The Binary Circumstance

From the Seattle Times:

In a 5-4 ruling that seemed to catch the state’s entire political establishment by surprise, the court overturned Eyman’s Initiative 747, a 2001 measure that limited increases in property-tax collections to 1 percent a year.

After initially sounding equivocal about what to do, Gov. Christine Gregoire and House Democratic leaders said Friday they will push to reinstate the 1 percent cap when the Legislature convenes in January.

“The voters approved Initiative 747, it has been in place for five years and I think we need to leave it in place,” Gregoire said in a statement.

“We have every intention of going in there and reinstating the initiative,” said Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, the House majority leader. To do anything short of that, she said, “would be political suicide.”

I say, “Fat chance!”

When Gregoire campaigned for governor she said she would not raise taxes. What’s one of the first things she did after winning office? Raise taxes.

The Supreme Court ruling came two days after voters sent some clear anti-tax signals to lawmakers, rejecting numerous local tax measures and passing another Eyman initiative that will make it harder for the Legislature to increase taxes.

With I-747 in the grave, some local governments — from library districts to cities and counties — could begin ratcheting up taxes.

There’s a lot of disagreement on how fast and how high taxes could increase now that I-747 is dead. But if local taxing districts begin seizing the opportunity to raise taxes beyond the 1 percent cap, there could be severe fallout for Democrats in next year’s election.

[…]

The state’s cities and counties, which collectively wield a powerful voice in Olympia, vehemently opposed I-747 and will lobby hard against reinstating the cap. They favor replacing it with a more flexible inflation-based cap.

Meanwhile, progressive groups are leaning on Democrats to instead focus on a more targeted approach — something that would preserve total property tax collections but shift the burden to wealthier taxpayers.

An inflation-based cap is worthless in the inflationary times we are living in. It offers no protection at all to homeowners who are already squeezed by inflation in housing costs, oil, food and just about everything else. It allows their property taxes to go up at the same rate as everything else, which only makes their situation worse.

If Eyman wants to make sure Democrats keep their promise to limit increases to 1%, he should start collecting signatures for a replica of California’s Proposition 13.

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled that Tim Eyman’s Initiative 747 is unconstitutional, paving the way for higher property taxes.

My own property taxes have gone up about 40% in the past five years, even with the limitations imposed by Initiative 747.

I hate to think what they’re going to be now.

If Tim Eyman were a smarter man than he is, he would get a replica of California’s Proposition 13 on the ballot. Prop 13 has been tested all the way up to the U.S. Supreme court and has been ruled constitutional. In California I always knew what my taxes were going to be and never feared losing my home because my fellow citizens felt they had a right to force me to pay child support or to finance their other pet projects.

The simple fact is that property taxes are an immoral theft of private property and if we had a government that protected the rights of individuals we would not have them. But instead, we have a government owned by special interests. When those special interests want money, the government takes it from private property owners.

I’ve written before that a rational definition of a crime must require that an individual is harmed in some way. There is no such thing as a crime against irrational inanimate entities like rocks or states and disobedience in an of itself can not be a crime in a free society. If a person can be guilty of a crime just be disobeying the law and without harming another individual in any way, he is not living in a free society but a slave state instead.

The arrest of Sen. Larry Craig in a men’s room gay sex sting illustrates this issue to some extent. The New York Times [reg. req.] also reports that Craig may have been treated more harshly than than other men arrested in the same sex sting. A defense lawyer clearly articulates the rational test for a crime in the article:

Mr. Dean, the defense lawyer, said, “My legal argument is: as long as it’s not invading anybody else’s privacy, as long as it’s not causing alarm to other people in the bathroom, and as long as they don’t actually have sex in the bathroom, it’s no crime.”

Our legal system is not rational, however. Our nation’s disgust with homosexuality is clearly at work here and the police report clearly indicated that the arresting officer gave a signal (foot-tapping) that would be interpreted as a signal of mutual consent. That raises the issue of entrapment.

I think Craig is being very dishonest with himself and everybody else about his sexuality and what happened in the rest room. I also think he had plenty of time and resources to fight the charges but pleaded guilty because he was embarrassed by being caught peeking into a stall and giving signals that are interpreted as solicitations for gay sex.

Another defense attorney put the entire sting operation into perspective.

Jonathan Burris, a lawyer representing five of the defendants, said the national attention on Mr. Craig had made prosecutors less likely to reduce charges against the other men.

“They’re very happy with their officers for their wonderful sting they’ve put together,” Mr. Burris said, adding, “This is an airport — they’re supposed to watch out for terrorists and bombs, not sit in a bathroom eight hours a day.”

To many, however, there’s nothing more terrifying than homosexuality. And people like Larry Craig and the police officers involved in the sting are both compulsively drawn to it and repulsed by it.

The real irony here is that if one accepts a rational definition of crime then the police officers committed a crime against Craig because they harmed him, and he harmed nobody. But even more importantly, every time Craig has supported legislation that deprives gay men and women of their basic human rights he has committed crimes against them, and himself.

If only our defintion of crime was rational rather than political and rooted in religion.

Once upon a time about 600 years ago in France, it was possible to have legal same sex-unions.

Same-sex civil unions, while seemingly new and radical, appear to have existed 600 years ago in late medieval France, a professor writes in the September issue of the Journal of Modern History.

The term affrerement, or “brotherment,” referred to a certain type of legal contract that provided a marriage-like foundation for non-nuclear households of many types, according to Allan Tulchin, an assistant professor of history at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

The model for the arrangement was that of biological brothers who inherited the family home on an equal basis from their parents and continued to live together, Tulchin wrote.

But in cases where the affreres were single, unrelated men, the contracts provide “considerable evidence that the affreres were using affrerements to formalize same-sex loving relationships,” he wrote.

“I suspect that some of these relationships were sexual, while others may not have been. It is impossible to prove either way and probably also somewhat irrelevant to understanding their way of thinking,” Tulchin wrote. “They loved each other, and the community accepted that.”