11-10-2010, 03:59 PM
Garvin, some of your basic facts are just wrong. Republicans controlled the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2007. They controlled the U.S. Senate from 2003 to 2007. And George W. Bush was president from 2001-2009. Have you been living in an alternative universe in which Al Gore won the Florida recount? You had a front-row seat for that circus.
Some more facts: California has had a Republican governor since 2003. And while the Democrats have long controlled the Legislature, tax increases require a two-thirds vote, which has given the GOP effective veto power over tax increases.
More esoterically, Prop. 13 doesn\'t just affect properties that haven\'t been sold since the late \'70s, although the owners of those properties are its biggest beneficiaries. When a property is sold, a new assessed value is established, but that assessed value can only rise by a maximum of 2 percent each year. So if you bought a California home in the early \'90s, when home prices slumped, and held onto it through the property boom of the last decade, you saved a lot as a result of Prop. 13.
If you go back and re-read my last post, you\'ll see that I do think the government needs to cut spending. I also that federal income taxes should go back up to their levels in the 1990s -- America\'s disastrous socialist experiment. 8-)
Some more facts: California has had a Republican governor since 2003. And while the Democrats have long controlled the Legislature, tax increases require a two-thirds vote, which has given the GOP effective veto power over tax increases.
More esoterically, Prop. 13 doesn\'t just affect properties that haven\'t been sold since the late \'70s, although the owners of those properties are its biggest beneficiaries. When a property is sold, a new assessed value is established, but that assessed value can only rise by a maximum of 2 percent each year. So if you bought a California home in the early \'90s, when home prices slumped, and held onto it through the property boom of the last decade, you saved a lot as a result of Prop. 13.
If you go back and re-read my last post, you\'ll see that I do think the government needs to cut spending. I also that federal income taxes should go back up to their levels in the 1990s -- America\'s disastrous socialist experiment. 8-)