Better in their words…

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

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What will we do without Governor DeSantis? America’s best governor is not relaxing and sitting back for his lame duck year, which if anyone were entitled to coast, it would be this man. But —among many others— Governor DeSantis continues pressing his initiative to end property taxes on Florida homesteads, hard. You may recall that earlier this year, the Governor said, “If I go to Best Buy and buy a TV, I pay sales tax, but I don’t keep paying taxes on it year after year!”

CLIP: DeSantis argues for ending homestead property tax (2:46).

There is no doubt that property taxes violate the Constitution, which forbids government from taking private property without just compensation. Taxing property —whether homes or bank accounts— is a “taking.” But if you ask defenders why it survives, they will wave their hands around and invoke customs and history. In other words, we’ve just always done it that way.

Sales taxes, on the other hand, levy taxes on transactions, which isconstitutionally permissible. So DeSantis’ point is well taken: if homes were taxed like TVs, there would be no Constitutional problem, and even better, it would line up local government incentives in the right direction. They would want local policies that encouraged growth, so there would be more sales, and increased property values, with better schools, roads, infrastructure, and fewer rainbow crosswalks.

🔥 I bring up this older DeSantis news to frame the next astonishing article. On Wednesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a shocking story headlined, “Delco residents prepare for a 19% property tax hike — the second double-digit increase they face in two years.”

Delaware County’s commissioners don’t care what voters think. “Facing fury from residents,” the Inquirer reported, “the all-Democrat board voted 4-1 on Wednesday to approve a $340 million budget that raises the county portion of property taxes +19%.”

Delco residents shouldn’t complain. At least it was less than last year’s +23% property tax increase. The stated reason? Because of Bidenflation and because covid relief money ended. Thanks, Joe Biden.

“Our strategy is not just to increase revenue but to decrease expenses,” County Chair Barbara O’Malley said, right before increasing revenue and increasing expenses. The county’s newest budget, passed along with the tax hikes, boosted spending by +6%.

In other words, flush with federal covid funds, Delco went spending crazy. Since Democrats took over in 2020, they: took over the jails from private contractors, created a brand-new health department, and spent oodles on legal fees defending all their new initiatives.

Now the federal covid grants are gone. So instead of cutting anything, they went straight after property owners to make up the difference and allow continued spending. “Absent this increase tonight, we would run out of money,” shrugged Councilmember Kevin Madden, who terms out this year.

Everyone enjoys the feast; no one washes the dishes.

Seniors and young people are affected worst. “I own my home, but I’m behind on my taxes because the taxes are so high,” resident Maureen Mitchell told the commissioners at a Monday budget hearing. “Something’s gotta give for the seniors, we’re losing our homes.”

Democrats were re-elected to all five county seats this past November, despite the tax increases. Before 2020, Delco was a Republican stronghold for over 100 years. In 2019, Democrats successfully tagged Republicans with overly high property taxes in Delaware County. WITF headline, November 2019:

I know. Haha. The irony. It’s just lies, all the way down, like dead turtles. Will Delaware County voters remember?

This story offers a profound lesson for Republicans facing next year’s midterms.

🔥 You might properly wonder at this property tax-hiking strategy. Democrats are currently running on a vague affordability platform. Why increase property taxes, which are among people’s highest annual expenses? Taxes are added to mortgage payments, increasing homeowners’ monthly housing burden and making it harder for young people to buy homes. It’s no help to rent; landlords just pass higher property taxes to tenants.

It is almost like, if it weren’t for double standards, then Democrats … well, you know the rest.

But wait! There’s more! Two days ago, Fox ran a story frozen out of corporate media, headlined, “Bessent blasts Democrat-led states for blocking Trump tax relief in OBBBA.” Most states with income taxes (not Florida!) let their citizens claim the same exemptions provided under the federal tax code.

But several blue states, like Colorado, New York, and Illinois, as well as the District of Colombia (DC), have now decoupled their state tax codes, carving out all the exemptions from the OBBBA, like tax relief for tips, overtime, and social security. So a nurse or waitress in those states won’t pay federal taxes on tips and overtime, but will still have to pay state taxes.

