Twas The Night Before Voting

Twas the night before voting and all through the cities

The ads were still playing, and more is the pity.  

Signs were replaced now, in front yards with care

Secure without Union sheet metal trucks there

The pundits were nervous, they gave their best hunch

And hoped that the voters wouldn't hand them their lunch

The pollsters were drinking, unsure in their bumbling

With poll weighting likely to make their night humbling

The cable new networks were all in a tizzy

At last they had something to keep them all busy.

They'll pant and they'll whine til they talked themselves blue,

Lucky if one word in twenty is true.

  

While safe in Chicago, the dead were now mute.

They'd voted with Mickey, and Adolph, and Knute.

The states all around them indignantly stared,

But none were a swing state, so nobody cared.

The hopefuls were out there and still on the stump,

With ad buys they hoped would give them one last bump.

They knew with one speech they could still win the game, 

So they pulled out their soundbites and called them by name.

Don't vote for the red guy, he'll just kill old ladies.

Don't vote for the blue guy, he's killing off babies. 
The blue guy is digging the debt hole too deep.

The red guy just wants cash for rich folks to keep.

This one's for the wealthy, and this one's for poor.

This one gave us health care, so show him the door.

Remember for four years how hard this man tried.

Remember Benghazi and how those four died. 
  

They talked and they lectured and scolded us all
They told us without them the nation would fall.
Their PAC's proved that there was no line they'd not cross,
And in the end two billion dollars it cost. 
   

Eventually both of them ran out of words

Six years is too much of both men being heard.

We've tired of the process, we're sick of the spin.

We're ready at last for the vote to begin 

Tomorrow therefore we will show we are clever,

Without our ID's we will pull down a lever.

The ads will be over, at least for four years,

And all that remains will be crying the tears. 

Regardless tomorrow of who wins the vote,

The losers will soon call the process a joke.

They'll grumble and groan as they call their foes sinners

For Democracy works these days just for the winners. 

 

The chads will be hanging, in recounts galore

Each candidate claiming, "I know I got more".
And off in the distance, you'll hear the retort,

Make no bones about it, this ends up in Court!  

Property and Taxation

There's been some public discussion in a number of places about the levies coming up in cities around the country.  This talk is not only about the worthiness of these efforts (or lack thereof), but about the levy process itself.  At issue is whether those not owning property, and therefore not paying their share of property taxes and their associated levies, should even have the right to vote on taxing their fellow citizens. While having pointed out a number of occasions that many of us not currently owning property do in fact pick up some incremental cost in these taxes (for they cannot be honestly called anything else), I can easily understand and agree with the point of view of someone saying that non-owners do not bear the same burden.  Something about the discussion kept nagging at me however, and I was forced to continue puzzling it out long after it ended.

The source of my discomfort was realized when I understood that levies, like property taxes themselves, are part of the over all annual tax burden that citizens in this country are extorted to pay under the threat of fines, seizure, and imprisonment at the hands of our own government (with the able assistance of its myrmidons at the IRS).  As such there are advantages and disadvantages to the status that we hold where each form of taxes are concerned.

Earn a high salary and you are likely to pay a higher tax rate.   Cash in stocks or sell property that those less fortunate don't own, and you'll pay a capital gains tax on the profits of such a sale.  Die rich and you'll be hammered with a large estate tax to add insult to the permanent injury.  In each of these situations however, the tax code (which started out at 504 pages and as of 2010 had grown to almost 72,000) is likely to provide you something in the way of a loophole or two if you've got a good enough accountant to find them.  In other words, there is often an offset achieved in some part between what has to be paid and what gets a pass.

My discomfort was the dirty little secret that no one talks about when this disparity in taxes is discussed .... the Mortgage Deduction.  You see while a homeowner makes a mortgage payment and a lessor his rent, the interest on a home mortgage is tax deductible.  For those buying the biggest place they're allowed to by the company financing it, mortgaging as much of it as they can possibly get away with, and staying less than seven years in the home purchased; in fact most of what they will make in the way of a mortgage payments will be interest on the loan and therefore tax deductible.  No part of the rental payment a lessor makes to his landlord during the same period will carry a similar deduction.

