TheMissingBand

That’s an overreach… but i do like having a health department around to make sure that things are sanitary around those restaurants… food temps, extermination schedules , etc. But I doubt the guy who’s forced to buy a permit, then gets fined/shut down by the health department feels the same way.

Are construction costs different in Port Neches than they are in Port Arthur?

That was exactly my scenario. Same exact house. Greatly differing values, same tax bill.

Here are the problems with your scenario… I’ve got a friend that just looked at a 1.8 acre lot in Evergreen, Texas yesterday morning. New subdivision, concrete streets, underground utilities, HEAVILY restricted. The price for this 1.8 acre lot is $149k. If I give a 1/4 acre off of the east end of my place on a dirt road that floods to my kid and he builds the same exact house as my buddy, they’d be taxed the same under your plan, even though my kid’s house is literally worth a fraction of what my buddy’s would be worth. Not to point fingers, but a small, remodeled, frame house in the city of Groves would have the same insurable value as one on the west side of port Arthur that hasn’t seen a coat of paint in 25 years and sits in the middle of a few abandoned, burned down structures. Homes in Lum sell for completely different prices than houses in Kountze, despite their relative closeness. Neighborhoods matter in terms of affordability and value… your model calculates value on the price of lumber used to build the thing, while ignoring the actual value of the entire property. It’s not fair or equitable in my opinion. if your value is too high, file a protest with the CAD this spring. Round up your documentation as to what you believe it’s worth, and see what happens. Unfortunately, most people realize that homes in their area are going for much higher prices than they believed. One of my gripes is that the values are set based on sales prices… but that final sales prices usually includes thousands in repairs/upgrades to make the thing marketable, plus the 6% that’s going to pay the real estate agent(s) and often times it still includes the closing cost assistance that sellers give to buyers. Why are we all being taxed every year based upon sales prices that include the costs to market/sell the properties that sold down the street? It’s a legit gripe. My opinion is that a number that exists about 8-10% below the final sales prices of comparable sales should be used to establish appraised values for homes that haven’t sold in a couple of years. When you buy, your taxable value would stay static until your market value as determined by the Cad rose was 10% higher than your purchase price… then you’d start the ride upwards. Quite simply put, I don’t believe that the scenario you described occurs. Nobody is being taxed and fee’d out of their houses so that cities can improve their tax base. Municipalities move at the speed of glaciers. If some urban planner got the bright idea to raze a whole neighborhood and put in new housing, it would take years to get approval, legal fights, etc. What it sounds like to me is that your kinfolk had a property that wasn’t very well-maintained, while others around it were… subsequently they sold for ever-increasing prices while your kinfolks’ property sat needing paint, a roof, etc. Unfortunately those comparable sales are what is used to establish property values (and subsequent taxable values). Cities do have ordinances that require you to maintain your property. If you neglect your property, one of the last tools that the city has is to levy fines for violating city ordinances. There was a news story about two weeks ago about a house on 32nd street in groves that’s finally about to be cleaned up after years of neglect, complaints, etc… the entire yard is covered in used tires, appliances, etc. Some people would argue that the property owner has a right to do whatever he wants on his/her own little slice of Heaven. But I also bet that they wouldn’t want to live next door to the guy, either, based on the sight, smells, vermin, fire hazards, etc…. It’s an imperfect system, but to my way of thinking, it’s better than most of the alternatives, but it could use some tweaks.

