sad story in California

Anybody alive for this one?

---------------------

The grandfather of these endless permutations of using the Widows and Orphans technique to soak-the-poor and lavish-the-lucky-rich was Prop 13, the infamous California 1978 law that froze property taxes for those fortunate enough to have owned them that year, with only 2 percent added each year. Anyone buying a house thereafter paid taxes on the current market rate---- rates that having been skyrocketing as national urban house prices have tripled and quadrupled in the meantime. Prop 13 was designed by a small group whose goal was to shrink the state government to the advantage of the affluent and business.

At the time, I did a study of the treatment by the state newspapers of that revolutionary act. Overwhelmingly, Page One headlines and leading paragraphs told tale after tale of elderly couples and individuals in danger of losing their homes by foreclosure. Stories of real widows whose inherited ranches and gracious homes would be lost by high property taxes and force the poor owners to end up in rooming houses. The cases were often about genuine individuals and their real fears, but were the isolated mainstay of the horror stories in orations in the state legislature by the tax cutters.

The state's biggest newspapers took part in the game. I studied the 30 largest dailies and day after day leading to the election. The Page One and headlines of the stories before the election were about the imminent loss of homes by widows and the poor. There was substantial opposition that cited real fears about the danger of losing the model California public school system (supported, like most public schools, mainly form property taxes).
The opposition pointed to the cuts that would be needed in civic services like police and fire departments. But overwhelmingly, these were relegated to the inside pages and rebutted at once by those favoring Prop 13. (The major exception was the San Francisco Chronicle which from the start highlighted both the pros and cons and editorially noted the probable loss in education, fire and police protection.)

The worst predictions came to pass. The harsh realty emerged quickly. Up until then, California school children's achievement test scores regularly ranked among the top two or three in the country. After Prop 13 passed, they dropped to among the bottom half dozen. When police precinct houses, fire stations, and libraries closed, there was a good deal of shock and wailing, but too many citizens had believed the promoters and newspaper headlines of Prop 13 that none of this would happen because --ever heard this before?-- "it would only cut the fat and waste."

Those who owned property before 1976 paid their small tax so long as they owned the building. California cities still are characterized in its neighborhoods of one house with the same owner since pre-Prop13 with a relatively tiny annual property tax, while next door a homeowner pays $10,000 a year more for a similar or more modest home.

Pre-Prop13, California had attracted high-paying industries because it had the best educated work force in the country. Ten years later too many cities and towns were desperate with poorly paid, uneducated workers, and the state has experienced steady tax increases (one of them, in 1991, $7 billion, the largest single tax increase of any state in the country).

Prop 13 started a national trend and has been a factor in the nation's widening gap between its rich and its middle-class and poor. As though Proper 13 of the mid-1970s were an infectious disease, in the early 1980s, the federal government cut low-rent subsidies in half and suddenly -- as though a curse from heaven -- the country for the first time since the Great Depression had homeless families and individuals living in the streets.

So the next time, a politician is heard promoting an action speaking in tearful terms of the poor folk, you can probably make money betting that there is about to be proposed a tax plan that will take money from the poor and working people and give to the rich. Ask for all the numbers and look at the fine print when a politician starts talking about the widows and orphans.

Ben Bagdikian's latest book is The New Media Monopoly.

who can afford 10,000 a year for taxes?
the problem is that the large pensions and the administration cost of education has sucked it dry.
they aren't spending it on teachers or books.

the basic move for high price housing though is to move people out of single family dwellings.

and then we have the unfortunate problem of people getting free health care because they are not citizens.
If i got much worse, my best options are to fly to the EU and collapse on the street or learn another language so i xccould pass myself off as a non citizen. if you think i am joking i am not, i only have a few months lerft and then i am out of luck
I am not against giving people health care, but then it should be available to all.
Christopher Bailey wrote:

