Keeping Up the Fight

I have to congratulate fellow Libertarian Karl Kimball for his persistence in working his butt off to allow the voters of Arkansas an opportunity to express their opinion about having to pay sales taxes on human foods and medicines. Animal food is already exempt. Karl has been spear-heading the effort to obtain enough petition signatures to satisfy the Secretary of State. Several thousand signatures were recently tossed out for ridiculous reasons. Now, Karl has come back with 27,000 more, which should be plenty.

As always, the fight isn’t even close to being over. The fans of high taxes are scared to death to allow voters to have any power when it comes to taxation. They will definitely be pulling several more dirty tricks and spending huge amounts of tax dollars to get the initiative kicked off of the ballot, as they have done dozens of times for similar tax cutting measures just in the nine years we have been living here.

The bureaucrats and other fans of big government have good reason to worry, if this poll is accurate. 72 percent of respondents have said they support the repeal of the sales tax on food and medicine. In typical fashion, the tax supporters claim that the respondents are too stupid to know what they are talking about.

KMK

Talking Tax Forms

Making sure that the tax system is accessible by everyone, IRS is planning to post on its web site talking tax forms for blind people to use in preparing their tax returns. Interesting; but I doubt that I would trust it. Many of the forms are so poorly designed and utterly confusing for those of us who can read them and their instructions, I can only imagine what the verbal equivalent will sound like.

KMK

Sinking Deeper

One of the main reasons I decided almost ten years ago to leave the PRC was the continuous steady erosion of freedoms and property rights. Having owned rental properties myself, as well as working with hundreds of clients who also were landlords, I knew all too well that the laws in that state were all slanted in favor of tenants and against the rights of property owners. The State Rulers in Sacramento operate under the assumption that all landlords are so stinking rich that they don’t need any rental income. Professional tenants who know how to work the system can easily live in a home for six months rent free, and can often actually make money by extorting landlords to pay them to vacate.

The scariest movie ever made from a landlord perspective is Pacific Heights, with Michael Keaton as the tenant from Hell who goads property owners into attacking him and then he brings charges and gets the property. These people actually exist. We had a psycho tenant on our Palomares Canyon ranch who used that movie as his guide and was actually telling people that he was going to get our property. Luckily, we were able to get him out without losing the property; but we are still so gun-shy about having tenants that we have refused several offers to rent the extra houses on our current ranch. Even though the laws in Arkansas aren’t as heavily biased in favor of tenants, we still don’t feel comfortable.

What triggered this rant is this article from the PRC that they have now passed yet another law allowing tenants to live rent free for even longer. Property owners have no rights. It is no coincidence that many of my clients have been liquidating their California rental properties and reinvesting tax free into rentals in other states, where private property rights are given more respect. It is also yet another confirmation that leaving the PRC was the smartest move I could have ever made.

KMK