There are a number of right-wing blogs crowing about a ‘tax revolt’ in Augusta County where a committee is starting recall efforts to remove five Augusta County supervisors who voted to not repeal the 2009 property reassessments. Steve Bright, Jim Harner, and Elwood Hilderand are setting out to collect 10% of the votes cast in each of these Supervisors’ district.

Yankee Philip: KICK ‘EM OUT ! ! !: Recall Vote Coming In Augusta
SWAC: Augusta tax revolt tea party was a HUGE success
Rightwing Liberal: What if you held a tax revolt and EVERYBODY came?
Fishersville Mike: Going to Wednesday’s meeting?
The Journey: Massive Protest of Mass Appraisal, and
Tertium Quids: An Augusta County Tax Revolt?

If the required signatures are collected in Augusta County, they get presented to the Circuit Court, which must then rule on a recall vote for “neglect of duty, misuse of office, or incompetence in the performance of duties [that] has a material adverse effect upon the conduct of the office“. — VA §24.2-233

A group that similarly petitioned Gloucester County Circuit Court last year for the removal of four Supervisors got slammed by the judge:

Substitute Circuit Judge Westbrook J. Parker ordered the residents to pay and made no effort to conceal his contempt for their actions. “I’ve never seen the judicial system abused so much for purely political ends,” Parker said. “This should not happen in America.“—RTD

Parker then ordered the group pay $80,000 of the Supervisors’ $130,000 legal bill, directing that the County pay the remainder. An appeal of the fees is ongoing and the ACLU is aiding the group.

But that citizens’ group faulted the Gloucester supervisors for holding secret meetings, firing the two top county employees, and hiring a Supervisor’s friend. They also relied on a grand jury indictment charging supervisors with 14 misdemeanors, although those charges were dismissed when a special prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to proceed. But right or wrong, the Gloucester group had something resembling a reason.

In contrast, assuming they collect the signatures, the Augusta County group will present the Circuit Court with a novel ‘charge’:

“Your honor, these Supervisors neglect of duty, misuse of office, or incompetence is that they followed Virginia code and obeyed state law, resulting in material adverse effect upon the conduct of the office”

Yes, you heard right, they want the Supervisors recalled for obeying the law —or to be more precise— they want them recalled for failing to disobey state law.

Stuck on stupid.

Noticeably absent from the Augusta County recall committee are the people who are spearheading the fake tax-revolt movement: Churchville sort-of-attorney Francis Chester who has repeatedly promised to sue the Board, lone Democrat Supervisor Tracy Pyles, Kurt Michael, and Lynn Mitchell. These last two failed to wrest control of the county’s Republican committee, and their current involvement looks remarkably like sour-grapes and malicious retaliation against the Republican-led Supervisors.

The Augusta County recall petition will fail spectacularly. Just as there is no exception of state law allowing someone of the ‘wrong’ color to be lynched because a mob large number of citizens wants it; there is no provision in state law for a County’s Board to defy the law just because a mob large number of citizens wants it. That’s the heart of their argument: a lot of people asked the Board to break the law and the Board didn’t do it. Now the crybabies are going to fling feces.

The county’s assessments were accurate —as accurate as mass appraisals are— and conducted properly. If the county could back out of the assessment, it would face the inevitable (and this time well-founded) lawsuits from property owners of more recent purchases; whose assessments aren’t synchronized with their neighborhood and would bear disproportionally higher tax. That would have been unjust in addition to illegal, and the Board majority was smart to not go there.

Whether Bright, Harner, and Hilderand will be held responsible for their acts is uncertain. Following the Glouchester ruling, there is legislation waiting Governor Kaine’s signature amending §24.2-233 and §24.2-238 so that petitioners cannot be assessed attorneys fees or court costs.

We have electoral terms for a reason, and if signed, the legislature may well regret the change they made. As originally introduced, the change would have allowed a judge to penalize “clear and convincing evidence” of “malicious intent”, a fair and healthy balance. As it was passed by the GA, the new law protects petitioners from any sanctions at all, even when the petitioner is clearly malicious or intended only to harm the official(s).

