Political Cartoon is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Do Property Owners Have Any Rights ?
There was a time in this country's history when the owners of private property could do pretty well what they wanted with their own property, as long as they didn't damage their neighbors (such as diverting a public water source to deny water to others that have traditionally had access to it). The owner could build on it, run a business on it, or do nothing at all with it. But those days are gone.
Now city ordinances, state laws, homeowner groups, and who knows what else have combined to limit what a property owner can do with his/her property. A homeowner is told what kind of house can be built and even what color it must be. A businessman is told not only what kind of building he can construct, but what his signs can look like and even what kind of business he can have in that location.
I know there are many who disagree with me, but I generally don't like those kind of laws and restrictions. They trample all over the rights of the property owner. The owner put up the money to buy the property and is solely responsible for paying any taxes due on that property, and should be able to do whatever he/she wants to do with the property. This continuing battle over property rights has popped up again -- this time in Arlington, Texas. And I think the city has gone too far with its greed this time.
The new Cowboys Stadium was built in Arlington right next to the baseball stadium that is home to the Texas Rangers. Together, the two facilities have 27,000 parking spaces. There are another 97 properties with city permits (costing from $150 to $400) that have another 12,000 parking spaces. And then there is Michael Anthony Caldwell.
Mr. Caldwell owns some property near the two stadiums, and he has been renting out parking spaces on his property during big events held at Cowboys Stadium (U2 concert, Cowboys games, etc.). This has upset the city of Arlington because Caldwell doesn't have a city permit to park cars on his property. They have issued him repeated tickets for the parking -- tickets that total to more than $120,000.
Caldwell has not paid the ridiculous fines, and the city is taking him to court. His trial will start today in Arlington Municipal Court for 40 of the over 390 citations he has received. Now you're probably asking yourself why doesn't he just get a city permit? He's tried, but the city has refused to sell him a permit.
To get a city permit, the property owner must have a business on the property, provide lighting, stripe the parking lot, have a sign showing the rates and have parking attendants. Caldwell cannot qualify because he does not have a business on his property, since an office building that was there burned down in 2008.
The city is afraid if they let Caldwell make money just off parking cars, the property might remain undeveloped and therefore be less valuable for tax purposes. In other words, their motive is "city greed". A commercial parking venture will not provide the city with as much tax money as another type of business would (even though commercial parking makes imminent sense near the two sports and entertainment facilities).
Personally, I think the city is way out of line in this matter. Caldwell owns the property and pays his property taxes (even if they are somewhat less than the city would like to have), and he should be able to make money off parking just like the properties all around his property. He provides a needed service, and is hurting no one. He even meets most city requirements -- the exception being he has no other business on his property.
I hope the Municipal Court jury chosen to hear his case has more sense than the city officials. A property owner should have at least some rights, even in our modern world. The city's desire for more taxes should not be able to trump this property owner's right to use his property as he sees fit.
The city of Arlington is in the wrong, not the property owner.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Americans Still Want Health Care Reform
The Republicans, and even a few gutless Democrats, have been preaching that Americans don't want health care reform. They point to Brown's victory in Massachusetts as proof of that. According to them, the people voted against health care reform as much as voted for Brown.
But that is just not true, as a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows. The poll was taken of 1,009 adult Americans between January 22nd and 24th. It is true that a clear majority of Americans did not like what the Senate and House had come up with and called "reform". A full 58% of the public did not like those bills -- and this includes both people from the right and from the left.
These people saw those two rather pathetic bills as a poor excuse for real reform. It shows that the American people are not nearly as stupid as Congress seems to think they are. The poll asked what Congress should do now, and gave three options -- pass bill similar to those approved by House and Senate, start over on an entirely new bill or stop trying to pass any kind of health reform. Here are the results:
Pass a similar bill..........30%
Start work on a new bill..........48%
Stop work on health care..........21%
No opinion..........1%
Health care reform wins hands down. Nearly half of Americans would like for Congress to start over with an entirely new bill, and a full 78% want to see some kind of health care reform passed. Only one in five Americans is actually opposed to health care reform.
And they're not talking about some kind of wimpy band-aid approach to health care reform. The poll then asked if the people would approve of Congress just passing some new regulations for the health insurance companies without increasing the number of people covered by some kind of insurance. About 51% of the respondents said that would not be good enough.
Americans elected the Democrats because they promised to deliver real health care reform, and they are still waiting on them to deliver on that promise. The Democrats need to find their missing spines and start over on health care reform using the budget reconciliation process. They need to rein in the excesses and wrongdoing by private insurance, and include a public option that would bring down premiums and insure that all Americans have insurance coverage.
The American people still want health care reform. They are waiting. How about it, Democrats? Can you deliver?
It Is Just A Slice Of Cheese
The McDonald's corporation has just received a rude awakening in the Netherlands. Evidently, they thought they could abuse their European employees the same way they do their American employees. They were wrong.
It all started last March, when one of their waitresses sold a hamburger to a co-worker. Then the co-worker asked for cheese and she gave it to him (without charging extra for the cheese). McDonald's fired the waitress.
The company said the addition of that single slice of cheese made the hamburger a cheeseburger and the waitress should have charged more for it. They said the waitress had violated staff rules which prohibited free gifts to family, friends or colleagues.
The waitress sued the company over the termination. I think McDonald's was surprised when the Dutch court sided with the waitress (after all, it was one whole slice of cheese -- never mind the fact that they undoubtedly still made a profit on the burger).
The court agreed the waitress had done wrong, but said a written reprimand would have been more appropriate. But the beautiful part was the courts reasoning. They wrote, "The dismissal was too severe a measure. It is just a slice of cheese." The court awarded the waitress 4,200 euros ($5,900) for the remaining five months of her contract.
