it's easy to get the masses through various devices (religion in the old days, MSM now) to ignore their own best interests.

Revolution is not made by the proletariat as a whole but by small, class-conscious, tightly disciplined revolutionary vanguards, who need to counteract whatever stupefiant the ruling class is currently using to drug the minds of the masses, and they then need to educate the masses as to the realities of the class war, enlist the enlightened members of the proletariat and finally to bring about the revolution.  In the past the main agent of the vanguard element was the Communist Party - - they attracted the best and the brightest (and also the most courageous) because they had a theory and a plan, party discipline and (I'm coming to see this more clearly now) amazingly intelligent, resourceful, far-seeing people of great judgment and vision.  I might be coming around to Thomas Carlyle's "Great Man" theory of history, because you have to wonder, where are the Lenins and Trotskys of today?  Probably they were the kind of individual who, like Winston Churchill in the capitalist world, comes along but rarely, maybe only once in a lifetime, once in a hundred years.

Anyway the key concept to grasp is a malleable people often fooled by the ruling class but producing a vanguard that breaks free of the stupefiant (in Marx's day, it was religion, the so-called "opiate of the people") and takes the necessary steps to throw off the ruling class and bring the "People's Revolution" through to completion.

[Plane]

   How would you convince anything like the brightest that Comunism actually works?

     A century of earnest experiment produced a lot more misery and death than real Communism.

      I think it firmly established that Communism is only approximated under severe tyrany and has no potential for realisation of its grand promise.

      Or do we need another century of earnest experiment?

[Plane]

   Although the Occupy Oakland protesters have not yet decided on a unified set of goals, they are holding committee meetings and a larger general assembly daily to develop a strategic plan of action to end what they call the corporate corruption of the country’s elite. No single leader or organization runs these meetings, which one protester referred to as a “community tribunal.” Participants put forth amendments and proposals on issues such as creating new subcommittees and addressing housing for the protesters, either reaching consensus or “blocking” decisions.

http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/11/%e2%80%9c99-percent%e2%80%9d-protesters-occupy-oakland%e2%80%99s-ogawa-plaza/


   Time is ripe for the Communists to show up, these people are at their most malliable.
    Unfortunately for communism in general , only idiots are left to believe in it.
    Unfortunately for the reat of us idiots are not in short supply.

[Kramer]

   Although the Occupy Oakland protesters have not yet decided on a unified set of goals, they are holding committee meetings and a larger general assembly daily to develop a strategic plan of action to end what they call the corporate corruption of the country’s elite. No single leader or organization runs these meetings, which one protester referred to as a “community tribunal.” Participants put forth amendments and proposals on issues such as creating new subcommittees and addressing housing for the protesters, either reaching consensus or “blocking” decisions.

http://blog.sfgate.com/inoakland/2011/10/11/%e2%80%9c99-percent%e2%80%9d-protesters-occupy-oakland%e2%80%99s-ogawa-plaza/


   Time is ripe for the Communists to show up, these people are at their most malliable.
    Unfortunately for communism in general , only idiots are left to believe in it.
    Unfortunately for the reat of us idiots are not in short supply.

Plane think of it this way. There's us the workers and them the lazy bums that don't want to work. We are working our tails of supporting the lazy losers so when do we have time to do much more than work. On the other hand the lazy bums have all sorts of spare time to attend union thuggery events and other liberal/communists events in order to push their cause. These people are so stupid that they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. Soon all of us will be screwed.