You Can't Silence Us

Property Taxes

The Florida house of representatives approved a ballot measure for this year’s election. The proposal would allow voters to approve an elimination of all non-school property taxes for homestead property. Sixty percent of those voting would need to approve it, then it would become part of the state Constitution. This proposal still needs to be approved by the state Senate in order to make it on the ballot, and it will have a much harder battle there, because the Democrats are absolutely opposed to it.

You will recall from my post of a couple of years ago:

In Florida, the tax assessor decides what the “fair market value” of your house is. The taxable value is then calculated by taking the market value and subtracting your homestead exemption. In order to have a homestead exemption, the owner of the property must live there as their primary residence. In other words, commercial and rental property doesn’t get a homestead exemption. The taxable value is then subject to being taxed. If you want more detail on how all of this works, click on this link to my previous post.

There are also numerous carve-outs for various groups.

  • The homestead exemption is $25,000 on the first $50k of value, then another $25,000 for the next $50k of value, but that second $25k is only for non-school taxes.
  • Additional exemption for residents 65 or older who make less than $38,686 per year
  • Total exemption for totally and permanently disabled veterans, surviving spouses, or first responders.
  • No property taxes for  active-duty personnel deployed outside the U.S.

The result of all of this is many people already don’t pay taxes. In my town, there are 1,000 homes total. Two neighborhoods were recently built in the town- my own, and one other. Those two communities have 200 homes in them, so 20% of the town’s homes. Those homes pay more than 50% of the town’s taxes. Many homes in the town, including those of three of the five city commissioners, pay no taxes at all.

As a result, taxes are very tilted. Renters pay more than owners (because landlords don’t get tax exemptions). Those who have lived in their homes for a long time don’t pay any (or very little) in taxes.

The left is pissed about this. They are all singing the same song- claiming that this is a tax break for so-called “boomers” because GenZ doesn’t own houses. Isn’t it odd that the left constantly wants corporations to pay taxes, but they finally understand that companies don’t pay taxes- instead, they treat taxes like any other expense, and pass those expenses on to the consumer.

The left claims that property taxes are essential for things like police and fire, but ignore that overall, ad valorum taxes are only 18% of local tax revenues. Still they claim the following would be affected, but are lying:

  • Law enforcement
  • Social services
  • Parks
  • Environmental programs
  • Fire districts
  • Emergency medical services
  • Schools
  • Roads

Law enforcement, fire, EMS, and police are specifically mentioned in the law and will have required funding. School taxes are exempt. What this leaves is Social services (giveaways), Parks and environmental programs (luxury items), and roads (already funded by gasoline taxes and tolls). What the left is upset about is the funding for things like learing centers and other graft that permits them to hand out money to their wealthy well connected patrons.

The Senate session ends March 13. The odds that this gets passed before then are long. It probably won’t happen.

People who have read this post: 177
By Divemedic, ago

Suspicious

The man who was shot dead by Secret Service agents after entering Mar a Lago armed with a shotgun at 0130 this morning had been reported missing by has family less than 12 hours earlier, and local police had notified the FBI.

Twelve hours isn’t even long enough for a missing person report, much less FBI notification. What else was known that made this necessary? Did he leave a manifesto or something?

Now all of the news stories I found from when he went missing have been scrubbed. The left is already claiming it to be a false flag designed to boost Trump’s numbers.

Too many more Trump assassination attempts, and i will have to create a blog category specifically for this.

People who have read this post: 428
By Divemedic, ago

Terrorism

Terrorism defined: the premeditated, unlawful use of violence or threat of violence against civilians, governments, or property to induce fear, intimidate, or coerce, with the goal of advancing political, social, religious, or ideological objectives.

Now read about the sabotage of the Kennedy center and tell me what you think…

These fanatics won’t hesitate to come after you. They want you to submit or die.

People who have read this post: 309
By Divemedic, ago

Police Shooting

Today, I came across a 2023 incident in San Bernardino involving a shootout between a deputy and a criminal. The action begins at the 10:00 mark.

The lesson here is stay in the fight, even after being wounded.

People who have read this post: 286
By Divemedic, ago

51 Days

Mayor of New York Mamdani was elected with Socialist promises of free ice cream and a socialist utopia, with a solemn promise of making the rich pay for it. It only took 51 days for him to float the first tax increase on people who aren’t rich.

“This would effectively be a tax on working and middle class New Yorkers, who have a median income of $122,000,” he said

That amount of money is not much in New York. The people making $122k isn’t a lot of money. The proposed tax hike? A 9.5% increase in property taxes. This is why I keep saying New Yorkers need to stay there, and stop moving to Florida where they vote for more of the same policies that made them come here in the first place.

People who have read this post: 398
By Divemedic, ago

Shooting

A Walmart in Poinciana Florida, an unincorporated community that spans Osceola and Polk County, had been hiring off duty Sheriff’s deputies as security. One of them confronted a group of “teens” who had been shoplifting. That’s when one of the youths decided to pull a gun on the Deputy, thereby changing his crime from misdemeanor larceny into armed robbery, a forcible felony.

The Deputy conducted an impromptu ballistics test of his .45 ACP caliber Glock, which performed as expected. The crowd became a bit irate because the deputy shot a “kid,” so another off duty deputy, along with an off duty firefighter, both of whom happened to be in the store and were armed, assisted the original deputy in securing the crime scene until others could arrive. I can’t post the link to the tweet with the video, because it’s been restricted. Click on the tweet below and take a look.

