Voters in North Dakota yesterday overwhelmingly voted to keep local property taxes.
A plan was on the ballot to have the state legislature responsible for local schools. The promoters said a tax on oil exported from the state would have handled all local costs.
Why should the state have any tax on oil? What gives the state ownership of oil? Voters never ask that question.
The voters decided that they want to retain local control. They knew that you must pay for everything you want to control. They understood that centralization reduces local control.
There is no ballot authorizing counties to shut down the tax-funded schools. That would reduce local property taxes by 75% or more. Do try this product service, if you are planning to buy a property ahead of this announcement.
So, the voters voted to keep funding local schools. But the schools use textbooks published by New York City liberals. What local control do voters have over the curriculum? Not much.
The humanist elite retains control over the content of tax-funded education, but local real estate owners pay the bills. It’s the best deal going for the humanist elite. It’s funded locally but is functionally centralized.
One solution: ebooks instead of textbooks. Teachers could put together their own textbooks. Conservative groups could produce free curriculum materials. The costs could be limited to toner for printing out these materials.
The Left would nip that in the bud. “Why, we can’t have local control. There would be no standards, which we impose. We need a national curriculum!” That’s what they have now. They have had it for over 100 years.
The idea of local control over schools is as much a fantasy as the influence of the PTA over the curriculum. It’s for press releases, not for actual policy-making.
South Dakota has no state income tax. If you want to move to the Dakotas, choose South Dakota.
I spent about a year in North Dakota as a builder/developer. One thing the locals talked about was how they, in 2011, were still paying the bonds tab for the oil boom and bust of the 1980s. I have many friends in Northwest ND who fear the closing of the current oil fields (the oil removal process is a point of controversy). The fear is based on the assumption that the boom might bust – leaving the thinly populated counties to deal with the aftermath, including any debt.
I have heard and read some conservatives who think ND residents are pretty dumb for voting to keep property taxes. I am no fan of taxation as it is currently structured, and would have voted to eliminate the the tax, but I also know that from the perspective of many ND citizens, the debt of the 1980s is still painfully real.
Local control was maintained. And the future may bring about ebooks so the teachers can actually teach REAL facts and information. YOu can play your game. But what they did was, in the long term, a good deal.
The more we decentralize, the more control we have over the government. What we have now is so bad because the politicians KNOW that it is really hard to be removed because of the stupidity of the voters who think tenure means more pork for the local area. To stop that, end pork and enact term limits with NO RETIREMENT BENEFITS. That would take a lot of wind out of the greedy politicians' sails.
This really is a conundrum. You have essentially two competing conservative ideals- local control and the idea that you never truly own your own home if you have to pay property taxes.
There was massive vote fraud in the GOP primaries, this November the final vote count will be done in secret in Spain. That's right, vote rigging is being off-shored! As long as Americans tolerate electronic voting done with proprietary source code that the people are not allowed to examine, pretty much any issue can be decided against even massive popular support — like lowering taxes.
"South Dakota has no state income tax. If you want to move to the Dakotas, choose South Dakota."
I would like to move to a Free state, there just aren't any; as long as they are part of the United States there is nothing but continual oppression and destruction of liberty. I don't mind paying legitimate taxes to pay for legitimate services of civil government, we need a minister of justice and I think the Bible had a flat head tax for that purpose. Every man had the same stake in justice and every man paid the same tax, that makes sense to me. But pretty much all States now conform to systems, whether imposed or economically designed to garner submission, to Statist controls and they perpetuate these frauds designed in Washington across the country. I really don't think we have a civil government anymore, we have a centralized taxing authority with satellite administrators called "states," it works like a great big "arcade," of sorts.
Sort of like Chuckie Cheese pizza, except you trade your labor, invention, hopes and dreams for game tokens to live in this Federal arcade – some call it "the economy." But it works just like Chuckie Cheese pizza, they have these worthless tokens with a picture of rat on them and then the backside is stamped with "No Cash Value," your tokens only work in their arcade and you then get worthless tickets to trade for Chinese junk in their display cases. Federal government is just more sophisticated about it, they put pictures of dead President's on their game tokens and convince everybody that they "trust in God."
The American people don't have enough faith to ever change this, they'll continue voting for the proverbial lesser of two evils, until they destroy themselves. Ever time they think they are doing something positive it turns out they are just hacking at branches and they never strike the root, in turn the root grows deeper, bigger and stronger every time they hack off a few branches and then it springs forth ten times as proliferate – and then they are surprised by it, where did all this come from?
Secession needs to become part of the serious public discourse, though. People think that didn't work the first time because of the slavery issue, never realizing that only private slavery was outlawed through its public establishment making everyone property of the Federal government. All State's became slave states and the question was settled over who the slaves are, not on the issue of slavery, which is why the issue of secession needs to be raised again to once and for all deal with the issue of slavery and cut it off.
I would have voted to remove property taxes simply because with them you never OWN your home, even when 100% paid off, your property can be taken away from you.
1. Listen to TruNews with Rick Wiles.
2. Listen to The PowerHour with Joyce Riley.
3. Don't vote for ANY evil (greater or lesser).