As we all know, the SCOTUS screwed us all yesterday.
Here is my plan, please pass this around to as many folks as you can:
As we speak, the Senate has been sent a prospective Constitutional Amendment that would give Congress the power to enact laws making illegal the desecration of the American Flag.
This is not only disgusting and wrong, but a horrible waste of time for Congress and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Call your legislators, all of them and tell them you want them to stop screwing around with the Flag Burning Amendment and get working on an actual amendment that matters to every single American.
“Private property shall not be taken for private use, except for private ways of necessity, and for drains, flumes or ditches on or across the lands of others for agricultural, domestic or sanitary purposes. No private property shall be taken or damaged for public or private use without just compensation having first been made, or paid into court for the owner, and no right of way shall be appropriated to the use of any corporation other than municipal, until full compensation therefor be first made in money, or ascertained and paid into the court for the owner, irrespective of any benefit from any improvement proposed by such corporation, which compensation shall be ascertained by a jury, unless a jury be waived as in other civil cases in courts of record, in the manner prescribed by law.�
That is the original text of Article 1, Section 16 of the Washington State Constitution, minus the last sentence about the judicial branch being able to determine what is ‘public’.
If you have listened to any discussion, either televised or on talk radio, where one side is 100% behind the Flag Burning Amendment, one of their arguments is that they want it enacted so as to make a point to the SCOTUS that the Congress has the ability to make law they cannot beat, to stop judicial activism in the SCOTUS
With this Amendment, the Congress will not only do that, they will also please every single property owning American.
I am not in the least bit surprised that the SCOTUS came to the decision they did. One of the main reasons I do not currently own my current domicile is that I live and work in King County, Washington: Home of the sky-high property tax increases.
With property taxes: you really do not own your property, you are only renting it. Stop paying your property taxes for 2 or three years (if you’re lucky) and you’ll find out who really owns your property.
Washington State has no state income tax, but I would gladly pay a yearly state income tax of 5-10% to get rid of my future property taxes. The more money you make, the more potential property you own. So essentially, a property tax is an extra income tax for the middle class.
If you want to see people strive to make enough of a salary to buy property, charge them a tax that substitutes a property tax. Once they figure out what they’re being charged for even though they don’t have it, they’ll get the message and get off their asses
But then again, we first have to get a new property preserving amendment passed since the SCOTUS doesn’t seem to think too highly of the one we had.
So get off your ass and let them know you’re pissed off!