Once taxes go up, they never go down
Regarding “Assessing Assessment” (Feb 8th) you tell us that Mr. Earls likes to tell (lecture) us that if assessments go down, i.e. truly reflect housing values, “it would wreak havoc on schools, fire districts, city government and dozens of other vital services”. This kind of skewed logic asks us to ignore the fact that all of these “essential” services were doing just fine on 22% less only two years ago. Government officials and politicians always love to tell us that any tax reduction would cripple “essential services”, implying that all tax increase only go to these essential services and never to government bloat.
Some of these same officials also want us to believe that the sales price for some house sales, for example foreclosure prices, “do not count” because, they argue, they represent below market prices. Foreclosure prices, however, no more misrepresent the low end of the market when prices are falling than did the outlandish prices some paid for houses on the high end of the housing bubble. I donʼt recall the assessors deciding that these prices would not count. The market is a collection of all prices but government officials only want to regard as “acceptable” those sales that fit their needs for bigger government.
If, as Mr. Earls seems to be arguing, we cannot now lower taxes because of his view of the resultant “havoc” then letʼs just simply change the tax code to simply and clearly state—”once taxes go up they shall never go down”. Because, after all, we simply cannot possibly survive without all the new, but now essential, government spending.
Ken Cange
St. Albans
Great letter Ken. Mr Earls is obviously one of those gloom and doom politicians. You know, the kind of stuff the Obama is doing now. “If we dont pass this stimulus bill, there can only be a catastrophe.” I gotta give Obama credit. He sure knows how to talk positive about the nation. He needs to take lessons from Ronald Reagan who always talked positive about the United States.
Sorry to stray off the subject but these Democrats are the gloom and doom party. They believe in big government and paying these people big bucks with lots of extras to go with it. You know, lots of days off and everything is paid for. Funny how government can do that and can never do without less, but we sure can!
This is Democratic politics of fear, just as in the economy and global warming.
This is part of the Marxist theory. Isolate the fear and capitalize on it.
Government will then become the opiate of the masses.
I posted earlier about a guy who aske BHO the same thing in Fl this morning. The guy pays his mortgage, gets taxed on what he payed for it, lost his equity. Simply wants to know if uncle BHO will help him out as well as those who got us into this mess,,,,,the ones who knowingly obtained mortgages they knew they could not afford. No response from our “choosen one” lots of tap dancing. He was all too eager to help out the lady who actually got forclosed on,,,,,same town hall meeting
Thanks to the Democrats….dum dum dum
superdave,
I am responding to your comment in a previous thread about name calling and attacks. Just ignore it. Do not engage. It’s like getting crank phone calls — if you just hang up, or don’t answer, the person will stop because it isn’t fun. Also, I look at names before I read comments, and there are some posters that I almost never even read.
Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11) appeared on C-Span recently and described the visit they got from Paulson and Bernanke on Sept. 18, 2008. For anyone who believes there should not have been an original bailout, what do you think of Paulson and Bernanke’s prediction of a collapse of the US and World economies? If they were correct, do you wish that we had gone down that path?
(LINK) Video
Transcript (at ~2:10 into the video):
I was there when the secretary and the chairman of the Federal Reserve came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on… Here’s the facts. We don’t even talk about these things.
On Thursday, at about 11 o’clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to a tune of $550 billion being drawn out in a matter of an hour or two.
The Treasury opened up its window to help. They pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks.
They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic out there. And that’s what actually happened.
If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.
Now we talked at that time about what would have happened if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.
Depression here we come.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409
Thanks for the link Lisa, but I have a problem with Paulsen and the rest of those guys. It’s called, who do you trust. At this point it is very difficult to trust politicians who spend other people’s money like its monopoly money and then they come to us and cry wolf. Sorry, I am not biting.
Regardless of whether this is true or not, my problem is that here they go spending again. What, they didnt learn from what they started. Didnt they learn that not all people should get a loan for a house? It was our pathetic politicians that started this mess. We pay them to keep the house in order. Well guess what, they are spending our money and really dont give a rats butt what happens. They live in their esteemed palaces and act as though they are one of us. Doesnt it make you wonder when you see Gingrich and Pelosi together talking about Global Warming. Neither one have credibility in my book. What about George Senior and Bill Clinton sitting together talking unity when Clinton just gave George Junior all kinds of grief.
They are the elites and we are the suckers. These guys that have been there forever need to go. Those that hang with those guys need to go. They dont have to pay their taxes but we very stiff penalties and interest to pay if we are late. We could even go to jail. Where were these same people with Geitner and Daschle? Its a different world for them and us. In the mean time, they play games with us as we bicker about little things down here in peasant land. Who are they kidding? Apparently its working now, isnt it?
They renamed Pork to Earmarks. They call this a “Stimulus” package when it isnt. Are we that easily swayed? If we keep electing these people we will only get the same. Shame on all of us for putting these people in power and worse than that, leaving them there for decades.
I heard the same version of the beginning of this meltdown that Lisa12 refers to earlier. I occurs to me it may well have been manipulated to dupe Bush into starting this whole mess. However, the part of the story that makes me doubt it all is that the $250,000 guarantee helped to slow the panic. Think about it, $550,000,000,000 in an hour - that is 2,200,000 units of $250,000. Is is reasonable to believe that anyone drawing money out at the rate of nearly $10,000,000,000 a minute are going to be impressed with a $250,000 guarantee?
Lisa12, have you thought for just a second that Kanjorski was covering his keister for voting for the bailout? Let’s work through this on a logical step-by-step.
Kanjorski says 550 billion was withdrawn in a few hours and estimates were that 5.5 trillion would have been withdrawn by the end of the day. And yet the bailout only put 350 billion into the banks? 350 billion stemmed a 5.5 trillion dollar tide and certain economic collapse? Come on, quit pulling my leg.