It might seem that way, but it’s not. It’s actually a criminal act for anyone to try and influence values, upwards or downwards… on a single property or on all of them. There’s a formal protest process for property owners to use, and anything other than that process isn’t permitted by law. There are limits to how much a taxing units other than schools can increase their taxes. Long story made short is that they’re only allowed to increase the total amount of taxes collected last year by 3.5 percent without triggering an election. So if everybody out there has an increase in value of 20% this year, their taxes won’t go up by 20%… the max that the total amount of taxes can grow is 3.5% across the board. Now, if everybody else’s value stays the same and yours doubles, you’re in trouble. There are lots of caveats, but that’s the basis of it. If your CAD doubles everybody’s values this year, it doesn’t mean your taxes will go up. In fact, almost every taxing unit out there has lower tax rates than they did ten years ago because of the growth in values. Here’s my thing. Old people get incredible breaks. If their value is less than $200k, they pay nothing for school taxes. I just checked my dad’s. His bill for 2025 was $795. The bill would have been $4075 if there were no exemptions. Thats a hell of a break. But if you were to ask him, he’s getting robbed. The problem is that everybody has a solution that results in them paying less, or none at all, and the costs being passed on to everyone else. To answer your question, the elderly and disabled can defer their taxes and it stops any collection efforts until the property no longer has a deferral in place. No elderly (or even disabled people) should ever lose their home. But should people who aren’t elderly or disabled also not have to worry about paying their taxes? Well, we told people that they were entitled to healthcare whether chose to pay for it or not, and now our healthcare system is in ruins. Simply put, tax auctions are a last resort when people refuse to pay their taxes. Should I pay mine if nobody else pays theirs? Tax sales aren’t about punishing someone for not paying theirs… it’s about putting that property in the hands of someone who’s willing to actually pay the taxes, and a reminder to everybody else that there are repercussions for not paying your taxes. The reason that the American experience is doomed to fail is the same reason it was created. People don’t want to pay taxes. Americans have realized that they can elect leaders who promise generous gifts from the treasury. Those gifts come in the form of direct payment (EBT, food stamps, housing, free health care, etc) or in the form of tax cuts that we quite simply can’t afford. Either way, we just head further down the road to ruin. We can argue that no one should go hungry, healthcare is a human right, or old people shouldn’t have to pay taxes. Either way, it’s all about making sure that we pay less, regardless of what effect it has on the survival of our communities or the nation.

I think you’re on point with the property tax issue. Consumption taxes are regressive. They hit people with lower incomes/and property values much harder than those with more property value. The only discrepancy with your insurable value scenario is that I don’t see how it will work with homes on larger acreage tracts. It costs the same amount to insure a house on a half acre as it does to insure one on a hundred acres. Also, the value of homes in restricted neighborhoods is significantly different than one down a dirt road. Same age, same size, completely different market value, but the same cost to insure. But the idea isn’t a bad one, just need to tweak it, but you’re on point. My gripe is that the CADs were set up to make sure that taxes were as fair and equitable as possible. But imagine a scenario where there are four $250k homes in a row on a street in Lumberton. The first one pays $0, the next $500, the next $2000, and the last pays $4500 per year. Is that fair and equitable? Not hardly. The first one is a disabled veteran, the next is owned by an elderly couple in their seventies whose taxes were frozen ten years ago. The third is owned by a young family with a homestead exemption, and the last is also owned by a young couple the same age, but they bought a new home to live in elsewhere and are trying their hand at rental property with this one, so no exemption here. Still fair? I mean, that’s the law, but it doesn’t seem very fair or equitable. Then you hear that one of the ideas in Austin is to eliminate property taxes on any property that has a homestead. Now houses one, two, and three will pay nothing and the young couple that own the fourth home will have to pay $7000 per year to cover the revenue lost by the elimination of taxes on homesteads. Of course that’s going to pass the costs on to their renters. It’s no secret why rents seem extraordinarily high… the property tax relief giveaways that the legislature keeps passing off to homesteads are landing squarely on any type of property which doesn’t have a homestead exemption. There aren’t any easy answers, but the idea of just scrapping it all and tacking an extra 7 percent on all of the goods and services that you buy will absolutely hurt people and the economy in Texas.

Up to a point. I think abortion is wrong, but that’s based on my religious beliefs. Whether or not you have one should be between you and your creator, IMO. BUT, the problem comes in when a person can’t afford one. Should we then collectively be responsible to pay for a procedure that we believe to be immoral? That’s where the argument lost me. If the right have one means that the rest of us should foot the bill for anybody else getting one, then I’m out. And I’d love to hear your opinion on the movement to abolish all property taxes in Texas?