Welcome to the world of eternal elections, where special interest groups’ can repeatedly and continually collect signatures to keep properly elected officials —elected during scheduled elections— permanently in court defending themselves. Community organizers, ACORN, and bevies of student activists can keep the electoral polls churning endlessly.

“The court may require the state agency or political subdivision … to pay court costs or reasonable attorney fees, or both, for the respondent”, so the cost of defending against the frivolous lawsuits recall petitions will fall —as it always does— squarely on the taxpayer. So will the added costs of special elections. The people screaming loudest about assessments and taxes are the ones raising costs the fastest. Regular taxpayers, not ‘a government’, are the ones who would have lost $50,000 if the Board deferred the assessment, and regular taxpayers will bear the cost of this ‘recall’ petition too.

Sticking it to the taxpayers. Again. Stuck on stupid.

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Update
Irony beyond irony: one of the proponents for the Augusta recall petition is decrying that Alaska Governor Palin is getting hammered by frivolous legal bills. You simply can’t make this stuff up.

Update 2
Lynn Mitchell objects to my use of the term ‘wrest control’ or ‘commandeer’ in terms of herself and the party apparatus. Everyone else I have spoken to, including members of her own faction, speaks in those terms which refers to the Hanger and Sayres split. Mitchell describes herself simply as a grassroots member, but uses the terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’ to describe who had or has party control. Her objection is noted —it may be more valid than I credit— and the reader is left to draw their own conclusion.

Update 3
Last night, Supervisor Tracy Pyles announced he would no longer ‘fight the good fight’ and considered the assessment issue settled. The other public face of the movement, Francis Chester, said only he was surprised by Pyles announcement. Last night’s Board meeting had only the usual (small) audience. If Chester fails to carry the movement —my guess— the issue is almost over.

Want to save a few bucks? A couple of posts at CatHouse Chat reminded me of how much money the Commonwealth could be —and should be— saving, and how rotten and slow Microsoft’s Vista® is.

When my old computer died, I was astonished that the new computer took four minutes to boot. Even after it was started, it ran slug-slow. Then it wouldn’t run my CAD programs, which was a deal-stopper, those programs had to run.

Kat’s articles about how she fixed her problem (on her laptop too) reminded me of how I fixed the problem the same way, by installing Linux instead of Windows. We both used a version of Linux called Ubuntu.

Technical stuff, skip if you want.
This is on a computer that has four processors (4!) all running three times faster than the old one, quadruple the memory and quadruple the speed, etcetera. What should have been blazing fast was poking along like a snail.

Reformatting for Win2k didn’t work at all, the hard drive was too big for it to recognize. WinXP needed special drivers for the network card that were on the internet, a catch-22. Reinstalling Vista took 3 hours! and wasn’t complete when I got frustrated.

So I tried the Ubuntu CD. This version of Linux recognized and used every piece of hardware immediately. The installation took 12 minutes from boot to final re-boot. And it enabled me to get the WinXP drivers, as I still needed Windows for the CAD programs.

But now Linux is installed for good,. It was awesome the way Ubuntu outshone, outran, and outperformed the Microsoft systems. And it plays nice with the WinXP system I have to use.

The Ububtu software looks a lot like Windows and operates like Windows should. It comes fully outfitted with an Office suite, productivity tools, educational programs and games for the kids, photo and graphics software, music and video, a planetarium, and all the internet, messaging, calendering, contacts, email, Bluetooth and IM gadgets you can imagine. Similar to more expensive Windows or Apple computers.

Nobody in the family can tell that it didn’t cost $150 for the operating system, plus more for the software and virus protection. Which comes around to what cost savings Virginia should be looking at.

Using free software such as Ubuntu or Linux Mint would save the state taxpayers at least $29 million per year. Not only is the software absolutely free, it is easier to administer than Windows, and maximizes computer life.

