Demanding Accountability

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New Taxes Anger Residents

By John Taft
Investigative Reporter

Grants Pass, OR – In Josephine County, Oregon, neighbors turn on neighbors in an attempt to tax homes for cash to pay for their social programs. These people have no heart or soul for seniors, working families on low incomes, residents with fixed incomes, the sick and disabled, and children of low income families (add to these all the many people in Josephine County who have never stepped foot into the library). All they care about are their personal wants and using your home as collateral to pay for these wants. They don’t care about families and the sanctity of family homes. Leading this hit squad is a former county commissioner candidate Cheryl Walker who wants free books and computer use for everyone. This is being done with the blessing of present county Commissioner Dwight Ellis. Ellis has proven numerous times that he is no friend of homeowners and renters. When Walker introduced the new proposed library taxing district (which is a hungry wolf dressed in a sheep’s skin) before the county commissioners, Ellis in an emotional outburst bleated, “God Speed,” during a recent weekly public commissioners’ meeting. This is typical of the so-called liberal elite in Josephine County.

Daily Courier Peddles Biased Articles
to Community

Let’s take a look at what’s been happening at the Josephine County Library which the Grants Pass Daily Courier is keeping out of print. The Courier has published many articles that promote the library taxing district on family homes with pro library articles. Several have been published along with the editor’s personal endorsement of the library taxing district. The Courier writers present only one side of the library issue and avoid any negative views in these articles. Thus the public only gets one viewpoint in the Courier’s front page stories and its section on community news. This tends to create a bias and ill-informed voter. Newspapers are infamous for doing this type of reporting. In fairness, the Courier is usually lenient with letters to the editor, printing diverse points of view and does print some guest opinion on the editorial page that opposes its agenda. But these articles don’t have the readership that a front page story has.

Scandal at the Library?

Here is what Courier writer Patti Richter won’t tell you in her articles. The county library has been weeding books from the shelves to make room for new books they have no money to buy. There are reportedly numerous empty bookshelves in the library; presently this includes the children’s library where the shelves were heavily hit by the book grabbers. Some of the books were given to the Friends of the Library and others went to the shredder. Why would personnel be directed to empty the bookshelves at this time of cuts in the library funding and a reduction in the hours the public is served? The county commissioners were informed of this action and told those in charge to cease purging the bookshelves. This request was ignored, and the shelves continued to be purged until a commissioner personally intervened and stopped the book removal. Remember, you never read this in the Daily Courier. In a conference, two of the commissioners voted to do nothing about the desecration of the children’s library and adult section of the library. Since the commissioners cut the library from the public coffers, limited library hours were imposed and have created long lines of users waiting to check out books while some library personnel were busy raiding the bookshelves for the shredder. You didn’t read about that in the Courier either. Then there is the case of the General Services Director for the county, Mark Sorenson, who was appointed to take the place of the library director when she abruptly left after an alleged disagreement with county commissioners. Interestingly, Sorenson abruptly left county employment during the great book purge of the Josephine County Library. And now for the kicker, no one bothered to make a record of the books purged, and no one knows the titles of the public books removed or how many were hauled away. Is this incompetence? Apparently not in Josephine County, as the previously mentioned two county commissioners (Ellis and Riddle) decided to do nothing about this. Did you read this in the Daily Courier? Of course not. Now is this an efficiently run organization? Do the voters want these people running a library that promotes a lifetime tax on family homes in Josephine County at 55 cents a thousand of assessed value? If this taxing district passes, it will never go away and will bring in twice the cash the library has received in the past. All consumer prices are leaping up, wages are static, and the liberals want to increase our existing property taxes. As the old saying goes, if these are your friends, you don’t need any enemies.

Others Also Want to Tax Your Home

Rogue Community College is asking for a tax lien on your home to fund the college. The City of Grants Pass is asking for another tax lien on city residents’ homes. The government claims inflation is at single digits. Most folks know that to be false. Ten percent may be closer to the truth. Check the increase in prices at your local grocery store. Tomatoes are around $2.00 a pound, apples are $1.50 and more, 10 pounds of potatoes are up 20% or more from last year. Food is necessary, but taxes on homes are an abomination.

Liberals Regard Your Home
as Their Piggy Bank

They all have the thief’s syndrome of wanting your money to pay for their social programs. These folks are all very liberal with other people’s money. In their arrogance they never ask you if it would be convenient for you if they placed a compulsory tax on your home. It’s as though the state legislature or congress passed a law saying that every adult is required to have a mandatory savings account of at least $1,000. Now, anytime your fellow citizens decided there was a public need they could put the issue to a vote. What could be fairer than the citizens deciding on public policy? Isn’t this democracy at it finest? If the pro vote received over 50% of the count, then they could deduct from your savings account the cost of their particular social program. It no doubt would be called, “The debit savings account for social progress.” That is exactly how the liberal social tax and spenders think regarding your home; it’s their piggy bank and they are always trying to get their grasping hands into it. No one has an ethical or moral right to tax your home for anyone’s social program. Every home dweller should fly the flag in his heart that has an image of a buzzing rattlesnake entitled, “Don’t tread on me.”

Your Home is Your Castle

Those who can’t pay for their social programs have found the family home poorly defended and easier prey than robbing banks. This hasn’t always been so. The old saying that a man’s home is his castle has its roots in early English history. In the year 1532 King Henry the VIII put forth the idea that a man is allowed to defend his castle using any means at his disposal.

Four hundred years ago William Blackstone, a noted English scholar, said, “The law of England has so particular and tender a regard to the immunity of a man’s house that it [it’s considered] his castle and will never [be] violated.” This became a part of the English common law. No man has a moral right to put your home at risk of being taken from you by the tax collector. Those who wish to do so are not your friends but seekers of personal gratification at the home owner’s expense. Your home is indeed your castle and must be defended from the enemy invaders. In this case a no vote will suffice.

Community Liberals Are a Danger
to Family Homes

When you cast your vote in favor of any property tax that uses a man’s home to pay for someone’s social program, this is akin to a tyrannical act. The reason is you are placing your neighbor’s home at risk of foreclosure and seizure with the complicity of the state if he doesn’t pay the tax bill sent to him. No one is so wise that he knows who can and can’t afford an additional drain on limited family resources. Anyone who promotes a tax and especially a taxing district, which is forever, on another’s home, displays sheer arrogance and contempt for the homeowner. If you remember when you vote that it is unethical for any person to promote a tax on another man’s home to pay for his social program, you will do the right thing and oppose those who are willing to put your home at risk. The tax and spend crowd really don’t care about you.

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