short comments on some current events

[cellio]

County property taxes are currently the subject of a fracas. The county executive wants to cap increases in assessments at 4%, because school districts aren't allowed to gain more than 5% a year and if they do, they have to lower the tax rate to compensate. This cap sounds like a win for the taxpayer at first glance, but actually, what it means is that under-assessed properties will remain under-assessed while everyone else picks up the difference. Accurate assessments and the resulting changes in millage rates are more fair, and the current scheme might violate the state constitution. (Fairer still, of course, is to not tax property, or savings. If you have to tax something, taxing consumption (sales tax) seems fairer, with exemptions for food, heat, etc. But don't penalize people for trying to save for the retirement no one else will provide.) But the part I like is that when approving this plan, the council mandated that tax bills would show whether you gained or lost from this scheme. So at least they have to tell us. :-) (Well, that said, how many homeowners see their tax bills? They go to the mortgage company.)

According to CNN, a CA prosecutor and judge conspired to keep Jews off capital juries because "no Jew would vote to send a defendant to the gas chamber". I find this curious. Yes, I know a lot of liberal Jews who are anti-capital-punishment, but that's because they're liberal, not because they get it from their religion. Lots of non-Jews are anti-capital-punishment, too. I actually wonder what the proportions supporting capital punishment are in the four groups represented by these two divisions: Jews and Christians, and religious versus non-religious. (Non-religious, in this case, means identifying with the religion but not doing much of anything about it, like the bagels-and-lox Jews and Christmas-and-Easter Christians.) I suspect that religious Jews are the most likely to suppor the death penalty.

Finally, Terry Schiavo. The situation is tragic, but I don't see how it's any business of the federal government to intervene in a specific case. If you have an issue with the way the state courts are structured, address that (if you can, constitutionally -- which I doubt). But you don't get to pick and choose interventions like that. So purely on legal-purity grounds, I hope this current effort fails. On non-legal-purity grounds, I feel awful for everyone involved but it's a sucky way to live and if she did express an opinion on that, her family needs to honor it. And this should serve as a wake-up call for everyone to put these things in writing; she was only 26 when she was struck down. I had a living will by then; do you now?

Comments

[siderea]

There is a vast Democratic tradition among Jewish Americans. I can't begin to tell you how shocked I was the first time I met a Jewish Republican. I don't know if that is still true, or if it translates into opposition to the death penalty.

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=23&did=1266 irritatingly only addresses Christianity (Protestant vs. Catholic, church-going vs. non).

tax bills

[magid.livejournal.com]

In MA, anyway, the tax bill is sent to the homeowner; I remember very clearly being told at the closing how important it was that I send this on to the mortgage company when I got it. Last year I forgot (due to online bill paying), and discovered that the bank that has my mortgage has someone who liaises with the city, so I haven't had to send the bill on in years.

But anyway, yes, I've seen my tax bill, every year I've been a condo-owner.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I suspect the CA notion is based on gas chamber=Holocaust. I have no idea whether any or many Jews would actually vote against a death penalty for that reason.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I agree about accurate assessments being more fair, but I'm not sure I agree that it's fairer to tax consumption. Consumption taxes tend to be heavily regressive, so they are proportionally heavier on the poor.