Thursday, March 19, 2015


Online story: " They say the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes. President Barack Obama wants to add one more: voting. * Obama floated the idea of mandatory voting in the U.S. while speaking to a civic group in Cleveland on Wednesday" -- "mandatory voting"? What's next.. single candidate ballots? You know.. there are some countries that have mandatory voting.. some enforce it, others do not..what you won't hear from Obamageddon is that in major general elections, countries with "mandatory voting" get only about 10% more participation than the US.
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Good grief.. how can Obamageddon be "for" mandatory voting, and "against" mandatory voter ID....and proof of citizenship....
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James Madison penned our Constitution in 1787, and it was ratified in 1788.. Obamageddon cannot "ratify changes with his pen and phone.
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BTW.. the closest country to the US with mandatory voting is Mexico (about 120M population), and more than 10% of Mexico's population has fled and illegally resides in the US.
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Online quote source: " “Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.” -- Hmmm.. then how can Democrats support Obamageddon and Hillewinsky?
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In a nutshell, education is the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Education is supposed to be a learning experience.. and one that is a lifetime journey. Education is about questioning things you don't understand or simply just wanting to know more about something. The key to learning is asking questions..asking people of a certain belief why they believe such. The smartest people in my life believed there is no such thing as a "stupid" question, but there are "stupid" responses. Denying a student in class, or a parent at a MCSD/MCSB meeting an opportunity to question the status quo denies the truth from coming to light. Education is a process of enlightenment, not shutting up questions into a closet.
If you have a good idea...a good product.. you welcome questions..you should welcome the idea of bringing more people on board. Why does the MCSB/MCSD discourage.... even stifle questions?
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Oh! I learned something last night.. remember during the period before the SPLOST election that I pointed out that the construction estimate of those wrestling buildings were being promoted at $312.00 a square foot... well I was think how intolerably overpriced that was for a cement block/slab building. Last night I learned that the buildings were going to be prefab metal ones which are way cheaper than cement block construction! ASK QUESTIONS and DEMAND ANSWERS and a FORENSIC AUDIT!
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Excuse me, but why is a phone threat against Caroline Kennedy a "breaking news" item? She's in Japan, and I'm sure hourly flights home are plentiful.
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One if the oldest adages is, The enemy if my enemy is my friend"...of course, said "friend" is not necessarily going to be you ally once a current situation has been resolved. Iran will never be America's friend.
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You know ..with less than 17% of the registered voters in Muscogee County going to the polls on a tax issue makes one deduce that traditional newspaper & audio/video advertising no longer reaches the general audience in significant numbers or ways.
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Had an interesting.. well, maybe more "disturbing" than interesting conversation this past Tuesday night at a fund raising event. A man who lives in Harris County (to avoid Columbus' higher property tax rates) has a number of commercial holdings in South Columbus. He says rising tax rates on his commercial properties are "killing him" and that the solution is to end the "tax freeze" on residential properties. He thought that would slow down commercial tax raises. Hate to say it, but he's been sipping too many Kool-Aid cocktails with Mayor TomLYINGson.. Lifting the "tax freeze" will not reduce property taxes on residential or commercial properties... not EVER! Lifting it in ANY way will only provide huge windfall tax revenues, and once the City government spends such a superfluous one time surge of revenues , the taste of more tax revenues every year will become insatiable, and without the tax freeze, it becomes more doable for the City to attain.
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You know.. I have proposed a condition that I would at least listen to a plan to lift the freeze.. but it's not going to happen.. it would require work and due diligence on the tax assessor's and mayor's offices to keep property values current. My idea would be for Council to declare a two year moratorium on billing property tax revenues that would limit such to the total existing dollar amount being collected from the current tax digest at that time. Take my neighborhood for example: my neighbor bought his house the same time as the person I bought my house from. When I bought my house, the previous owner paid about the same taxes as his, but now, my neighbor. His taxes remained at about $3,000.00, and mine went instantly to over $5,000.00. Now, if the freeze is lifted under Mayor TomLYINGson's plan, my neighbor's taxes would soar to $5,000.00. Now, if a plan were installed that would limit taxes during the two-year moratorium that collected only the amount our two houses combined are paying (about $8,000), then we would both start out at $4,000.00. From there, reassessments could be made on a 2 or 3 year pattern (or on a sale price if either of us sold) and taxes levied on the actual values, whether market prices rise or fall, with the proviso that the sale of my neighbor's house at a higher value does not mean an automatic assessment increase on my property.
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L-E headline: "Water Works customers to see one-month spike in bill" -- Two questions: Since Feb and March are two of the lowest water consumption usage months (most don't even use the minimum ).. how come the CWW "thinks" we all will owe an extra $30-$40 bucks? Second question is how does the CWW come up with 65,000 households, while the City Manager says garbage collection is conducted at 55,000 households? Wait ..one more question: Since water has 10,000 more customers than the garbage collections, does that mean those 10,000 are either not being charged for a garbage fee or does it mean that the CWW is charging a garbage fee on 10,000 residences that don't have garbage?
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Oh! I learned something last night.. remember during the period before the SPLOST election that I pointed out that the construction estimate of those wrestling buildings were being promoted at $312.00 a square foot... well I was think how intolerably overpriced that was for a cement block/slab building. Last night I learned that the buildings were going to be prefab metal ones which are way cheaper than cement block construction!
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Curiosity question.. if the MCSD is going to retrofit three now empty classrooms for autism students, doesn't that mean the previously used classroom will now become empty? If not.. WHY
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L-E story: "L-E story: "A Turman Realty Company house located in the 900 block of Brighton Road was reportedly stripped of $5,000 worth of copper pipe between Monday night and Tuesday afternoon, Columbus police said." -- RED FLAG! Excuse me, but houses in that area sell for $40-to-$50,000 dollars, and we're to believe a house (and possibly a rental house) there has $5,000.00 worth of copper pipe inside.. installed or just new "to be installed doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

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