That’s $4 for each and every citizen in Virginia. Enough to fund and reverse every service cutback VDOT has proposed. Or simply give you that much back.

My neighbors believe some not-very-provable things. It isn’t harmful, and none of the other neighbors publicly criticize them for it. But some beliefs draw out meanness and spite from others. One of those just snagged the Below The Beltway blog.

It went like this:

1) Calling himself ‘The Searcher’, Derek Chatwood of Seattle WA —a liberal, gay rights proponent, and Obama supporter— makes and posts a graphic on his photoblog in March 2007. It is purportedly a page from a child’s coloring book that shows Jesus riding a dinosaur.

“I modeled him off of bronze cowboy sculptures, I only wish I could have found better Jesus reference that weren’t so confoundingly serene and calm.” —The Searcher

2) An anonymous blogger in Dublin, Ireland re-posted the picture earlier this month asking, “Another one for the miscellaneous file?“.

3) On Sunday, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic re-re-posts, claiming “A coloring book for evangelical children.”

4) Doug Mataconis of Below The Beltway rises to the bait, and re-re-re-posts it with the comment, “From a children’s biblical coloring book”

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Of the entire chain, Chatwood may be unpleasant, but honest in stating the drawing was made up. The Irish blogger is not really clear about it; her comment is ambiguous.

It is at Andrew Sullivan’s entry that clear misrepresentation is found. Sullivan —a liberal, Christian-hating, bitter homosexual, and hypocrite— needs little introduction to most people, but Wikipedia can fill in for those who aren’t familiar. He is no stranger to creating and starting malicious gossip.

It was Sullivan who posted the rumor that Palin faked her fifth pregnancy, and that the baby was actually her daughter’s. When confronted with proof to the contrary, Sullivan caved but defended his article spreading the rumors. Now Sullivan claims this graphic is ‘a coloring book’, when a few seconds of link-hopping reveals the source as manufactured parody.

Those seconds of link checking would have saved a Virginia blogger from repeating the same lie. Regrettably the bias was too strong —the preconception of ‘stupid creationist Christians’ too powerful— for Doug Mataconis to bother confirming the validity. Below The Beltway was pwn’d, it’s content usurped..

That’s what prejudice will get for you.

Yet again, we see American policies helping to raise the heat under a boiling pot. Mexico is rife with corruption, and now violence right on the border rises to unprecedented levels.

In the current situation, a city of 1.5 million people on the US border is erupting into armed conflict. The current staffing levels of Mexican police and army (ratio of peacekeeper to civilian) in Ciudad Juárez is almost equivalent to US and Iraqi staffing in Bahgdad. Note also that CNN’s math is poor: 1,500 soldiers to join the 3,500 there plus 3,000 federal agents are 8,000 added personnel.

That’s a lot of armed and law enforcement personnel, but violence in Mexico is increasing exponentially. There were 5,400 slayings in 2008, more than double the 2,477 reported in the year before. The murder rate in Juárez is three times more than the worst US city.

The situation in Ciudad Juarez is of special concern. Mexican authorities report that more than 1,800 people have been killed in the city since January 2008. Additionally, this city of 1.6 million people experienced more than 17,000 car thefts and 1,650 carjackings in 2008. —Travel Alert, U.S. Department Of State

Concerned conservatives should support a deflated drug war, so crime organizations would have less profit and fewer Mexicans would try to flee its violence by entering the US illegally. Concerned liberals should support deflating the drug war, so crime organizations would have less profit and fewer Mexicans would try to flee its violence by entering the US illegally. And as usual, partisan hacks will exploit the people caught in the crossfires.

Partisans on the right use the issue to gain organized labor votes while simultaneously getting the cheap-n-cheating businessman and day-labor voters; and they also garner support for cultural stability. With ‘eevul-Republicans’ exploiting the poor this way, it means it’s acceptable to for partisans on the left to exploit the same people —as long as it’s exploiting the opposite way— pushing union protections while keeping cheap labor for cheap-n-cheating businessman under the guise of ‘helping the poor’ and pro-foreigner rhetoric.

