A constant battle over property taxes rages in Sturbridge.

Here is an overly simplified view of the battle in order to provide the background for the solution. One side wants improvements and amenities in the town that would raise property taxes.  They are willing to pay the extra taxes for these additions.  The other side is already struggling to pay their property taxes, and feel that they just cannot afford to pay for these additions.

In researching the idea I had, I found that it is already provided for in the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachuestts.

I found an explanation in a document published by the city of Boston, Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Property Taxes. The relevant section is on PDF page 18, document numbered page 14.

Each city or town assessing all property at its full and fair cash value, as certified by the Commissioner of Revenue, must annually decide whether to adopt a residential exemption within the residential class for parcels that are the principal residence of a taxpayer.

A residential exemption is an assessed dollar amount of value that is exempt from taxation. It is a reduction in the amount of property tax that a homeowner would otherwise be asked to pay. For example, if the residential exemption were $8,000, then a home with a market value of $150,000 would be taxed on only $142,000 of its value.

In Boston, the residential exemption can be between 0% and 30% of the average value of all residential property in a city or town. For example, if the average value of a home was $180,000, the residential exemption could range from $0 to $54,000 of value.

A residential exemption can only apply to the principal residence of a taxpayer. A principal residence is one in which the taxpayer lives and which is used as a permanent home and legal residence. Summer or vacation houses are not eligible.

The residential exemption does not affect the share of the property tax levy to be paid by the residential class, but does affect the taxes paid within the residential class.

For example, an owner-occupied home will receive the benefit of the residential exemption, while a non- owner-occupied residence will not. Further, within the owner-occupied class, the residential exemption would have a greater effect on lower-value properties. The net effect of the residential exemption is a shift of tax burden within the residential class such that there is a higher effective rate on higher-value property than on lower- value property.

The residential exemption is a local option and is adopted in a town by the selectmen, and in a city, by the mayor with approval of the city council.

I do not know if Sturbridge has such an option, but if it doesn’t, this might be a good way to get the two sides of this battle together.  This might also help to solve the problem of the split tax rate that business people in Sturbridge claim is unfriendly to business.  It concentrates the tax relief on the lower income residents, instead of for all residents.

April 12, 2014

The web page for the Sturbridge Tax Assessor’s office does not give any indication that the type of residential property tax exemption discussed in this article is used in the town of Sturbridge.

The Sturbridge Annual Town Election is Monday, April 14.  Polling place is Oliver Wight Tavern, Old Sturbridge Village.  Poll opens at 7:00AM.

The Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee endorses three people in contested races.

• Jacob Ryan for Tantasqua Regional School Committee
• Pat Barnicle for Tantasqua Regional School Committee
• Don Fairbrother for Board of Selectman – one year term

I will be voting for all three.  Of course I will be voting in the uncontested races, too.

Democracy Now has an interview with Nomi Prins.

All the President’s Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (1/2)

All the President’s Bankers: Nomi Prins on Secret History of Washington-Wall Street Collusion (2/2)

Here is the excerpt mentioned in the videos READ: Nomi Prins’ “All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power”.

The Nation has the article Presidential Prospect or Not, Elizabeth Warren Has a Lesson for Democrats.

Yes, yes, Warren has said that she is not running for the Democratic nomination in 2016. And there are plenty of polls to suggest that, were she to enter the race, she would not have an easy time competing with a prospective Hillary Clinton candidacy—although, notably, Warren’s numbers rise rapidly in hypotheticals that do not feature Clinton.

But let’s put the polls aside for now.

Let’s recognize that a necessary politics does not just reflect public opinion, it anticipates concerns and answers them in bolder and better ways than pollsters and pundits can calculate. Those who would lead the nation ought to offer much more than a set of approved talking points. There must be a vision, a language, that explains the crisis, and inspires a response.

This article does a wonderful job of explaining why Warren’s speech that I posted in Elizabeth Warren’s 2014 Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale Dinner Speech is so important.

We Democrats can fix it so that Hillary is not in the mix. I think I would rather lose with someone who will set up the party for an eventual ascendancy, than win with someone who will slowly let our principles be eroded until the point that there is no use for the Democratic party. However, looking on the bright side, we might actually have a better chance of winning with Warren than with Hillary.

What Obama and all the Democrats after Johnson forgot, is that it is not only a matter of winning on one small issue by finding a winning compromise, it is a matter of educating the voters and changing their minds on big issues so that the path is paved for the future. Obama seems to forget after he wins or loses today, there are many tomorrows to worry about. If you win once today, but lose 10 times in the tomorrows, then you have the wrong strategy.

We should have been working on the terms of debate 30 years ago.  You can’t say, well I guess it is too late to do it now.  If we don’t start working on changing the terms of debate the way that Warren and Sanders are doing, we’ll find ourselves 30 years down the road wishing we had done this back then.  How many generations can we waste before we finally do what is necessary to save the country?

I have to thank LlandaR for finally convincing me to read The Nation magazine.  I know I am supposed to read the Bernie Sanders article Bernie Sanders Is Thinking About Running for President, but that article is only available to subscribers.

The Real News Network has the interview West Looks to Carve Up Ukraine & Privatize Industries Held By Kleptocrats posted on YouTube.

Michael Hudson: The financial grab for Ukraine industries is simply war by another name, as other Eastern Europe countries have experienced similar fates.

You may or may not think that this post is the serious one that I promised in the previous post.

I am quite willing to believe that the west has the evil motives that Hudson claims. I am also willing to believe that Russia has a right to feel threatened by western actions. I am still a little skeptical that Russia’s motives are as pure as Michael Hudson may seem to imply.