Same… I’ve always been conservative fiscally and socially, but feel myself recognizing more from the “other people” these days. Today “fiscally conservative” means “cut taxes and end regulation, that’ll fix everything” when it’s the not the answer. Even the successes that they point to are more like cautionary tales. There are some things that I can actually agree on from a liberal/progressive standpoint. Same-sex marriage, for one. If my wife (or I) die suddenly, there are rules for the disposition of our estate that protect the surviving spouse. Same with medical or end of life decisions. It doesn’t matter how long a same-sex couple has been together, until gay marriage was legalized, the significant other had no say in anything… that’s not right, when the only thing that would prohibit such unions were the religious beliefs of others. I’ve heard it said, but it’s true. We’re not a Christian nation, where a nation where we’re free to be a Christian. Or not. Or a Muslim, Hindu, etc… conservatives today don’t understand that basic fact of our constitution.

I’m just surprised at all of the supposed “free market, conservative” people who don’t a problem with all of the things you just described.

I have a friend that’s in management at one of the largest local credit unions. I asked her what they’d do if Trump’s plan to limit interest rates to 10% was to actually be implemented. She said that they’d still extend credit, but only to customers who deserved a 10% interest rate, dramatically limiting the credit extended to risky borrowers… typically the ones who rely upon credit the most. To your point, the proposed cap on credit card interest rates could also push the debt to income rate to even lower lows, lol. I think that it can be seen from other perspectives, too. Higher mortgage rates are keeping a lot of people in their current homes/mortgages because the cost to finance a new property is keeping them in their old home. If you’re in a 200k mortgage financed at 2.75, but the next logical upgrade is to a 350k mortgage, but at 6.00, you’re probably not going to upgrade. You could have afforded that $350k mortgage at 2.75, but not at 6.0-so they stay put. Trump’s demand to scrub 2 points off of the fed rate (and assuming there’d be a corresponding drop in mortgage rates) would move a lot of people to upgrade, but with resulting inflation that would drive prices up further. The uncomfortable truth is that low mortgage rates (too low, probably) caused problems in the system that were just now beginning to understand. Same story with vehicle debt. Tariffs cause higher prices, and high interest rates discourage purchases… end result is a lower DTI. It’s a win, I guess. The fact that mortgage delinquencies and auto loan defaults are rising is a much better indication of where we stand financially.

When the Feds kept raising rates, and the extra money people received ran out, they had to pull back some. That helped cool inflation as well. Where’ve you been, sir? Excellent analysis. I think the higher interest rates are keeping inflation lower, the two point reduction in the fed rate that trump is demanding with add multiple points to the inflation rate, in my estimation. It’s all relevant. Two point drop in mortgages and the housing market will take off like we haven’t seen in years. Demand will far exceed supply and prices will soar, etc… he wants the lower interest rates so that our debt payments will decrease and continuing to borrow at the federal level won’t sting so badly. But it’ll be a really rough time for those of us already struggling with high prices. I’m not a tinfoil hat kind of person, but I’m starting to wonder if these poor fiscal policies aren’t merely mismanagement, but instead pushing us towards an alternative to the dollar that his family keeps pushing.

Trump announced that he’s bumping his 10% tariff on everybody on earth he announced yesterday up to 15% today. [Hidden Content]

I plainly said Trump, then Biden contributed to the inflation that we had during Covid. Three of the justices that shut down the tariffs yesterday were conservatives. They just didn’t ignore the law in favor of what Trump wanted.

They did… supply and demand happened. Supply dropped while demand actually INCREASED because the Trump, then Biden Administrations saw fit to dump Trillions of dollars into the economy in the form of direct payments to citizens, PPP loans to business who didn’t need them, and weren’t required to pay them back, and fraud. Inflation soared, due to COVID and lax fiscal policy between 2020 and 2022. It was brought back under control during the latter part of the Biden administration, and has lingered at persistent levels since. Not good, but not horrible either. The problem is that Pedodent Trump claimed he’s lower costs on day one… you’d expect to see deflation-a lowering of prices. The only place that you’re seeing that is in the price of oil. The exact opposite of “drill baby, drill”. They’re stacking rigs all over America because OPEC is ramping up supplies and now you’ve got the flood of stolen oil from Venezuela hitting the price of oil, too. Cattle prices are insane. Grocery prices are insane. Orange juice is $7 gallon. Tbones were on sale at Brookshire’s last week for $9.99/pound. When people complain about prices, we get told “it’s a democrat hoax.” No, sir… the fact that it costs me $22-25 a day to sit down and eat lunch isn’t a hoax.

