Category Archives: Property

Driving Mrs Jen

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Today is my turn to chauffeur my daughter on some errands. She can no longer drive due to a neurological condition that affects her right side. After a year of doctors, tests, consultations, she still hasn’t a clear diagnosis. At least it isn’t getting worse.

I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a liberal wakeup call when the tax bills come due.

Liberal Austin homeowners surprised to find they have to pay all the taxes they voted for

posted at 9:31 pm on June 2, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

NIMBY, literally.

“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.”

I’m really just bringing this to your attention for this quote alone. Voting and paying are different endeavors entirely. Often, when one has to pay for the things one has voted to fund, that decision becomes less flippant. This is a comment, less on the specifics of Texas’ or Austin’s tax system than the blaring disconnect between liberals in Austin who are voting for higher taxes and the actual paying of the taxes. Which, as it turns out, is painful, discouraging, and can be a detriment to the fabric of the city.

The article continues on Hot Air. Go there and read. It’s a hoot! Liberals actually paying the consequences of all their tax increases and the whining when the bills come due.

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Intended Consequences

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http://www.millcreekrc.org/cms/index.php/mcrc-photo-gallery/image?view=image&format=raw&type=img&id=162Saturday was a range day. I’m in the process of joining a new rifle club. Saturday was the time for the required safety class. It’s a growing range with pistol, shotgun and rifle ranges up to 500yds.

A club member and shooting buddy joined me after the class. We did a bit of pistol shooting (my Colt Commander does give me hammer bite!) and then shot 10″ steel gongs at 200yds. I surprised myself with hits using the iron sights on my AR Frankengun (Olympic upper and lower receivers plus the barrel, with DPMS innards.)

One of my to-does is cleaning my pistols and rifle. That also means I have to clean up my office to free up needed space.  What a way to force me into Spring cleaning!

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I wrote about the Kelo Decision last week in a post titled, Boundaries. The decision allowed the municipality of New London in Connecticut to seize private property (Kelo’s) for a developer’s use. The argument was that the developer would put the property into better use (read generate more tax revenue to the city,) than the private owner. The suit went to SCOTUS and was upheld. A travesty. It was a win for the left who believe everything belongs to government and government allows ‘private’ owners to use their property only under governmental ‘guidance.’

That line of thought has arisen here in Missouri—St. Louis, to be specific.

St. Louis County Abrogates Property Rights

By Timothy Birdnow, April 29, 2014

St. Louis County, Mo. is planning to force property owners to purchase a landlord’s license to rent out or even allow friends or family to inhabit a privately owned domicile.

Not content with collecting fees for “safety” inspections and occupancy permits, the county government is now intent on imposing a landlord’s license and extracting yet another fee.  Duplication of current law aside, this new requirement strikes at the heart of a fundamental legal right: the right to ownership of property.

Private property is the most basic principle in American jurisprudence.  When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he borrowed from the philosopher John Locke, who asserted three fundamental rights enjoyed by all: life, liberty, and property.  Jefferson, at the urging of Benjamin Franklin, changed the last to “pursuit of happiness” because he did not want to give slaveholders any sort of legal justification should abolition finally overtake the “peculiar institution.”  Still, everyone knew what Jefferson was getting at here, and though the Declaration is not a foundational legal document, it does illustrate the mindset of the Founders, who clearly believed in ownership of property.

As John Adams stated:

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

And so it is; without a sacred view of property, a society inevitably slides into despotism.

The first property right is self-ownership.  We have seen the left nibble away at this concept, and the ObamaCare mandate has effectively tipped the scales toward state ownership of American citizens.

With that under their belts, the Progressives can now turn their lustful eyes back toward real estate.  Actually, they have been nibbling away at the rights of property owners for decades.  Eminent domain, the Fair Housing Act, zoning restrictions, occupancy permits, “safety” inspections (which are more often than not also about cosmetics), property maintenance codes – all circumscribe the rights of owners to have final say on the use of their property.  Yes, many of these things were well-intentioned and have contributed to a more pleasant society, but the movement has been ever toward government regulation of private property.  While property rights are not absolute, where does ownership end?  If government tells the owner how he can use his property, can it be said that we have private ownership at all?

