Mugged in DC

An MSNBC hostess was mugged in DC.

Big deal.

I'm a taxpayer, and I get mugged in DC every April 15.

And I'm a Californian, so I get mugged every April 15 in Sacramento too.

And once in December, and again in April when property taxes must be paid.

California is a strange state in many ways, but one of the strangest is that since Proposition 13 passed many years ago, a new property owner will pay ten or more times in property taxes what his neighbor pays on an identical property he's owned a long time.

Something about equal rights or equality under the law gets missed in all this.

However, as I seeth about what I have to pay, I chuckle at the liberals desperate for tax revenues to spend. The dirty little secret under Prop 13 is that the law applies to businesses as well as individuals. Businesses hold on to properties for very long periods of time, the property becomes extremely valuable, but the businesses only pay property taxes on the tiny prices they paid many years ago (which can only be increased a maximum of two percent per year).

Returning now to my main point, now the California Democrat legislatures have figured a way to raise taxes by billions of dollars and not call it a tax increase. Calling a tax increase a fees increase allows them, they think, to pass the increase without following the law established by Proposition 13 that all California tax increases require a two-thirds vote for passage.

It's amazing that they have found this loophole in the law after about three decades of compliance with Proposition 13. They're either very slow, or suddenly very creative.

Can you be both?

Or it's magical, like the magician pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat.

Shazzam!