>Anybody alive for this one?
>
>---------------------
>
>The grandfather of these endless permutations of using the Widows and Orphans technique to soak-the-poor and lavish-the-lucky-rich was Prop 13, the infamous California 1978 law that froze property taxes for those fortunate enough to have owned them that year, with only 2 percent added each year. Anyone buying a house thereafter paid taxes on the current market rate---- rates that having been skyrocketing as national urban house prices have tripled and quadrupled in the meantime. Prop 13 was designed by a small group whose goal was to shrink the state government to the advantage of the affluent and business.
>
>At the time, I did a study of the treatment by the state newspapers of that revolutionary act. Overwhelmingly, Page One headlines and leading paragraphs told tale after tale of elderly couples and individuals in danger of losing their homes by foreclosure. Stories of real widows whose inherited ranches and gracious homes would be lost by high property taxes and force the poor owners to end up in rooming houses. The cases were often about genuine individuals and their real fears, but were the isolated mainstay of the horror stories in orations in the state legislature by the tax cutters.
>
>The state's biggest newspapers took part in the game. I studied the 30 largest dailies and day after day leading to the election. The Page One and headlines of the stories before the election were about the imminent loss of homes by widows and the poor. There was substantial opposition that cited real fears about the danger of losing the model California public school system (supported, like most public schools, mainly form property taxes). >The opposition pointed to the cuts that would be needed in civic services like police and fire departments. But overwhelmingly, these were relegated to the inside pages and rebutted at once by those favoring Prop 13. (The major exception was the San Francisco Chronicle which from the start highlighted both the pros and cons and editorially noted the probable loss in education, fire and police protection.)
>
>The worst predictions came to pass. The harsh realty emerged quickly. Up until then, California school children's achievement test scores regularly ranked among the top two or three in the country. After Prop 13 passed, they dropped to among the bottom half dozen. When police precinct houses, fire stations, and libraries closed, there was a good deal of shock and wailing, but too many citizens had believed the promoters and newspaper headlines of Prop 13 that none of this would happen because --ever heard this before?-- "it would only cut the fat and waste." >
>Those who owned property before 1976 paid their small tax so long as they owned the building. California cities still are characterized in its neighborhoods of one house with the same owner since pre-Prop13 with a relatively tiny annual property tax, while next door a homeowner pays $10,000 a year more for a similar or more modest home. >
>Pre-Prop13, California had attracted high-paying industries because it had the best educated work force in the country. Ten years later too many cities and towns were desperate with poorly paid, uneducated workers, and the state has experienced steady tax increases (one of them, in 1991, $7 billion, the largest single tax increase of any state in the country).
>
>Prop 13 started a national trend and has been a factor in the nation's widening gap between its rich and its middle-class and poor. As though Proper 13 of the mid-1970s were an infectious disease, in the early 1980s, the federal government cut low-rent subsidies in half and suddenly -- as though a curse from heaven -- the country for the first time since the Great Depression had homeless families and individuals living in the streets.
>
>So the next time, a politician is heard promoting an action speaking in tearful terms of the poor folk, you can probably make money betting that there is about to be proposed a tax plan that will take money from the poor and working people and give to the rich. Ask for all the numbers and look at the fine print when a politician starts talking about the widows and orphans.
>
>
>Ben Bagdikian's latest book is The New Media Monopoly.
>
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
> >Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
> >
>
>
> >

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles

> prop 13

While this article claims it was the doing of
conservatives (essentiallly), my uncle-in-law's
wife claims she had to leave California (where
she was born) when the liberals got a hold of
it, which started with prop 13. I have no idea
why she said that.

It's certainly been bad legislation from my
point of view. On the other hand, homeowners
had to be protected from real estate inflation
somehow.

-Carl

--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
>
> > prop 13
>
> While this article claims it was the doing of
> conservatives (essentiallly), my uncle-in-law's
> wife claims she had to leave California (where
> she was born) when the liberals got a hold of
> it, which started with prop 13. I have no idea
> why she said that.