It may just be a matter of deciding whose Kleptocrats are more desirable. It seems that no matter which side you choose, it is an issue of concentrating wealth in someone’s hands.

The Boston Globe has the article Governor’s race has all Democrats leaning left.  The story is on the front page of the newspaper.  I think it would have made an excellent addition to the comics pages.

Missing from this year’s crop, though, is a candidate who fills a long-running role in previous Massachusetts Democratic primaries: a prominent centrist alternative.

This is where the new Globe mapping service must come in.  They have found the center, and they can tell you who is there and who is not.

The candidates need to capture 15 percent of the delegates at the June party convention to qualify for the September primary ballot. In jockeying to obtain the minimum percentage of delegates, La Raja said, Democrats are being forced to prove their left-leaning credentials, often the case in primary races of both parties.

That must mean that the Democrats are so unified ideologically that you cannot even find 15% of the delegates who aren’t way left.  Did you ever see a group of Democrats that could be that uniform?

In 1990, the last time Democrats ran to succeed one of their own as governor, the party nominated Boston University president John Silber, who ran to the middle before losing to Republican William Weld.

If they think John Silber was toward the middle compared to William Weld, I start having doubts about the new Globe mapping system.  John Silber may have been more to the middle than Ted Cruz, but that is not saying much.

The campaign’s only self-proclaimed fiscal moderate, Wellesley biopharmaceutical executive Joseph Avellone, identifies as a social liberal and backs what he calls a revenue-neutral carbon tax long sought by environmentalists.

He is the field’s leading skeptic on other new taxes. But he trails in both public polling and delegate commitments, according to tallies maintained by other campaigns.

I don’t suppose that the fact that nobody knows who Joseph Avellone is could be responsible for why he trails.  I am pretty sure he hasn’t been out to Sturbridge.  See if you can find a picture of Avellone among all the other Democratic contenders for the governors office in the photo album 2014 SDTC Scholarship Brunch Honoring Senator Stephen Brewer.

It might help to refer to RichardH’s post on this blog Diversion–Highway Fatalities and Lemons. The Globe writers and editors could use a good dose of the debunking of the fallacy that correlation is the same as causation.

At the same time, the last decade has brought a cascade of left-leaning policy changes, from same-sex marriage to health care expansion to marijuana decriminalization.

So I guess you can call Mitt Romney left-leaning because the Massachusetts health care reform was started during his administration.  He even claimed the authorship of the idea.

“Eight years of the Patrick administration and a lot of his successes in terms of his political achievements have moved the party to a more left agenda,” said state Representative Aaron Michlewitz, a North End Democrat unaffiliated with any gubernatorial campaign. “And I think our candidates in this race are a microcosm of that.”

How could the Democrats be so ideological that they would want to propose anything that has been “successful?”  Does the Globe think you would get more votes for proposing things that have been failures.  It seems to work for Republicans on a national level.  Then again the national Republicans have the Koch brothers who have been propagandizing for these failed policies for over 30 years.  Maybe The Boston Globe is envious because it has not been as successful as the Koch brothers in gulling the people here as the Koch brothers have been almost everywhere else. You may remember that Marilyn Vos Savant once said in the pages of this newspaper that “You won’t find the word gullible in the dictionary.”

Well, enough hilarity for one day.  Maybe I’ll find something more serious to post.

From the introduction on YouTube of the video  Elizabeth Warren’s 2014 Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale Dinner Speech:

Elizabeth Warren takes on Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz at the 2014 Minnesota DFL Humphrey-Mondale Dinner, her first state Democratic Party dinner.

If she had given this speech at yesterday’s Sturbridge Democratic Town Committee Scholarship Brunch, The audience would have been standing on their chairs, waving banners, applauding, and cheering. I guess they must be more sedate in Minnesota.

The artists comments are at Cover Story: Barry Blitt’s “The Best Medicine”.

Naked Capitalism has the story Bill Black: The Kamikaze Economics of Forcing Austerity on the Ukraine.  I’ll just give you the conclusion in the excerpt below.

The Ukraine faces severe problems beyond Russia and its energy dependence on Russia.  It has an enormous informal business sector because it is so difficult to start a legitimate business.  Ecuador recently adopted a law, and new technology, to make it radically faster to start a legitimate small business.  This is great for entrepreneurs, growth, reduced corruption, and collecting taxes.  It is a radical reform that people of all political stripes can support.  Similarly, anti-fraud and corruption efforts can save the Ukraine billions of dollars and spur growth.  President Obama could develop an aid, stimulus, debt relief, and reform package for the Ukraine based on ideas like this that would that have broad appeal and help the working class and entrepreneurs.  It would also be good for peace and security without being hostile to anyone.  Instead, we are committing kamikaze capitalism that is so crazy that it should be criminal.

What are the chances that new Ukrainian billionaires will emerge from the Western style economic “aide” while the Ukrainian middle-class declines?  Bill black further points out an obvious mistake and a way to avoid that mistake.

The EU and the U.S. can easily pay off Ukraine’s debts (or if they prefer any debt owed to non-Russian entities) and replace it with very low interest rate debt in the Ukraine’s own currency with interest payments deferred for a decade.  Ukraine has made the double mistake of trying to peg its currency to the dollar and to borrow in foreign currencies.

How many times do we have to witness the havoc that is brought on by borrowing in a foreign currency and also trying to peg a currency to the dollar?  You can see the train wreck coming in plenty of time to avoid it, but there doesn’t seem to be anything a sane person can do to prevent it.

I bet you thought that Conservatives were against assisted suicide.  They surely don’t seem to be acting on that principle in this case.