tvc184

That makes for no repeat offenders.

The name Boy Scouts as part of Boy Scouts of America ended five years ago. They went to Scouting BSA. They quit using the term Boy Scouts a few years ago. Some people are a little late to the protest. The Boy Scouts have been co-ed for about 50 years in some programs and all of them years ago. They quit completely being completely “boy” scouts like back in the 70’s with Explorers. So they went to Scouting America. Horrible!! They are currently about 1.2 million scouts of which almost 200,000 are girls. This isn’t new. They simply changed the name to Scouting America as the parent organization. Again, the name Boy Scouts ended a while back. They didn’t change their logo to a transgender person, didn’t change the qualifications, they didn’t take “America” out of the name, etc. Sometimes I wonder how far people will go to be offended…..

Port Arthur has been taxing GSU/Entergy for decades through in lieu of tax agreements. Bridge City was making some noise about trying to undo Port Arthur’s lawful ETJ so Port Arthur simply ended the discussion by annexing what they already had control over. I have responded to calls at Entergy so they are receiving at least police services.

If that is a quick question, I would hate to see a long one. 🤣🤣🤣

After listening to a podcast from the Michael Berry show yesterday, interviewing the lawyer that led the fight to the Louisiana Supreme Court, it changes things a bit. St. George was never part of Baton Rouge proper. According to Louisiana law though, the mayor of Baton Rouge was automatically the president of the parish which I believe is roughly, the equivalent of the county judge in Texas. So the mayor of Baton Rouge had control of the city and the parish simultaneously. As such she had control over Baton Rouge and St. George, but without having to provide city services to St. George. According to the St. George lawyer, Baton Rouge could have annexed the St. George area at any time but apparently chose not to as they had access to that tax base but did not have to provide any city services. So St. George decided to create their own city but not by separating from Baton Rouge who had some control over them even though they were not within the city limits. It kind of harkens back to taxation without representation. We want your money but you don’t have a say so in how we spend it. I guess St. George had their own mini revolution. The Baton Rouge response was something like, “how dare you use state law to create your own city and take your money away from us!?”

We all know that each state has its own laws which can be very different, especially in endeavors like annexation or incorporation, so there is no telling what Louisiana law says. I don’t know but I doubt that there is a point of appeal for Baton Rouge to force St. George to be absorbed back into Baton Rouge by now giving them what they asked for years ago. “Oh, we lost? Well let’s just undo incorporation, ruled as legal by the Supreme Court (of LA) by going back and giving them what they asked for”. There has to be a law allowing such an appeal. I think what I read about the lower court decisions which actually backed up Baton Rouge, they did not all rule that incorporation was illegal but that they did not think the city could have services up and running soon enough. So you have a court saying that sure you can split but only if we agree that you can provide services get enough. In Louisiana, who knows? I doubt that Texas has such a mechanism to allow a city to split, for example, could the west end of Beaumont say that they wish to make their own city against Beaumont’s objection? I doubt it. Certainly Beaumont could allow a city to be created as Port Arthur did with Bridge City and Taylor’s Landing. There is a huge difference in allowing and forcing which is what happened in Baton Rouge. Similar to the sometime discussed topic of Texas splitting off from the United States because they don’t like the way things are going, think if citizens in any city in the United States were allowed to create their own city, which could not be stopped by the parent city. That could get interesting!! Don't like what is happening in the south side of Chicago? Just de-annex and create your own city!! Anyway, I thought that it is an interesting story when the capital city splits in half.

It seems from what I have read, that Baton Rouge, LA has been split almost in half, with a new city called St. George being incorporated. I think that St. George is an area of the city much like South Park is in Beaumont or Port Acres in Port Arthur. Apparently people living in the St. George area of the city wanted a new school district because of how bad the Baton Rouge school district was. When denied, they organized and voted to form their own city. After the vote passed to incorporate, Baton Rouge fought it in the courts which ended last week with the Louisiana Supreme Court ruling in favor of St. George. At least the way I read it, Baton Rouge just lost about 85,000 people (almost half) and about $50 million from their tax base. Baton Rouge probably should have let them start their own school district…. [Hidden Content]

After all my years of responding to calls, how many times did horrific injuries occur by a dog…. that was friendly and has never done anything like this!! It makes you sick yet terribly angry. It’s horrifying. Some dogs need to go, period. But that isn’t politics…..

No argument in your rationale however politics isn’t rational. Said people vote. Those votes don’t have to be approved by a jury deciding if a voter has a valid reason for his beliefs. There are things that I firmly believe but I would never say them, even in private (what is private anymore?) if I ever intended to run for office. It doesn’t matter if my private thoughts could be proven 100% as correct, it still might very likely lose voters and an election. Maybe you missed the Trump presidency……

What does my comment to baddog have to do with this post? He said that free speech is only for Americans. It isn’t. Tell me where I am wrong.

Only if you ignore the Constitution. I get the sentiment but I sometimes ponder when others may say, “We always support the Constitution”, “The Constitution has to be followed as the law of the land”, etc. When in reality they mean, “I LOVE THE CONSTITUTION……. except the parts I don’t like”. There are certainly parts of the Constitution that I would change if I had the option.