We’ve seen some huge leaps in recent years: the Kelo decision allowing property to be taken from the lawful owner and given to a developer, for instance, or the declaration of property as environmentally sensitive and so not allowed to be developed.  We have the Cliven Bundy affair; Bundy had purchased grazing rights, which are in themselves a contractual interest.  We’ve seen government shut off water to farmers , or allow lands to be flooded, bankrupting farmers and forcing them off their lands.

Now we witness the imposition of licensing requirements for property owners.  The issuance of a license presupposes that government holds the rights and that the “owner” is being granted a privilege.

Read the bill here.

The bill is chock-full of “at the discretion of the Administrator.”

The column continues at the website, but that last sentence is crucial—“at the whim…” In short, the rules can change any at moment for any reason or for no reason at all! The result is total governmental control. He or the agent who makes the rules is the true owner of the property. If this is passed, the county will be the owner of your property, not you.
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Property: What do we own?

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I read an interesting article today in The American Thinker. It asks a question, “Do we own ourselves?” Now, many people would consider this a rhetorical question. “Of course we ourselves,” they’d say. It’s obvious.

Personally, I agree with them. But not all do. Statists, as Mark Levin and others like to call them, don’t—and they have historical examples to prove their point. The examples they use, people as subjects (UK), as citizens (FR), as serfs (RU), as peons (MX/SP), are examples that drove us and our forefathers, to create this nation, the United States.

Those who would agree with me—those who believe we own ourselves, have historical examples, historical heritages to support our views as well. We have our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Bible and the Talmud document Man’s relationship with God—a personal relationship, not a collective one. If we concede ownership of ourselves to anyone, it is to God, not a secular state.

Timothy Birdnow, writing in The American Thinker, has an article in the most recent issue that demonstrates the divergence of views on people as property. Too many believe the Civil War and the 13th Amendment, Article I, ended slavery. That Amendment may have ended “legal” slavery, but not the philosophy nor the concept of people as property supported by centuries of European thought and writings from Rousseau to Marx to Benito Mussolini, to more modern writers of the Progressive movement.

The Individual as Property

By Timothy Birdnow, May 1, 2013

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What is the nature of the relationship between the citizen and the State? America was founded on principles found in the Bible and in the writings of 17th century philosophers such as John Locke.

John Locke pointed out in his First Treatise on Government:

Though the Earth… be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself.

So, all men have first and foremost the right to own themselves.

This is of critical importance because it is this most fundamental principle that the modern Left and Right part company over. Liberals do not believe this basic assertion, preferring to believe that we as a collective own each other. This distinction is absolutely critical, because it informs our beliefs in terms of actions.

The English Philosophers Hobbes and Hume argued that property was a creation of the State, and were not held in high regard by the Founders of the United States. If property is a creation of the State, then one can argue that the State has sovereignty over the individual.

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As in communism and fascism, the entire undercurrent of modern liberalism is anti-individualism. Even the Anarchists, though they may seem to be radical individualists, ultimately seek the collectivization of property as a means to grant themselves the individualism they seem to believe in — making them as statist as any other leftist branch. Without property rights one cannot have individual rights.

It is no surprise that the general degradation of property rights should coincide with the rise of statism and the devaluing of the individual. Either we own property — including ourselves – or we do not.

Rousseau, Marx, Mussolini all disdained the concept of personal ownership or personal sovereignty. To them and modern progressives, the individual must be subordinate to the state. 

This is the concept that allows Mayor Bloomberg to issue his edicts to govern our personal lives, what we eat, how much, what we do, and may or may not own. Bloomberg believes he can issue those orders because the “citizens” of New York City are property of the state, in this case New York City. The City (State), therefore, can impose its collective will on their property, the residents of the city.

A more recent example was the Siege of Boston and pillaging of personal rights from the residents of Watertown. In their search for the Marathon Bombers, the State, ignored the 1st and 4th Amendment rights of the residents of Watertown because as property of the state, those residents had no rights not allowed by the state. History shows us that what the state has given, the state can take away. View those photos of people being rousted from their homes at gunpoint, look at them being forced from their homes, hands raised, helpless before armed troops.

Do we own ourselves or do we not? The progressives say no. That is why they wish to disarm us. An armed populace has the ability to resist the state’s effort to make us their property.

I invite you to read Birdnow’s article. It does invoke thought.