People who have read this post: 392
By Divemedic, ago

Scams

A reader recently wanted to know why people make money when owning companies that don’t ever make a product. Some companies are scams, that’s how. Look at this post from Twitter/X:

Believing that a 3D printed filter can eliminate 74% of the CO2 emitted by a car’s tailpipe is ridiculous. The chemistry alone is impossible. Plants don’t just convert CO2 to O2. They are doing so because they need the carbon atoms to make other things, but discard the unnecessary oxygen. The carbon gets turned into other things: cellulose, fructose, proteins, and all of the other things the plant needs. In other words, the plant gains in mass by taking in this CO2. The formula is one that is known and taught in high school biology courses.

CO₂ + H₂O + light → biomass (carbohydrates) + O₂

What makes this impossible is the numbers involved. Burning gasoline produces about 8.9 kg CO₂ per gallon. So at 30 mpg, that’s about 0.30 kg CO₂ per mile. To reduce CO₂ by 74%, you’d need to remove roughly 0.22 kg CO₂ per mile. At 60 mph = 1 mile/min → you’d need to remove ~220 grams of CO₂ every minute. That doesn’t seem to be too bad, on its surface. So why is this impossible?

At a conservative microalgae fixation rate of 4 g/L/day, you’d need ~106,600 L of culture. At 1 g/L density, that’s ~107 kg dry algae. That’s not all- that dry algae would need a water bath in order to function. Once the water is added, that amount of algae would have a mass of 107,000 kg- more than 100 tons. Fit in a plastic tailpipe adaptor. Obviously not possible in any practical sense. It’s like discovering your dog eats dog poop, so there’ll be no more dog poop if you just get your dog to eat its own poop.

So these kids are not the first ones to run a scam like this. There is the company website at https://www.gogreenfilter.com/ and they have corporate sponsors, including T-Mobile. They are marketing and selling these things.

Back in 2018, there was a post I did about a Canadian company claiming to be able to make gasoline from CO2. This is what I said then:

This company is hoping that those watching don’t understand the First Law of Thermodynamics. Carbon dioxide is NOT energy. Taking CO2 and converting it into hydrocarbon fuel USES energy. Thanks to inefficiencies in ALL chemical reactions (First Law of Thermodynamics) it takes more energy to create the fuel than the fuel itself contains.

I thought it was a joke, it was so stupid. I thought — it’s junk science, junk commerce, nothing makes sense about it. But look how pretty it is.

About a dozen years ago, there was another college concept where women could paint on a drug detecting nail polish that would change colors when exposed to date rape drugs. A woman could simply stir her drink with a fingertip and make sure the polish didn’t change colors. For numerous reasons this is impossible, but there are sill tons of people out there who are wanting to buy this stuff. I could swear I did a post on this years ago, but I can’t seem to find it. They were collecting funding to get the company off the ground. In other words, scamming investors.

The point is that there are tons of scams out there, and people will happily hand over their cash without bothering to check the claims of the person making them.

If you make a product while making claims about its performance, but you don’t test to make sure the product works as you claim, that is fraud or a scam. If I tell you that I have a machine that creates gold out of lead, then sell them for $10,000 each, but I never test to see if it actually works, that’s a scam. If I collect investor cash to develop this product, it’s a scam.

On the other hand, if I convince a company to fund my development of an idea for a product, or develop some technology with possible future value, that’s R&D. Sometimes R&D leads nowhere, and that is why companies have an R&D budget. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it leads to a dead end.

It’s a line to be drawn- if I tell you up front that this is research of concept, it isn’t fraud. If I tell you that I have a working prototype that I want to bring to market and I don’t, that’s a scam.

People who have read this post: 227
By Divemedic, ago

The Goal

They are not even hiding it any longer- schools are there to allow children access to gay porn:

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By Divemedic, ago

Second Amendment

I’m going to chime in on the ICE shooting of Pretti. Not the shooting itself, but in the left’s sudden discovery and defense of the Second Amendment. They, along with some on the right, are saying ICE shouldn’t shoot people merely for practicing their RKBA. That isn’t what happened.

You have a right to keep and bear arms. You have a right to peaceably assemble for a redress of your grievances. What you don’t have is the right to use that weapon in furtherance of your scheme to break the law. As an example, let’s look at a recent shooting in the Central Florida area.

An Osceola County sheriff’s deputy shot and killed a shoplifting suspect inside a Walmart on Thursday after the man pulled a gun and was running through the store. Does he have a right to carry a gun? Yes. Did he have a right to do so while breaking the law? No. Did it get his ass shot? It seems so.

Now apply this to Pretti. Did he have a right to carry a gun? Yes. Did he have a right to peaceably assemble? Yes. Does peaceable assembly include interfering with police activity or arrests? No. Does interfering with police activity while armed greatly increase the chances of a cop shooting you? Yes, yes it does.

The takeaway here is that, if you DO decide to break the law while armed, you have to be willing to accept this: If you are interfering with police carrying out their duties, you are no longer an observer or a protester, you are a participant. If you do so while armed, you are a combatant. Being a combatant, you no longer get to say that you are merely protesting, observing, or acting as a “medic.”

People who have read this post: 223
By Divemedic, ago