CardinalBacker

I'm curious how long it will be before Coach Johnston's seat starts warming up in Newton.... Are any of the locals out behind the ag barn plotting for changes, or is the job his-win or lose?

That’s the problem we’ve got now. The bills are so large that small percentage increases are actually big dollar amounts. It’s affecting peoples’ retirement plans. I know a young family that just bought in port Neches and their monthly tax bill comes out to $800/month on a $400k house. That’s before principal, interest, or insurance. $800/ month with 355 more payments to go, and they should expect that tax bill to double at least twice (to $3200/month) before the mortgage pays off. My $1500 tax bill 15 years ago is a $3k dollar bill now, but thanks to compounding of tax rates, you can expect that $3k bill to double in 15 more years to $6k.

That was pretty involved.. I'll use this example instead. The maximum allowed rate for some Fire Districts are allowed to tax up to $.10/per $100. That's the absolute highest rate that they can adopt. They're also limited to how much they can increase their total revenue (3.5%, max, w/o voter approval). Numerous ESD just keep adopting "10 cents, because our rate has always been ten cents." If property values go up by 20% but the rate stays at .10, your taxes also go up by 20 percent, not the 3.5% cap as per the legislature. But the taxpayers have a mechanism to fight, but somebody has to do it.

They "addressed" it with SB2 a couple of years ago. It limited the growth of new tax revenue by cities/counties to 3.5% per year (with exceptions), but did nothing about the biggest offender-ISDs. FWIW, the local governments have just rocked on and ignored the 3.5% rule in a lot of places because nobody was complaining- those governments seem to like the old rule where a mere 8% increase in total revenue every year without requiring voter approval is okay. SB2 allows a jump to 8% if there's a disaster. So basically they claim that Hurricane Laura and the Pandemic were both "disasters" and therefore allowed them to raise taxes beyond 3.5%. In a nutshell, local taxes are based on a tax rate adopted by the taxing units multiplied by the appraised values set by the Appraisal District. When tax rates are being considered for the coming year, the entities calculate what rate it would take to raise the same amount of money as last year using the new, higher values. Imagine that your total value of all of the property in your county was worth a billion dollars last year.... and the county needed 2 million dollars to operate. Last year's tax rate would have been .002 This year, the certified value of all of the properties in the area were raised to 1.2 billion (a 20% increase in value). The local government would only need a tax rate of .001666 to raise the same 2 million dollars that they raised last year. The legislature allows them to increase revenue by no more than 3.5% without an election.... that 3.5% increase would yield a rate of .001725 to raise $2,070,000,000. Basically speaking, if values go up, rates will have to go down.... but the most people don't understand the math. I've watched local politicians with the above scenario adopt a rate of .00199 (a much higher increase in tax revenue than allowed by law), then proudly crow "we cut your taxes" because the RATE is lower than last years.... and people clapped like seals. Meanwhile their raising much more than just 3.5% as allowed. It happens everywhere.

One of the bigger problems that I've seen is that they need approval to start "phasing in" the teeny, tiny consumption tax until they get around to eliminating the property tax. and we all know that the first would happen, but they'd forget about the second. Then the consumption tax would skyrocket, too.

I guess the question is, once they eliminate property taxes, how do you expect them to get their $3k-5K from you every year? Because those bills aren't going to pay themselves. Your property taxes don't make it to the state-they're collected and spent in your local community by your city, county, ISD (the largest one), Water districts, etc.... If you want meaningful change, elect local officials that will curtail spending. That's gonna mean sacrificing things like turf and video scoreboards, etc. Everybody wants lower taxes, but they also want all of the "things," too. That's what I find the funniest. Poor people saying "we need a consumption tax." In fact, the only people who would benefit are large landowners like Parkdale Mall, timber companies, etc... their bill goes away. Yours will just be swapped for a different kind of tax. Besides all of that, the consumption tax won't be collected locally. Your dollars will be collected and sent to Austin, and hopefully they'll give some back to you to spend in ways that they see fit. Good luck with that.

All joking aside, that's when I finally changed my stance on the abortion issue from "who cares?" to being pro-life... when the Dem Party Platform in 2012 declared support for a woman's right to abort, "regardless of her ability to pay." I'm strongly opposed to abortion personally, but that's just my belief. I felt like people should have the right to choose.. unless their "right" to choose means that I have to pay to support that immoral (in my opinion) act... in that case I guess it shouldn't be legal. But, there's enough stupidity to go around. Righties are talking about prosecuting people for taking abortion pills and outlawing contraception in any form. It's just too much. [Hidden Content] "The platform supports a woman’s right to seek a “safe and legal” abortion, regardless of her ability to pay."

Not exactly... for most of them it's loyalty to Trump, not even the Party or America.

All kidding aside, I’d take Trump in that one.

It'll be interesting to see if the Biden docs were as "top secret" as the Trump docs... if anybody ever says, anyways. The main difference that I see is that the Feds were aware that Trump had the docs, then Trump's attorneys said that they'd all been turned over when they obviously hadn't.... in this instance it sounds like Biden's people sort of self-reported and immediately turned everything over. But I honestly haven't read much on the subject. It's a pretty ironic turn of events, I've to say. AG Garland just announced that they are launching an investigation.