Imagine if you will that two people went to a car dealer to obtain identical new vehicles. Both handed over the same down payment money and both agreed to make monthly installment payments, but one purchased the vehicle and the other leased.  The person leasing may have reduced his monthly payment through his down payment, but that money was now gone forever and at the end of the lease there will be nothing to show for either it or his monthly payments; though the payments themselves would be less.  The person purchasing also reduced his payment through a down payment and established equity in his purchase.  Monthly payments made, though higher, would increase the equity in the purchase.  At the end of the loan, the purchaser would in fact own a car with some intrinsic value and the renter would own nothing.

Both would be freely made choices and the results of agreements fairly established however; in overall effect they would be virtually equal and neither would have the advantage.  Now consider these two people and add in a tax break for the interest on a car loan and ask yourself if the deals are still equal and you are likely to conclude that they are not.

So when we go back and look at the overall annual taxes paid by the property owner and non-owner, we can see that the property tax burden of the homeowner could be offset in some part (if not all) by the savings obtained on the income tax side of the equation.  The non-owner, while paying less of the property tax / levy burden; would pay a higher percentage of income tax on the money he earns, since there is no corresponding deduction to reduce their tax rate. 

This is not to say that property taxes are not an egregious burden on citizens; and that the continuing and increasing abuse of levy requests aren't adding insult to injury.  Living in a state that forces its residents to pay property taxes on vehicles before they can be legally licensed can't help but point that out to even those of us who rent.  Understanding however that as a renter I am able vote on levies (turning most of them down by the way), still seems reasonably fair to me in spite of the limited impact I bear from from.  After all, no one has yet offered me the chance to vote on limiting or removing the mortgage interest tax deduction and you haven't seen me bitching about it (even here).     

One might even add that the practices involved with the mortgage interest income tax deduction, coupled to the government encouraged sub-prime lending practices under which most 'too big to fail' lending institutions operated, and fed to borrowing public who has been told for years to buy the biggest barn of a home that they could and mortgage it to the hilt because real estate is one of the best and safest investments that they can make; largely fueled the bubble whose bursting caused the current economic downturn.  

And while there is still much discussion of government-subsidized refinancing for underwater mortgages which will further burden ALL TAXPAYERS, I haven't heard even one call to consider those locked in a lease and whose fortunes have likewise suffered.  You know, it might just be that it's we who aren't paying our 'fair share' property taxes who should be righteously pissed off.

                  

A Curious Celebration of Democracy

While many us have been focusing on the frenetic movement of the stock market, the dwindling value of our retirement portfolios, and the rising national debt; yet another movement has been afoot almost out of sight to subvert the intentions of the Founding Fathers. As reported by McClatchy Newspapers in the Kansas City Star, California Governor Jerry Brown on Monday signed legislation that could potentially place Founders' view of the Electoral College in dire jeopardy. 

How can this be, you ask?  Isn't the Electoral College specified in the Constitution under Article II, Section 1, Clause 2?  (I know, you didn't have a clue how the Electoral College came about.  Fortunately for you, I carry a leather-covered pocket edition of this document with me at all times.)  In fact this bit of the Constitution does address how many Electors each state gets, and allows each state legislature to decide how they are chosen.  There are subsequent entries in the 12th and 23rd Amendment covering other aspects of the College.  How those Electors vote after a national election is held however, is something entirely different.

Electors are in fact free to vote for anyone eligible to be President.  Traditionally, Electors vote in proportion to the popular vote of their respective states or for the winner of their respective electoral district (at least on the first ballot).  The idea that the Founders proposed with the formation of the Electoral College was much in keeping with their thinking behind the bicameral legislature created in the same document.  By using the Electoral College as a buffer, they hoped to provide some form of balance between the more populous larger states and smaller ones.  Using the electoral system has allowed swing states like Ohio (20 electors) or Michigan (17 electors) to play at least as much a role as Florida (27 electors), Texas (34 electors), or California (55 electors).  (The fact that none of these states existed at the time that the Constitution was written speaks volumes as to the wisdom of their decision and the Founders ability to deal with future eventualities.) 