So the company gets to pay the waitress for her remaining time, but don't get a minute's worth of work out of her. And the worst part -- they're still out a whole slice of cheese.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Teabagger Convention Is For-Profit Scam
Even though they've had their efforts publicized by Fox News and funded by large right-wing organizations like FreedomWorks, the teabaggers are still not a very organized group of people. They can't even agree on the best way to proceed now that they've made a name for themselves.
Some of them want to start a new teabagger third party. Others want to take over the Republican Party (which they rightly believe is owned by Wall Street). This has already happened in Florida, where establishment party leaders have been ousted and replaced by teabagger leaders.
Then there was word of a teabagger convention to be held in Nashville in February of this year. The organizer of the convention, attorney Judson Phillips, tried to pass off the convention as an effort to unify the teabaggers and provide direction for their future efforts. The fly in the ointment is that he has set his organization, Tea Party Nation, up as a for-profit organization.
In other words, if a profit is made off the convention, he's under no obligation to use those funds toward future teabagger efforts or campaigns. It would be perfectly legal (and very probable) for Phillips to just put the money in his own bank account, and congratulate himself on a successful money-making venture.
Consider the following. He is selling about 500 tickets to the convention for $560 each (and this does NOT include the cost of hotel rooms). That's a cool $280,000 right there. And don't forget that he's booked Sarah Palin for a speech that he's selling tickets to an additional 600 people for several hundred dollars each. That pushes the take up to around half a million dollars. And that doesn't count the sponsors Phillips has lined up for the event.
He does have to pay for a convention room, but not a very large one -- it only has to have room for 500 participants (and he can easily squeeze another 600 in for just one speech). This space probably doesn't even cost as much as he's paying Sarah Palin to make her speech. And I imagine details like sound system, security, etc. are probably included in the money he'll pay for the convention space.
That leaves him with the cost of Sarah Palin. Rumor has it that she will receive $100,000 for her (probably incoherent) speech. Neither Phillips nor Palin will confirm or dent that this is what she'll be paid, but that in itself confirms the amount. As sensitive as Palin is to bad publicity, I'm sure she would make it known if she was receiving less than that.
I'm betting that Phillips will clear at least $200,000 profit off the convention (probably more). And it looks like some of the teabaggers are finally waking up to the fact that they are being scammed by an unscrupulous lawyer.
Knoxville teabagger Antonio Hinton says, "I don't begrudge people making money, but that's not what the tea party is about. That convention has nothing to do with the tea party movement, as far as I'm concerned." A Nashville-based teabagger called Tea Party Nation "dishonest" and said it is "hijacking the tea party movement."
Conservative and RedState blogger Erick Erickson thinks it "smells scammy" and says, "I think it is a great con of people making money off the passions of others. . .A $500+ per person fee to a for-profit organization run by people most people have never heard of is neither populist nor accessible for many tea party activists."
At least three sponsors have also withdrawn their support after learning the event is a profit-making venture for Phillips. American Majority, a training group for teabagger organizations, withdrew and said, "Who is this guy? What are his motivations? And what gives him the credibility to try to step in and insert himself as a leader of the movement?"
And now it looks like the convention may suffer the greatest insult of all. Some teabagger organizations are saying they may actually picket the convention. Can you imagine teabaggers picketing outside of a teabagger convention?
Most readers of this blog will know that I have very little respect for the teabagger movement, but I also hate to see people being taken advantage of. I'm glad they are finally waking up and realizing that this convention is nothing more than a scam to separate them from their hard-earned money.
Was The Massachusetts Election Stolen ?
It's over in Massachusetts and soon they will be sending a Republican to the Senate to fill the seat of Edward Kennedy. But the excellent web site Black Box Voting has raised some questions about the accuracy of the election returns. It seems there is a significant discrepancy between hand counted ballots and electronically counted ballots.
This is a very unusual anomaly for a fairly held election. For instance, when the hand counted ballots and the electronically counted ballots were compared in Maine's recent election, they showed very similar percentages on the gay marriage question. This is the norm, but it is not what happened in Massachusetts.
That state had 71 hand counted location, 91 ES&S locations, 187 Diebold locations and two locations with some kind of optical scanners. Here are the results for the different kinds of locations:
HAND COUNTED
Coakley 51.12%..........Brown 47.77%
Coakley 32,247..........Brown 30,136
ES&S COUNTED
Brown 53.64%..........Coakley 45.31%
Brown 332,812..........Coakley 281,118
DIEBOLD COUNTED
Brown 51.42%..........Coakley 47.61%
Brown 791,272..........Coakley 732,633
When you add this to the locations that reported late (2 1/2 hours or more), it is cause for some raised eyebrows. The hand counted locations had 8.45% of their locations reporting late. The ES&S locations had 13.2% of it's locations reporting late, including two locations that were the last locations of any kind to report statewide. Diebold had 12.83% of their locations reporting late.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the main selling points for electronic voting the fact they they would be counted and reported much faster than hand counted ballots? Why didn't that happen in Massachusetts? Both types of electronic voting machines had a larger percentage of late ballots than the hand counted ballots.
All of the electronically counted locations should have been reported in less than an hour. What was happening in these precincts that made them take over 2 1/2 hours to report their results?
None of this actually proves that Brown did not win the election, but it is enough to raise some questions. Did Brown win the election? We may never know for sure, because Coakley wimped out and conceded before all the votes were even reported. Personally, I would feel better about the results if a hand recount had been requested.
Monday, January 25, 2010
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