Most people who immigrate to the US —legally or not— do it for a better life. Many are pressured into leaving their homes by corruption or violence in their native country. Violence or corruption in Mexico doesn’t excuse breaking US laws, but commonsense tells us that reducing Mexican drug-cartel violence will reduce illegal entry into the US and improve the quality of life for all Mexican citizens.

Recent rhetoric from the White House implies Mexican narco-traffickers are armed with US firearms, making the violence even more valuable to gun-control supporters.

As history repeats itself, watch carefully as nothing is done unless until the violence spills into the US. Keeping the Mexican pot boiling is to both parties’ advantage.

Too many people place dependence on technology. Gadgets certainly help make our world better, but common sense sometimes get misplaced in the presence of gizmos. In this instance, so-called intelligent signs are warning us “Caution! Zombies Ahead!“.

Yeah, in the razzle-dazzle of having programmable signs, some people forgot that anybody can program the signs. To say anything. In one case they warn of zombies, in another to take your SUV back to Detroit, warn of raptors ahead, telling drivers to don’t drive, or to take a left at the Pacific Ocean.

The problem is people get dazzled by techno and forget the basics. In Texas, they forgot to put a padlock on the program box. Duh! Stacy Sager of VDOT’s office in Shenandoah County says the office was alerted by the sign company to potential pranksters, so they put padlocks on all the control boxes and changed the controller passwords.

But techno-glitz struck the makers themselves. OK, it smacked them along-side the head and made them silly. The sign manufacturer failed to tell VDOT that —by design— the password can be overridden and reset by anyone. [Sorry dudes, the Shenandoah County folks know about it now. Try hacking signs in some other area.] Just how stupid is that?

It’s not a huge problem, and sometimes it’s cute; but in Texas it cost money. Transportation personnel, cops, and a prosecutor. Tax money, also known as your money. The tiniest little bit of thinking would have made the signs with detachable programmers, locks with keys, or a thousand other things to ensure these $50,000 signs are secure.

People are breaking in, stealing stuff, and assaulting each other; while the Front Royal police are concentrating on charging a local man for ‘illegal tattooing’.

Some weeks ago Jeffrey Gilliom plead guilty and got a 30-day suspended jail sentence and $250 fine for illegally tattooing a 16-year-old girl. He was originally was charged with tattooing three 16-year-old girls but in a plea bargain two of the charges were dropped in exchange for Gilliom pleading guilty to one of the charges.

Now he faces three more charges because the department places a charge for each tattoo, but involve a different minor. “It’s a separate individual offense each time a juvenile is tattooed” said the head of investigations.

“He didn’t have a license, and our biggest thing is the juveniles and the health [issue],” David L. Fogle, an investigator with the Front Royal Police Department who has been working on the case, has said. “That’s why you have to have parental permission before you’re allowed to tattoo a juvenile.” — Northern Virginia Daily

What a load of hogwash. We all know health is just the excuse; parents not wanting their kids to permanently paint themselves is the reason, and class perceptions of tattoos are the motive. Can’t say I blame them, but I realize my prejudice about tattoos; and I don’t feel right about putting someone in prison for it.

The girls wanted the tattoos and Gilliom provided them. The equipment was sterile; nobody was infected. Yet we have (and pay taxes to their salaries) two police investigators and an attorney tied up prosecuting him for that. And society —our local society— is apparently willing to put this guy in jail for up to thee years.

The purported reason for requiring licenses is health, yet the legal violation is tattooing on minors. People don’t have to be licensed to pierce ears; where a needle goes completely through the skin, not just the top layer like tattoo. Would we do the same if the girls gave themselves the tattoos?

Yes, health is only an excuse. If he’d used a coathanger surgical steel wire in the girls’ uterus the government would pay for it, the police would be guarding him, and it would be none of the parents’ business.