It doesn't make any sense to me, but I don't have my dates straight
as to (like) who was governor when Jarvis-Gann got their grubby
little mitts into things, etc. Deukmejian?

>
> It's certainly been bad legislation from my
> point of view. On the other hand, homeowners
> had to be protected from real estate inflation
> somehow.
>
> -Carl

That's the explanation I've always heard. But I've never heard any
dispute that the net effect was to completely gut CA's
infrastructure, and no way to overturn it, really. Supermajority,
right?

Why is it bad from your point of view?

P

I was the student rep. to my school board in '78 when Prop. 13 passed,
and had taken part in the campaign against it. It was an initiative
authored by super-conservative anti-tax advocate Howard Jarvis, and
catered to the then-current California demographics (i.e
overrepresentation of retired people among the electorate) and the
rapid increase of housing prices, and consequently property taxes, in
the 70s. Prop. 13 was very bad law, anchoring tax rates to the
purchase price rather than current value, and requiring an impossible
2/3 of _eligible_ (not registered or participating) voters to change.
While property taxes were in fact rising too fast, this was probably
the worst possible solution, it was crude, unfair, unamendable, and
immediately retroactive. That immediate consequence was a rapid
shortfall in property tax income which had funded schools and local
agencies. This was largely covered by state funds, but at the price of
losing local control over the allocation of those funds.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown had campaigned against the initiative with the
warnings above, but when passed and irreversible, he went rapidily
into a triage mode on state and local finances. He had always been a
"small is beautiful" advocate, but his realist embrace of limitations
at this point caused the conservatives to label him a "flip-flopper".
(I view Brown as an extremely honest and prescient figure: the same
Republicans made fun of his plans to put the state into the satellite
communications business, exactly the type of thinking that
conservatives would call visionary when coming out of the mouths of a
Gingrich, but I digress).

Brown's Republican successors in office Deukmejian and Wilson
continued to apply band-aid style solutions, with Wilson's so-called
"market reforms" of state energy suppliers leading to a second
catastrophic change in state funding. All of this has combined with
the idiocy of such strict term limitations that no office holder of
any party can afford to commit to any significant long range planning
or structural change. Thus we see the recent failures of the Davis and
Schwarzeneggar regimes. The last 20-some years have been marked by
bad performance by politicians of both parties, but the Republican
hands on Prop. 13, the Energy "reform", and term limits are most clear.

At one point California was a state with liberal and labor Democrats
and progressive Republicans (from Hiram Johnson to Earl Warren; Earl
Warren once was the candidate of both parties!) and through the Pat
Brown administration (1959-67), there was a broad consensus for
progressive policy. This changed somewhat with Reagan (67-74),
although Reagan's actually policies would look leftist to almost
anyone today -- he was a big spender and even signed the bill making
abortions legal in the state! -- his nomination to the Governorship
signaled that the Republican party had changed hands, from the
progressives to movement conservatives, drawn largely from post-WW II
immigration to the state from the South and Midwest. (Reagan himself
was an immigrant from the midwest).

Daniel Wolf

--- In metatuning@...m, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
>
> > prop 13
>
> While this article claims it was the doing of
> conservatives (essentiallly), my uncle-in-law's
> wife claims she had to leave California (where
> she was born) when the liberals got a hold of
> it, which started with prop 13. I have no idea
> why she said that.
>
> It's certainly been bad legislation from my
> point of view. On the other hand, homeowners
> had to be protected from real estate inflation
> somehow.
>
> -Carl
>

a large amount of the educational fund goes to high pensions for administrators
who are basically way over paid in the first place. actually the whole state is being bled dry by pensions that are way over the top compared to any other industry in the state.
that schools are paid by only the immediate property taxes is also an injustice, it seems all schools should be given the same amount of money, in schools in richer neighborhood already enjoy a much higher percentage of "private donations.
right now you have taxes on new housing up into the range of 2-3000 a month.
we also have high gasoline taxes and sales tax.
add it up, it makes sweden look like nothing, and what does anyone get for this money.
maybe roads, but no one in their right mind lets there kids in public school, even the so-called magnets are a farce.
my daughter took the proficiency test in the third year, just so she could drop out to go to college now.
danieljameswolf wrote:

>I was the student rep. to my school board in '78 when Prop. 13 passed,
>and had taken part in the campaign against it. It was an initiative
>authored by super-conservative anti-tax advocate Howard Jarvis, and
>catered to the then-current California demographics (i.e
>overrepresentation of retired people among the electorate) and the
>rapid increase of housing prices, and consequently property taxes, in
>the 70s. Prop. 13 was very bad law, anchoring tax rates to the
>purchase price rather than current value, and requiring an impossible
>2/3 of _eligible_ (not registered or participating) voters to change.
> While property taxes were in fact rising too fast, this was probably
>the worst possible solution, it was crude, unfair, unamendable, and
>immediately retroactive. That immediate consequence was a rapid
>shortfall in property tax income which had funded schools and local
>agencies. This was largely covered by state funds, but at the price of
>losing local control over the allocation of those funds.
>
>Then-Gov. Jerry Brown had campaigned against the initiative with the >warnings above, but when passed and irreversible, he went rapidily
>into a triage mode on state and local finances. He had always been a
>"small is beautiful" advocate, but his realist embrace of limitations
>at this point caused the conservatives to label him a "flip-flopper".
>(I view Brown as an extremely honest and prescient figure: the same
>Republicans made fun of his plans to put the state into the satellite
>communications business, exactly the type of thinking that
>conservatives would call visionary when coming out of the mouths of a
>Gingrich, but I digress).
>
>Brown's Republican successors in office Deukmejian and Wilson
>continued to apply band-aid style solutions, with Wilson's so-called
>"market reforms" of state energy suppliers leading to a second
>catastrophic change in state funding. All of this has combined with
>the idiocy of such strict term limitations that no office holder of
>any party can afford to commit to any significant long range planning
>or structural change. Thus we see the recent failures of the Davis and
>Schwarzeneggar regimes. The last 20-some years have been marked by
>bad performance by politicians of both parties, but the Republican
>hands on Prop. 13, the Energy "reform", and term limits are most clear.
>
>At one point California was a state with liberal and labor Democrats
>and progressive Republicans (from Hiram Johnson to Earl Warren; Earl
>Warren once was the candidate of both parties!) and through the Pat
>Brown administration (1959-67), there was a broad consensus for
>progressive policy. This changed somewhat with Reagan (67-74),
>although Reagan's actually policies would look leftist to almost
>anyone today -- he was a big spender and even signed the bill making
>abortions legal in the state! -- his nomination to the Governorship
>signaled that the Republican party had changed hands, from the
>progressives to movement conservatives, drawn largely from post-WW II
>immigration to the state from the South and Midwest. (Reagan himself
>was an immigrant from the midwest). > >Daniel Wolf
>
>--- In metatuning@yahoogroups.com, "Carl Lumma" <clumma@y...> wrote:
> >
>>>prop 13
>>> >>>
>>While this article claims it was the doing of
>>conservatives (essentiallly), my uncle-in-law's
>>wife claims she had to leave California (where
>>she was born) when the liberals got a hold of
>>it, which started with prop 13. I have no idea
>>why she said that.
>>
>>It's certainly been bad legislation from my
>>point of view. On the other hand, homeowners
>>had to be protected from real estate inflation
>>somehow.
>>
>>-Carl
>>
>> >>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Meta Tuning meta-info:
>
>To unsubscribe, send an email to:
>metatuning-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>Web page is http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/metatuning/
>
>To post to the list, send to
>metatuning@yahoogroups.com
>
>You don't have to be a member to post.
>
> >Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
> >
>
>
> >

--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
The Wandering Medicine Show
KXLU <http://www.kxlu.com/main.html> 88.9 FM Wed 8-9 pm Los Angeles