I wasn’t even posting back then.

[Hidden Content] Exxon’s ceo told Trump that Venezuela is currently “uninvestable” and Trump responded by saying that he’d keep Exxon out of Venezuela. It happened. "I didn't like Exxon's response," Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way back to Washington on Sunday. "I'll probably be inclined to keep Exxon out. I didn't like their response. They're playing too cute."

I guess I’m disappointed in guys like TVC. He’s spent way more time studying opinions given by various courts (including the Supreme Court) than I’ll ever spend. He analyzes, understands, and can explain his opinion of the issues in a way that’s understandable. But when you have the president attacking the judiciary THAT HE APPOINTED, accusing them of being biased, unpatriotic, under foreign influence, just because they interpreted the law in a way that restrains him from using powers to which he’s not constitutionally entitled… in a manner in which a President has never behaved before, quite frankly because it’s childish, not presidential. But there’s no condemnation if trumps behavior from the right. People are silent because Trump is their guy. That’s the problem with America today. When good people decide that wrong isn’t really wrong because the guy doing it is on “their side,” we all lose.

Here’s my honest opinion. I think that the left said some things about Trump early on that sounded ludicrous. Exaggerated, fear-mongering, etc… then you had lifelong conservatives like myself that started saying… hold on a minute, this isn’t just bluster, I think this guy really thinks he can stay in power as long as he wants-genuine dictator vibes. And today during his tantrum he says “I can destroy any country that I want.” Is that how you all feel? A President has enough power at his disposal and discretion that he can just “destroy any country” that he wants? It’s okay to admit that this guy is a bad fit for the job. We made a mistake. It’s okay to say it.

Well said. But when the oil companies didn’t pledge to invest down there immediately, Trump promised to punish them.

How is ICE going to deal with the extraterrestrials? That’s what I’m wondering.

In other breaking News, the Dallas Cowboys home is in Arlington since they moved the team from Irving.

Everywhere. Go to a car dealership. The grocery store. Any restaurant. You can’t rely on the government statistics anymore since posting numbers that don’t fit Trump’s narrative will get you fired. Here’s the thing. Year to year (1/25 to 1/26) is a modest 2.4%… not good, but not bad. UNFORTUNATELY, Pedodent Trump promised that he’d bring prices back down “on day one.” A better question is why have prices done everything except come back down, and more importantly, is it your opinion that he lied, or that he’s failed, in your opinion?

Bingo. On a side note, I appreciate your approach. There are several people here who can’t stand Trump or pretty much anything that he does, but on the other hand there are several who support anything Trump does, whether it’s illegal, immoral, stupid, or just plain wrong… they support it. I don’t like him, but I only complain when he’s wrong. Unfortunately, he’s wrong most of the time in my opinion. But good for you for just stating the obvious.

Tariffs have a place… but understand that it takes careful thought and planning to effectively administer them, fully understanding all of the potential outcomes. BUT, if you put a unilateral tariff on a foreign country from which your citizens seek to purchase goods, you’re simply forcing your own citizens to pay more for the things that they want and need. Secondly, your tariffs WILL result in a reciprocation from your target, quite simply put, they’ll stick one right back on the things we’re trying to sell to them, tamping down demand for the products that we export. It’s not a surprise to people that understand micro and macro economics that our trade deficit last year was the third highest ever recorded. The tariffs raised the cost of imported goods that Americans wanted, while simultaneously chilling the demand for American products abroad because other countries simply slapped tariffs on goods we’d like to export. It’s not a secret that the last president who took us down the tariff rabbit hole was named Herbert Hoover. [Hidden Content]

The fact is this. The Supreme Court just said that a president doesn’t have the authority to just slam tariffs however, whenever he wants. So Trump promises an additional 10% tariff on every other country out there to show how displeased that he is with the Supreme Court. And you’re trying to defend it. He’s literally punishing the American Consumer (or foreign countries, if you’re dumb enough to believe that the costs aren’t being borne by American consumers) because the Supreme Court shut down his lawless behavior. And you’re proud of it.