Funny how law works. Just don’t call it justice.

In Florida, Sen. Larcenia Bullard took objection to the term ‘animal husbandry’ in a discussion of a bill outlawing unmentionable acts with animals.

Rich’s legislation would target only those who derived or helped others derive ‘’sexual gratification” from an animal, specifying that conventional dog-judging contests and animal-husbandry practices are permissible.

That last provision tripped up Miami Democratic Sen. Larcenia Bullard.

”People are taking these animals as their husbands? What’s husbandry?” she asked. Some senators stifled their laughter as Sen. Charlie Dean, an Inverness Republican, explained that husbandry is raising and caring for animals. Bullard didn’t get it.

”So that maybe was the reason the lady was so upset about that monkey?” Bullard asked, referring to a Connecticut case where a woman’s suburban chimpanzee went mad and was shot. — Miami Herald

The problem isn’t just ignorance, she is from a big city. It’s not that she didn’t catch on, the topic being debated was disturbing. It’s not that she was slow on the uptake, she is 61 and been in elected office for 17 of those years.

The problem is state Senator Larcenia J. Bullard (D-Miami) is Vice-Chair of the state’s Senate Committee on Agriculture.

Just don’t mention to Sen. Bullard that Wednesday is ‘humpday’.

Following a massive turnout at the Augusta County government center, it’s easy to see the decline and fall of traditional conservatism in the Shenandoah Valley. The throng that showed up to protest reassessments were protesting the free market, objecting to nonexistent tax increases. [Video and live-blog can be found at the Staunton News-Leader site.]

Farmers —the practitioners of agriculture— have to be able to calculate profits or loss on cost of feed and the conversion of feed to a resulting carcass weight. They have to be able to mix pesticide or fertilizer into a 1000 gallon sprayer and work out spray ratios so that it is “applied at 2 pounds per acre” . . . and calculate the costs of crop loss from under-spray or the double-loss from direct damage and product waste if over-sprayed.

Farming may be about the care and feeding of living things, but every aspect of that care involves math; its cause and effect. Farming is about the economics of raising plants and animals.

So it’s disappointing to see those core values lost; to see massive numbers of people in one of Virginia’s great agricultural counties without any concept of cause and effect, unable to grasp a simple budget, and ignorant about ratios or percentages.

To start with, the group was protesting the assessments! Assessment is the estimation of a property’s value. State law says —since market prices change— that property must be reassessed every four years. State law also says any increase in county tax revenue from reassessment must be negated to within 1% or less. So repeat after me:
Reassessment does not increase tax
Reassessment does not increase tax
Reassessment does not increase tax

For all the rhetoric about how high assessment values had gone —an average +28% over four years— nobody offered a shred of evidence that any private, mortgage, or bank appraisals were (or would be) different than the assessed values. There was a fairy-tale belief that ‘big increases’ were impossible because the housing bubble had burst.

Worse, they had no idea of what was going on in their own lives. For all the protestations about taxes, none knew how much tax they actually paid last year or the previous years before. OK, one the group’s leaders knew his back taxes exactly, because he hadn’t paid them! Why does this sound familiar? Does this qualify him for an Obama appointment?. How can people protest against ‘increased taxes’ when the taxes did not go up? The answer at the Augusta County meeting was to make it up, to claim taxes were ‘getting worse’ or talk about federal income tax. LOL

Most discouraging of all —the point of this article— is that a political movement that previously stood for civic engagement, personal responsibility, and prudent government has been co-opted.

Now we see deliberate ignorance, no respect for the law, asking government to set market prices, demanding action because of how they “feel”. This used to be a hallmark of the radical left, the actions of socialism. It still is.

While researching another subject, I ran across an organization that is amazing – for its deception. Calling itself the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) they claim to be our state’s ‘oldest faith-based advocacy group’.

