Category — Florida

Update: I finally located the Official Returns link, that isn’t on the Division of Elections page because people might look at it if they could find it. 😈

The Florida primary is today and everyone needs to go to the polls and vote, even if the Democratic National Committee doesn’t recognize the votes. because the Republicans have a nasty tax cut on the ballot that needs to be defeated. The only people who will be helped by Amendment 1 are the same old group that has been helped by several earlier measures. New homeowners get nothing from it, and the state legislature is setting up the school districts for another funding cut, forcing the districts to either reduce services in our already marginal system, or raise school property taxes. It’s the Reagan tax fake – the guys at the top cut taxes forcing the guys below them to raise taxes to make up the lost revenue.

The Florida tax code needs to be rewritten, not patched, but the legislature doesn’t want to do the work.

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FYI: the Florida League of Cities is the prime mover behind Florida is Our Home, the organization sending out all of the fliers and making the robo-calls against Amendment 1. I agree with them on the amendment, but they should tone down the rhetoric.

Here’s the text that will appear on your ballot tomorrow:

CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION

ARTICLE VII, SECTIONS 3, 4, AND 6

ARTICLE XII, SECTION 27

(Legislative)

Property Tax Exemptions; Limitations on Property Tax Assessments

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Sinfonian notes says that Florida’s senators predictably endorse front-runners indicating that Bill Nelson♥Clinton and Mel Martinez♥McCain, just like the New York Times, but I was slightly surprised that Bill didn’t endorse Obama like his “twin”, Ben from Nebraska. The Nelsons are almost as reliable as Joe LIEberman when the Republicans need votes.

Sinfonian vowed to find someone to oppose our supposed Democratic Senator when he runs again simply because Bill Nelson hates the Constitution. I told Nelson to kiss my grits before his last election in 2006 and left the line for Senator blank on my ballot. I’m now free to complain about him with a clear conscience.

To be totally honest, I wouldn’t have been surprised if both my Senators endorsed John McCain.

In Florida the race is on for fourth place – can Rudy Giuliani beat Ron Paul in the Florida Republican primary?

Patricia Hollarn, the Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections, has done her best to summarize Amendment One on the sample ballot, but it’s still a solution in search of a problem. They are just shifting the tax burden, instead of fixing the system.

To make it worse, you will note that the school district taxes are exempt from the the supposed reductions. Those who remember the Reagan years already know what’s going to happen. Tallahassee will now reduce aid to education and the school districts will have to raise their taxes to make up the difference. What you thought you were going to save has just been shifted, not eliminated.

People need to vote no because their taxes are about to be reduced anyway, just as soon as their property gets assessed again. Most of the increase in tax bills was a result of increased assessments from the housing bubble, and now that the bubble has burst, the assessments will go down between 20 and 40%. The local governments already know this is coming, which is why they are against this amendment. They will have to cut services as a result of the new assessments, because you can’t raise taxes in an “economic slowdown”.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

Sometimes it gets so bad that even the wheeler-dealers in South Florida don’t want to touch it. CBS reports on The $10M “Gift” Nobody Wanted:

(CBS) This earmark mystery stretches all the way from the Alaskan tundra to the warm beaches of South Florida.

“Basically, we were given a gift that we didn’t want,” Estero Council of Community Leaders chairman Don Eslick told CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. “And it was for the wrong thing.”

The “gift” was $10 million tax dollars earmarked from Congress for traffic needs. But not just any traffic need. The money had to be used to connect Coconut Road, a deadend street, with the major Interstate I-75.

The question was why?

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

The recent changes enacted by the Postal Service weren’t simply an increase in the price of stamps. There were other changes in the package that is shifting costs from large corporations to the people at the bottom. Many of you have heard of the large increases for small periodicals as compared to the big guys, but there are also changes that affect the individual.

A big change is that almost anything that isn’t a standard #10 envelope is going to cost you more to mail. Sinfonian at Blast Off! has a prime example of this: absentee ballots. The Palm Beach county absentee ballot will cost 91¢ to mail back, not a single first class stamp, because it is not a standard sized envelope.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

As is typical of the Florida legislature, there’s always time to screw things up but never time to to actually fix them. So it goes with Amendment 1 on the ballot on January 29^th, along with the possibly meaningless Presidential primary vote. Even if your vote for a Presidential candidate doesn’t count, your vote on Amendment 1 most definitely will.

Republicans will vote for this turkey reflexively because “it’s a tax cut,” without really reading it to find out who’s taxes are being cut and by how much. The Florida division of elections has a PDF of the Property tax initiative, which is actually the existing law with all of the changes made by the initiative superimposed.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

This is a Christmas Cactus among the ivy on the fence to my Mother’s side yard. The camellias are also starting to bloom, but might take a hit if the temperature drops a little lower. We have to “put up” with these distractions instead of snow.