I think it will be an interesting case and could potentially come up for appeal on a different constitutional point. The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the government doesn’t have to take possession of property in order to take it under the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. If they take away the enjoyment or use of the property, it is no different than physically seizing it to build a highway for example. In a lawsuit as opposed to a criminal trial, a person/plaintiff doesn’t have to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt but rather by a preponderance of evidence or “more likely” to have happened. Maybe it could be described as more likely yes than no or 51%-49%. ”IF” it can be shown at a trial by a preponderance of evidence that Texas more likely yes than no caused the flooding with its engineering of the project, the people suing might have a case. But…. Does that alone win the case under the Fifth Amendment taking clause? I am not so sure. In US v Causby the Supreme Court ruled that the US government took a man’s property by flying airplanes over it. It was a public airport lawfully leased by the US in WWII and used to fly heavy bombers from it. Causby had an egg farm and the extremely loud noise of some airplanes under full power and sometimes at night with a landing lights being so close, it bothered and scared the family and damaged his egg farm production. Some chickens died and some quit laying eggs due to the extreme disturbances and lights at night. The Supreme Court ruled in Causby’s favor saying that the US had taken away the enjoyment and use of his land even though they didn’t physically seize it. The use of the land was hampered and that was enough for the taking clause under the Fifth Amendment. So in the IH-10 case, did Texas take away the use or enjoyment of the property? A point of Causby was that the military bombers at a public airport was certainly for “public use”. The planes were public/taxpayers’ and the airport and lease were taxpayers’ property so the “public” definitely used it My question in this lawsuit against Texas, even in they can prove the damage, was the damage (like in Causby) for “public use”? If not would it then not be a Fifth Amendment case but rather a state law case? If Texas law denies such a lawsuit under state sovereignty and the families can’t prove a Fifth Amendment case of “public use”, could they prove the damages but still lose the case under state law? I haven’t read that anywhere and just thinking out loud. I could be way off base. But I think it could be interesting…..

If the state can show that, they will probably win. As far as the other people, they might have a case also. The Supreme Court doesn’t know any of the facts other than the State of Texas says that he doesn’t get his day in court. Their unanimous opinion was, yes the Constitution says that he gets his day in court. I have no opinion one way or the other except on the Fifth Amendment and precedent. Within the last few days they ruled the same thing on a California city where the local government said that the Constitution basically doesn’t apply to them. Again a unanimous Supreme Court said, oh yes it does.

But we aren’t discussing criminal charges which have nothing to do with a constitutional right. The government doesn’t have to receive something in order to take it under the Fifth Amendment. I have already said that the burden is on the land owner to prove that the highway caused the damage. If he can do so however, he will probably have a good case under the Constitution.

Read them the riot act! Then arrest where necessary…..

Actually I wasn’t responding to your comment. It was funny. I was using your comment to take issue with baddog’s comparison. 😎

That is yet to be determined in trial. ”Taking” in the Fifth Amendment doesn’t mean ownership, title changing hands, etc. A government can “take” your property without “taking” your properties. That has been true. This issue is, did Texas take the property under the Fifth Amendment and subsequent Supreme Court rulings and not the dictionary definition of “taking”. As always in the law, definitions matter.

Yeah, I got that but talk about a stretch. It should seem obvious that Trump’s prosecution is purely political. If someone is going to do a whataboutism, at least make it similar. This is so ludicrous that it’s like comparing a ham sandwich to a wallet.

Michael Jackson?

I would like to give a rebuttal to this!! But I can’t think of one….

I’m going to go out on a limb and say…… Blame might come down to, would it have happened had the state not acted as it did. Intent probably doesn’t matter. Having very little knowledge of the case except reading some court statements and legal websites, it seems that the state put up the concrete barriers with the intent for a to act like a dam and to keep the water on the south side of the highway. In other words, it worked as designed and flooded that land. In doing so however it protected the north side as an evacuation route. Of course, it might go to an arbitrator or a referee or I guess it could legally go to a trial but I’m not sure. The question that I come up with is, would it have flooded anyway? For example let’s say the guy got 4 feet of water on his land but meteorologists and other experts in flood plains might agree that he still would have gotten two feet of water without the barrier. So did the state seize his land? Can the plaintiff show that had the barrier not been there, his land would not have flooded? If so he probably gets some kind of compensation. If not…….

Obviously anything that is cut has to be made up somewhere. Raise taxes and fees or cut spending or a combination. The biggest question to get the discussion started, what percentage of property taxes come from a homestead of people 65 or older. Before that is know there is no point in looking into it. Is it 1% of property taxes collected or 8%?

From what I read, the state intended for there to be no drainage. It was to act as a dam or levee just like the hurricane levee around Port Arthur. It worked to perfection. In doing so, the water had to pile up somewhere. Like in Causby that I mentioned above, the Supreme Court ruled in that case that the federal government took his land by merely flying planes over it but low enough that the engine noise was disrupting.

Looking back at the exact wording, it seems like you are correct and it was the concrete barriers that were the ultimate problem. I mentioned it in my last comment, even if it was just the barriers, did Texas take his property? I think a case like US v. Causby might go a long way to proving his case. Causby had an egg farm and during World War II, the US government started flying four engine heavy bombers for the war effort, low over his farm at full power. The extremely loud noise killed a bunch of his chickens and caused many of the rest of them to quit laying eggs. Even though he legally still on the property, he sued, saying that the federal government had effectively “taken” the use of his property from him. The US Supreme Court sided with him, saying that for the purposes of the Fifth Amendment, the federal government had indeed taken away the use of his property. It wasn’t intentional but that didn’t matter. It seems like this case would fall somewhere along those lines.

That might have added to it but it said that they intentionally raised the roadway to help it act as a dam. Even if it was the dividers and no intent, did the state “take” his property without compensation? I think that it is interesting that a local landowner fought his case all the way to the US Supreme Court and won in a unanimous decision. So while he has not won his case yet, he won the right to have his day in court and possibly heard by a jury.