The layers of Democrat hypocrisy are truly onion-like. First, Democrats created the affordability problems they’re now complaining about, through pandemic-era Bidenflation. Now they are actively doing whatever they can to surge citizens’ costs, by boosting property taxes and thwarting federal tax relief. And yet, ironically, they clearly plan on running next year on an affordability platform.

Useless corporate media contributes to the problem, by uncritically reprinting Democrats’ mendacious claims that the Republicans are somehow causing affordability problems. It’s not enough to sit back and wait for someone else to do it. We must help educate our fellow citizens where the affordability crisis is really coming from.

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Yesterday, NPR ran an outraged story headlined, “HHS changed the name of transgender health leader on her official portrait.” His official portrait, they meant. I hate to bring up back pandemic memories, but surely you recall Biden’s cross-dressing Assistant Secretary of HHS, Admiral Richard “Rachel” Levine, M.D., who made our lives so much more miserable during the late, great unpleasantness.

It’s not clear which mad genius corrected the record. I’d like to shake his hand. But now, in the halcyon halls at HHS, Levine’s portrait bears the right name. It is hung with the others, but until this week under his assumed pseudonym and not his legal moniker.

If ever there were a real-life metaphor for the madness of the pandemic, look no further than the “Admiral.” How badly will future generations judge us, when they look back at Biden’s cabinet of circus curiosities? The bearded lady, but without the beard.

Hilariously, NPR refused to print Richard’s actual name. They were terrified of being accused of deadnaming, which is the doublethink mandate to never refer to a transsexual’s actual given name, but to always use the made-up aliases instead. “Deadnaming” was apparently so horrible and unforgivable that, for a few madcap years, you could lose a social media account for a single tweet with the wrong first name.

In other words, you must walk on eggshells about trannies’ special linguistic taboos, but not for real women, which just reinforces the differences between them. Anyway.

Corporate media would like to frame this story as a cruel, insulting prank played on Richard Levine by some mischievous Trump appointee. That is not the story. The story is about the slow resurrection of sanity, courage, and truth, in the face of sometimes violent resistance, and the rejection of an ontological revolution that coerced citizens into participating in a government-sanctioned illusion; pretending that unattractive men in dresses are exactly the same as normal women.

Once a society acquiesces into accepting fiction as truth about one thing, there is no lower limit, no principled stopping point. That society is hellbound.

Welcome back, truth. You were a little late getting here, but we are still very happy to see you.

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Yesterday, the New York Times ran a gloating story headlined, “Trump Symbolically Pardons Tina Peters, Colorado Clerk Convicted of Election Tampering.” Election tampering? Please.

There is no better example of Democrats’ two-tiered justice system than Tina Peters. While she was a Colorado county clerk in 2020, Tina saw election fraud and made a copy of the local Dominion databases. This is hard to say with a straight face, but those databases were “routinely removed” during Colorado’s “software update.”

Peters claimed the data proved that votes were electronically shifted to Biden from Trump after the votes were cast. Mesa County district attorneys “investigated” her claims, and ruled that the “irregularities” did occur, but were “caused by human error and troubleshooting by an elections manager” and not any conspiracy. They concluded the “mistakes” didn’t affect the outcome.

They gave Tina nine years in prison for “tampering with election devices.” The elderly grandmother has been cruelly cast into solitary confinement any number of times. Tina’s situation is terrible, deplorable, and a thumb in the eye of everyone who’s watched Trump whistleblowers and leakers skate off, free as vultures, without any consequences.

But it gave the Democrats a weapon to hypocritically wield against the President.

🔥 MAGA, bless them, are a passionate people. They are easily triggered by any whiff of perceived betrayal. Someone —and I think it was Democrats— started a rumor that Trump refused to pardon Tina Peters, who is as close to a MAGA hero as it gets. An endless flow of angry memes criticizing the President ensued, and corporate media piled on.

