Some more "debt crisis"

The other day, I got the following e-mail, and passed it on to a few people.

Will You Ever Sell Your House?

DID you know that if you sell your house after 2012 you will pay a 3.8% sales tax on it? That's $3,800 on a $100,000 home etc. When did this happen? It's in the healthcare bill. Just thought you should know.

SALES TAX TO GO INTO EFFECT 2013 (Part of HC Bill)
REAL ESTATE SALES TAX

So, this is "change you can believe in"?

Under the new health care bill - did you know that all real estate transactions will be subject to a 3.8% Sales Tax? The bulk of these new taxes don't kick in until 2013 If you sell your $400,000 home, there will be a $15,200 tax. This bill is set to screw the retiring generation who often downsize their homes. Doesn't this stuff make your November, 2012 vote more important than ever?

Oh, you weren't aware this was in the Obama-care bill? Guess what, you aren't alone. There are more than a few members of Congress that aren't aware of it either.
Check it out at the link below.

http://www.gop.gov/blog/10/04/08/obamacare-flatlines-obamacare-taxes-home

Why am I am sending you this? The same reason I hope you forward this to every single person in your address book; because another election is coming soon, be aware!

Then I got a reply from a Constant Reader who checked things out. It was a simple reference to this link:

Snopes.com (a very extensive explanation)

I went, I read, and this was my reply:

Thanks for straightening this out, sorta.

Simpleton that I am, it's still a tax, and still being taken from me at the point of a gun. At one point in my life I was in that vilified "rich-person-who-isn't-paying-his-'fair'-share" category, and had to deal with the nuances and bureaucratic legal-speak of the looters. (And yes, I worked all my life to get there, too!) Thanks to things like alimony, a crooked CPA, my own bad investment instincts, probate "death taxes" on my inheritance, a couple of lawsuits from aggrieved individuals, the bursting of the real estate "bubble" in the '90s, and legal fees to defend myself from the very government I worked for, I'm now a pauper by American standards, which still places me head-and-shoulders above most of the rest of the world.

It really is hand-to-mouth after all these years, but what's mine is mine, as it should be. I am not a slave to loans or mortgages; my biggest problem is local taxes, which will go up this year because they have a $2,000,000 shortfall of wasted extortion money to throw at public non-education. (The millage rate will go up on the property I own, because those state-school teachers have union salaries that must be paid.) According to our local tax commissar [whom I have personally "buttonholed" on the issue] it will literally require an act of the state legislature for me to receive any type of exemption before I hit the mandatory age of 67. This despite the fact my daughters never attended Union County schools, and I certainly ain't gonna have have any more kidlets at 58. I don't mind paying the basic property taxes, a separate entity that supports local infrastructure and our corrupt law enforcement militia. I don't begrudge the 1% SPLOST [Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax] on intra-county purchases that goes for stuff like the new horse arena, the $10,000 worth of fireworks they popped on the 4th of July, or the new farmer's market pavilion. We have no rail or bus service in this area, so we need the tourist dollars the flatlanders and Floridiots bring up every fall on the federally-funded Zell Miller (D-GA) parkway from the People's Republic of Atlanta to "Deliverance" country. (Local entrepreneurs make good money on canoe expeditions. "Can you squeal like a pig?" The Ellijay Apple Festival and the Blairsville Sorghum Festival are big draws, too. There is apparently a perverse nostalgia for the quaint ways of the mountain folk.)

What I resent is paying the freight for other people's children to receive state indoctrination in whatever politically-correct idea of the moment is entrancing the bureaucrats and union hacks in DC. Our rural school system still retains a few moral values, and is better than most, but state-schooling is what it is. Philosophical differences aside, I've never benefited from this mushy, amorphous entity, and neither have my children. ( [The kids] got their state-schooling in a county much closer to the People's Republic, and if there were do-overs in life, it would have been home schooling at any personal price.) The local "education" tax makes up 2/3 of what the county says I owe every year, and it's getting more onerous every day. Old-school socialist Hillary Clinton said "it takes a village" to educate a child; I think it takes good parenting or a devotion to the welfare of the future if others are going to undertake the task of educating the young. Anyone who still believes an omnipotent government knows what is best for them is a meat puppet for slavery, not a free human being. Your natural, divine right to choose the course of your life ended the moment you abrogated your instincts and will to the governmental plantation owners, and became a statistical drone instead of a free-thinking person.

Alas, the "Bill and Hilly" days are now the stuff of innocent nostalgia. The apocalypse has speeded up, and while it may not be what the Left Wing demagogues are predicting, it's at the gates. We've passed the tipping point; the salt has spilled onto the tabletop, and no amount of throwing it over our shoulder is going to remedy the situation. I heard it put best tonight: "You cannot legislate 2+2=4." That's the basic economic truth, so say good-night to the American empire, Gracie. It's all politics from here until the darkness falls.

A passing line in my last blog post may be our epitaph: "Rationality becomes the nostalgic whim of the elderly."

Good luck, kids! This country was not founded on compromise or political expediency; it was founded on revolution and the concept of individual rights.