Firms’ Prop. 13 Savings Are Coveted – Newer property owners resent the lower taxes paid by long time property owners. It’s amazing how much energy is expended in our country in support of envy over what others have. Didn’t envy used to be one of the seven deadly sins? We’ve evolved to the point in our society where it is very acceptable and literally drives official government policies, as I described below.

As I’ve pointed out on far too many occasions, it is considered acceptable to discriminate, penalize and do all sorts of nasty things to the evil rich among us. Once it is agreed that it is proper to do bad things to a certain segment of our society, it comes down to defining where the line is between those to have bulls-eyes painted on them and the others who don’t deserve the harsh treatment. As I’ve described, in most areas, this line is defined by AGI (adjusted gross income) on 1040s. Those having income over the arbitrarily set amounts are to be penalized and persecuted.

If it isn’t obvious enough where I stand on this issue, it’s that we should all be treated equally. I dislike the entire concept of someone on their throne in Washington DC deciding who has enough and who doesn’t. That is just fine for communist societies; but has no place in a capitalist free market economy as established by our founding fathers.

For estate (aka death and inheritance) taxes, the defining point of who should have their family’s wealth stripped away and who may pass it on is defined by the size of their net estate at the time they pass away. That is currently one million dollars per person and scheduled to increase over the next few years.

Those of us who believe that nobody should be deprived of the right to retain his/her hard earned wealth in the family are having to fight people like this who openly resent rich people and feel it is the responsibility of government to equalize everyone by force. There is a name for these kinds of people. Just the idea of one group of elitists dictating who is average and who is evil rich is disgusting and is no different than having the government mandating what size home is allowable for each person in this country or in other ways telling us how to live our lives.

We have an increasingly unmistakable case of deja vu here. In spite of a huge approval rating after the 1991 Gulf War, Bush 41 alienated plenty of his conservative base by breaking his “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, leading to his record as a single term president. Bush 43 is following the same path with his support of bigger government spending. Many conservatives are expressing their displeasure with this blatant and very unprincipled attempt to buy votes from the DemonRats’ traditional constituency.

Let’s hope that, in acting on this disapproval, disenchanted Bush supporters will vote for a real small government choice (Libertarian Party) in November 2004 rather than sit out the election or waste their votes on a crackpot like Ross Perot.

Our rulers have done such an excellent job in forecasting the costs of other huge entitlement programs, why not let them just keep on going?

Calif. Near Financial Disaster – They’ve been on the brink of collapse before, and always survive. They’re trying to scare people into accepting higher taxes rather than cuts in the cost of government programs.