It was all made up. Yesterday, President Trump, perhaps tired of defending himself, did it. He officially pardoned Tina. It makes no difference. Tina was charged under state law, and presidents may only pardon federal crimes. Jared Polis, Colorado’s governor, could pardon Tina —don’t hold your breath— but not President Trump. Short of ordering special forces to break her out of prison, his hands are tied.

Trump can wait, and probably is waiting, for a good chance to negotiate something with Colorado that would get Tina Peters rightly freed, for time served and good behavior if nothing else. Governor Polis is likely to demand some excruciating concession for springing her, since Democrats are equally aroused about her incarceration.

The good news is that, at least, Trump’s pardon keeps Tina Peters’ unfair prosecution in the public’s eye. Tina is well represented and her appeals continue, but she faces a deep-blue judicial system. Hopefully, we’ll find some way to get her out. There is no lack of effort.

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Yesterday brought a little more negative electoral news— but nowhere near as awful for Republicans as corporate media is making it out to be. The New York Times ran a euphoric story headlined, “Democrat Eileen Higgins Wins Miami Runoff Election to Become City’s First Female Mayor.” Higgins is also the first Democrat mayor elected in Miami in thirty years. That’s the bad news.

The mayoral election first occurred in November, but after 13 candidates split the vote into shards, neither Higgins (D) or Emilio Gonzalez got more than 50% of the vote in the first round. So voters were forced to vote again on December 9th, this time with just Higgins and Gonzalez, the two top vote-getters from the November round.

What do I keep telling you about why we are losing these off-year elections? It’s turnout. Out of 180,000 registered Miami voters, Higgins received 22,142 votes, and Gonzalez 15,097. That’s a difference of only 7,000 votes in one of Florida’s biggest cities. Four out of five eligible voters stayed home.

In November 2024 —the presidential election— Miami-Dade county turned out 1.2 million voters. There were no separate City of Miami figures published, but based on an AI calculation of separate precinct reports, 127,460 voters turned out in Miami proper.

Therefore, you can’t say we’re losing independents, the youth vote, or beagle activists. There are well over 7,000 regular Republicans and MAGA people in Miami. You can’t even say Democrats were especially fired up, since 22,000 votes isn’t exactly burning the record books.

Finally, while Gonzalez had municipal experience, Trump support, and FL-GOP funding, Higgins had much more name recognition, having spent years as a county commissioner. Just having an “R” next to your name isn’t good enough.

Turnout is a problem; a problem that we desperately need to fix before next year’s midterms. Turnout is the biggest problem. But it’s not our only problem.

🔥 The New York Times ran another overly-excited story yesterday headlined, “Indiana Senate Republicans Reject Trump’s Redistricting Effort.” The sub-headline pushed the knife in further, “Republicans hold an overwhelming majority in the Indiana Senate, but more than a dozen of them defied the president’s wishes, voting against a map aimed at adding Republicans in Congress.”

Republicans hold a supermajority in Indiana. But yesterday, twenty-one Indiana Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with all ten Democrats to defeat a bill that would have captured the state’s two blue congressional districts. The final vote was 19-31 against.

Republican State Senator Spencer Deery said, “I see no justification that outweighs the harms it would inflict upon the people’s faith in the integrity of our elections and our system of government.” He added that “it’s time to say no to pressure from Washington, D.C.,” and that “it’s time to say no to outsiders who are trying to run our state.”

Deery didn’t say which outsiders he felt are trying to “run” Indiana. But we can guess. President Trump was engaged in a social media campaign to pressure Indiana lawmakers to approve the bill.

“I believe the bill on its face is unconstitutional,” said Republican State Senator Greg Walker. So.

Indiana Republicans rejected this commonsense move at this most critical moment in our nation’s history. It’s up to Hoosiers to let them know how they feel. But will Indiana voters be fired up, or more like Miami Republicans, who couldn’t even make it to the December polls in warm Florida weather?