Here's the deal... Gallery runs promotions that say "If the Astros win the World Series, your furniture is free!" They sell a bunch of furniture and since the odds of winning are such a long shot, Mac only needs to put up a portion of his actual sales. If his bet wins, he uses the winnings to make up the funds lost by refunding people for their furniture. If he loses, he's still up because so the promotion brought in so much in extra sales, and he's only putting a portion of those sales into his wagers... He's taking a small haircut on a loss, but it's not bad at all, apparently. And he has national news giving him tons of free advertising.

I'm all about a progressive tax... Nobody ever expected a 40% top bracket, though. We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. You're not wrong about the tax code being too complex. I've got a BBA and it's no small matter to file my taxes... It would be practically impossible without third party software. There's absolutely no way that Johnny Punchclock could file his own 1040 anymore.

It's been "the Groves" for as long as I can remember... Nobody is gonna mention how PN people have always had a little "superiority" complex over the Groves people?

It's been "libtards" here forever and I don't remember you standing up for the mentally challenged then. I guess it's only a problem when it's directed at YOUR friends.

Joe Rogan on Donald Trump: “The morons have a king.”

Is it true that the first thing McCarthy did was thank his Lord and Savior Donald Trump for getting him elected Speaker? Edit: Yup. He went there.

I'd like to see a source that says 80% of Republican voters don't want McCarthy. I'm confident that you made that one up on the fly.

73% of voters don't approve of Congress at all. [Hidden Content] And your 80% number seems really, really bad wrong. The average republican can't pick McCarthy out of a lineup, much less know that they don't want him. My guess is that the real numbers run more consistent with the House where 90% are fine with him, but 10% are vehemently opposed. That 90% of Representatives who keep voting for McCarthy aren't doing it against their constituents' wishes.

That was at 4a.m. The polices weren't called until noon. That sounds really, really strange to me.

I recognized the problem a while back. Our government functions in this manner. One party gets the slimmest of possible majorities and then uses their "power" to force THEIR version of politics on everybody else. Reform the entire Healthcare system without a single crossover vote? We got the votes. Tax cuts without a single Democratic vote? Sure.... we got the votes. It's all about forcing the masses to take what you have the "flex" to do. It's Manchin holding out for the Dems to sweeten the pot enough so he could sell the rest of us out. It's Rand Paul screwing us all on not playing ball on "Repeal and Replace." I heard somebody a while back celebrating Republican victories (in 2016, I'm pretty sure) and their point was "good! Now go to washington and don't give and inch on ANYTHING." I can remember thinking "what a stupid son of a _______." The entire purpose of representative government is get together with people with whom we don't agree and finding compromises that we can all live with. As I read through these posts it's nothing but more of the "we've got a tiebreaker in the Senate! That's a mandate to fundamentally change EVERYTHING about our way of life and we don't care what anybody across the aisle has to say." I guess the big difference about this week is that the Rs are doing it to each other, now... and I don't see the Dems doing it to each other very often. Did you see the Squad rfightingl this week to elect the most radical person in the whole caucus? Because that's pretty much what those jerks that are withholding are doing.... "McCarthy isn't radical enough for us... he's a MODERATE." Right. I think that our form of government is probably broken and the only solution will violent. There won't be pitched battle lines (North vs South, for example), it's going to truly be neighborhood vs neighborhood across the country. It's all just too acrimonious to last, IMO.

I think that Obama would be an interesting choice for Supreme Court Justice.... Don't get me wrong, I don't like his politics, but the guy is a Constitutional Scholar. If I were a Dem President needing to fill a seat I'd explore it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you'd only need five more votes to Jeffries and he'd be the Speaker, right? I'm just saying... there's more than one way to end the gridlock.

The Republican Party isn't a party.. It's a group of people who are held hostage by the whims of the most extreme members of their unit. That's why the Democratic Party is superior to the Republican Party, as bad as it pains me to say it. Democrats wanted the ACA? They had the votes and got it passed. The Repubs promised to repeal and replace, and they had the votes... but they couldn't get it done. It's a party full of people who are only looking out for their own desires and interests, and they have no ability to come together and do what needs to be done. Once 19 of these 20 get on the same page, you'll have a few defectors who recognize their own new-found importance and demand that even MORE stringent demands are met. The Republicans just look like a bunch of clowns who can't even agree on a leader, much less do anything to further conservative issues in the House. It's an embarrassment. I'm with you... they'll lose the House in '24 if they don't get this done, now. America is watching a bunch of dudes that can't even work with each other, much less across the aisle... and that's what most Americans who aren't hardened partisans wants to see happen.

This explains it all…. [Hidden Content]

Basically you have 200 representatives that are at least pretending that they want to get started handling the business of running the Country... the other 20 or so are holding the process hostage unless they all agree to focus 100% of the body's time and effort on partisan investigations into garbage like "Hunter Biden's Laptop." The fact is this... if the Republicans can't get 218 votes on this, they won't be able to get 218 votes for anything else over the next two years, either. So much for getting anything done.