Of course the interstate compact now signed by Governor Brown we are told, "would take effect only if states controlling a majority of the nation's electoral votes agree."  I guess that this would make this the a 'pile on the winner' law allowing the votes of other states to influence the electoral vote of CA. Eight states and the District of Columbia have now signed on to this potential compact, an agreement which the article goes on to point out now encompasses "almost half of the electoral votes proponents need".  Certainly this legislation has the potential to create more direct ties to the popular vote ( which is a good thing if you're a state with a population the size of California's).

Now there have been calls to do away with the Electoral College before, most recently after the election of 2000, when George W Bush failed to gain a plurality of the popular vote.  Opponents of the Electoral College claimed that election results like that of 2000 subvert the democratic process and fail to provide a true popular mandate for an elected leader (though it must be admitted that they did at least provide us protection against a potential President Al Gore).  What they fail to point out or perhaps even recognize, is that while we do have the popular vote, the United States is not and never has been a Democracy, but a Representative Republic. The Electoral College was just another in a series of well-thought-out concepts to protect the minority rights in this country from being trampled the 'will of the mob'. (Something that this measure might be overlooking, if not actively subverting.)

California's interest in throwing its 55 vote weight around should be of no surprise to anyone, as they have long felt slighted by the national voting process.  Having their polls closing 3 hours after those of the East Coast and with election coverage by 24-hour news networks calling states while CA is still voting has sometimes caused this bastion of the progressive thinking to find itself extraneous to the decision-making process.  

It's interesting however that these so-called Defenders of Democracy see this as progress towards portraying the will of the people.  If this legislation is followed through on, it would in fact allow California to, "award the state's electoral votes to the candidate winning the most votes nationwide, regardless of which candidate California voters choose".  One might think it a rather curious contradiction that California and it co-signers would seek to extol the value and virtues of true democracy by potentially subverting the will of the popular vote in their states.

 

Primary Day

It's primary day in Kansas and Missouri today, and there are some hotly contested issues and races going on (which might explain the 100 degree temperatures here without falling back on global warming). It is likewise primary day in Michigan, near my former home in Toledo.

Voter turnout in both areas is expected to be less than 20%!

It seems both inconsistent and and incongruous that during a period in the history of this country when nothing is more contentious, that so few will bother to take a side and exercise their constitutional responsibilities. With Tea Party protests, progressive counter-protests, and non-stop news punditry on the state of political upheaval in this country so much on the minds and in the media these days, you would think it would be easy to get out the vote ... even for a primary. 


You would of course be wrong in believing so. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly understandable that a person can look at much of politics in general these days, most of the politicians in particular, and the bastardization of the campaign process that's going on; and throw their hands up in disgust. Professional politicians continue to dominate the campaigns for office, their commercials are excruciatingly annoying (on an almost Biblical scale) with a non-stop assault of 'half-truths, mis-truths and outright lies', and primaries often mean so little; that actually having to pick candidates can bring on serious bouts of nausea. 


That being said, the only way that anything has a hope of changing in this country is if as many people as possible participate in the process. So I urge those of you to bite the bullet, hold your nose if you must, and cast your ballot for the candidates that believe most as you do on this election day. 


There will be a notable posting tomorrow for my mid-week rant, both because of the subject matter and because it will be my 600th posting on Just Blowing Smoke. While some of what has appeared here over the years will never be considered timeless prose, much of it has involved a great deal of effort and perspiration, as well as some occasional brain cramping. Because we all like to make a big deal out of round numbers however, I decided that tomorrow's subject would be one of some importance. I urge you to find the time to take a look at it (and carefully).