It is a throwback to the pre-Revolutionary age when the Church of England was indistinguishable from the Crown, when church and state were two parts of a single organ ruling over their subjects. Every program VICPP supports is leftist, every advocacy is for imposed collectivist policies.

Of two observations, the first is simply hilarious. Over the last few years the political left has been pitching a fit and moaning about the dangers of a ‘conservative theocracy’, claims that the religious right wants war in the Middle-east to hasten a Second Coming, etcetera. Sounds scary (if it was true) but reality is the exact opposite.

Enter the Virginia Interfaith Center. The left wants a theocracy all right —they want a liberal run theocracy— and they even started on it first. Virginia’s ‘oldest faith-based advocacy group’. The left is jealous. Even worse . . .

Theologically, the Social Gospel leaders were overwhelmingly post-millennialist. That is because they believed the Second Coming could not happen until humankind rid itself of social evils by human effort. . . . Examples of its continued existence can still be found, notably the organization known as the Call to Renewal and more local organizations like the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. — Social Gospel

So it is leftists who started mixing religion into state and politics. It is leftists who want a theocracy. And it is leftists who believe they can hasten the Second Coming by promoting their favored policies.

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The second observation is (social gospel or not) the Virginia Interfaith Center is anti-faith. Christians are not people who believe in Jesus; even Moslems believe that. Christians are those “professing belief in Jesus as Christ or following the religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus.” (Am Herit Dict)

Nobody is forced to agree with every interpretation, I am totally accepting of the fact there are many differing versions of Christian faith. But I can confidently state those who contradict Jesus —those who hold that Christ was accidentally or deliberately wrong— cannot call themselves ‘Christian’ in any meaning of the term.

The Center’s key fund-raising phrase “End poverty and heal God’s Creation” manages to both contradict Christ and declare that God’s work as Creator is imperfect. Jesus said —clearly and unmistakably said— that poverty cannot be eliminated.

The fifth book of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) Deuteronomy 15:11 states “For the poor will never cease to be in the land . . .” Much later, Christ said about the same thing, perhaps more clearly, “For you always have the poor with you . . .”, in Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, and John 12:8.

It is in its full context that John’s Gospel gives the true motivation for claiming to care about the poor:

Therefore Mary took a pound of ointment spikenard, or true nard, precious, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hairs; and the house was full-filled with the savour of the ointment.

Therefore Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, that was to betray him, said, “Why is not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to needy men?” But he said this thing, not for it pertained to him of needy men, but for he was a thief, and had the purses, and bare those things that were sent.

Therefore Jesus said,
Suffer ye her, that into the day of my burying she keep that; for ye shall evermore have poor men with you, but ye shall not evermore have me.

Therefore much people of the Jews knew, that Jesus was there; and they came, not only for Jesus, but to see Lazarus, whom he raised from dead.

— John 12:3-9
Wycliffe Translation

As we know, Christ was right. The only instances in history of sharply reduced poverty are the United States and nations adopting the free enterprise system; the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice. It reduces poverty a lot, but doesn’t end it; the poor are still with us.

There are things we can do —things we should do— to help and comfort the less fortunate. Deuteronomy continues “. . . You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.” Many, many other passages speak of charity and aid also. Yet none speak of compelling our brothers and sisters to pay.

Judas pretended concern about money for the poor so that he could steal some of it, “for he was a thief.” And Virginia Interfaith Center advocates more tax dollars to “end poverty”, an objective that cannot and will not ever be met.

Sometime around 400 AD a teenager in Britain was kidnapped by raiders and sold into slavery. There he stayed as a shepherd, until about 6 years later he escaped and arrived back home. Fearing other attacks and kidnapping, his father sent him to the Continent for his education, where he chose to follow the path to priesthood.

Saint Patrick

“And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as if from Hibernia with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: “The Voice of the Hibernians”, and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and they were crying as if with one voice: “We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.” And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many years the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.” —Confessio

So it was that Patrick departed his home to save the Irish people, and the Irish in turn saved Western civilization.