Divemedic

Social Justice

Self described “social justice warrior” Monique Worrell beat “law and order” candidate Jose Torroella in 2020 to become the prosecutor for the 9th judicial district of Florida. She ran on the following platform:

Monique Worrell has pledged to:

  • Implement policies to hold police officers accountable for misconduct
  • End the use of cash bail
  • Expand programs to divert children and adults away from jail
  • Partner with community programs to address mental health and substance abuse issues

The voters of Orange and Osceola counties overwhelmingly voted for her. In so doing, they sided with the “Defund” movement and elected someone who is soft on crime. The woman she replaced was removed from office by the Governor for the exact same policies.

The shooter in this case was pulled over by OPD with three of his friends less than a year ago. They had drugs and ski masks in the car. They had thrown at least one firearm out of the window before stopping. If the prosecutor had done her job instead of campaigning for “soft on crime” social justice, those people wouldn’t have been shot.
So, I ask the voters there: Where is the social justice in a known gang member with multiple violent felonies on his record being able to walk the streets and kill children and news reporters? Yeah. Dead women. Dead reporters. Dead kids. That’s the justice you voted for. You are getting what you wanted.

Enjoy.

But instead, as I predicted, you are blaming law abiding firearms owners. Screw you. Keep voting for this shit. Keep watching animals murder your women, your children, and each other. I don’t care. This is what you wanted, and you have it.

Enjoy.

By Divemedic, ago

Crime Hills Strikes Again

One of Orlando’s worst neighborhoods, Pine Hills, aka Crime Hills, has seen yet another shooting. A woman was found shot to death at 11:20 a.m., then the killer returned to the scene at 4 p.m., shooting and killing a reporter and wounding his cameraman who were out covering the story. Not done yet, he entered a nearby home and shot a 20 year old woman and her 9 year old child. Five victims, three of them black. Where is black lives matter and all of the race hustlers to condemn this? Let’s take a look at the killer:

Never mind. No one will care, as long as white people can’t be blamed. At 19 years old, he already had a lengthy criminal history, with convictions for burglary, armed robbery, grand theft, aggravated battery, and multiple gun charges. But instead, let’s blame “gun violence” so they can later blame gun owners and not the criminals who are running wild on our streets. Let’s take a look at murder rates, including white USA versus black USA.

I think I see the problem, and it isn’t guns. Look deeper into the story- two of his victims were a 20 year old mother and her 9 year old child. Can things get more obvious?

By Divemedic, ago

I have to work and save? Capitalism sucks!

As if more evidence were needed that we are seeing an entire generation that doesn’t understand money, we have young people claiming that them having the housing that they want at the price that they feel like paying. Yep, housing is a human right, but landlords making a profit is a luxury. Those are the exact terms used in this story.

Granted, the above story is from Australia, but the sentiments are identical to those here in the US, as evidenced by posts seen on social media where the latest generation vents that landlords should lose money because they are rich. They claim “they don’t own the properties at all most of the time, they just keep taking out equity from the last place and end up with 7 mortgages that need consistent renters.” Yes, that is how investing works. It’s called leveraging. You borrow money, invest that money, and turn a profit. The rate of return has to be higher than the cost of borrowing the money, or the investment isn’t worth making.

Proving that many legislators don’t understand economics either, the state of Connecticut is considering a law that would prohibit rent increases that are larger than the CPI plus 3%. The law would also make it illegal to evict a tenant when the lease expires. Since we all know that the CPI is complete and utter horse manure, it is easy to see where this will go. As expenses increase, they cut into profits. The landlord can’t ask the tenant to leave when the lease expires, meaning that a lease becomes a lifetime contract of involuntary servitude between the tenant and the landlord. All because housing is a “human right.”

This is nothing more than slavery disguised as human rights. They are demanding that property owners provide losers with a subsidized place to live. Communism in a nutshell.

The part that make me laugh as I realize the magical thinking here is the sentiment that “Get those houses back into the market, 70% of renters want to buy!” as if there are no houses out there for sale because landlords own them all. If renters wanted to buy, all they need is good credit, a steady job, and a grasp on managing money. They don’t have those things.

Many young people don’t grasp the way things are. They want to live in luxury without paying for it, without sacrifice, without work. They have decided that all they must do to have everything that they want is protest and vote for it. Working for what they want, being responsible with their money and saving for a down payment are all foreign concepts to them. As far as they are concerned, having to do those things means that capitalism has failed.

By Divemedic, ago

ASVAB Exposes Education Failures

For those who don’t know, the entrance exam for the US military is a standardized test called the ASVAB, and is one of the best vocational aptitude tests out there. The ASVAB includes tests in 10 areas: general science (GS), arithmetic reasoning (AR), word knowledge (WK), paragraph comprehension (PC), mathematics knowledge (MK), electronics information (EI), auto information (AI), shop information (SI), mechanical comprehension (MC) and assembling objects (AO).

The test is scored as a percentile. That is, the score ranges from 1 to 99. A 60 would indicate that you scored higher than 60 percent of the people who have taken the exam. For that reason, a perfectly average person would score a 50. The score required to enlist is different for each branch of the military, with the lowest being a 30 for the Army, and the highest being a 36 for the Coast Guard. (There are waivers that allow even lower scores to qualify)

With that being said, black applicants are half as likely to reach the minimum score as any other demographic. In fact, a whopping 40% of black test takers cannot achieve a passing score on the ASVAB. The average score for blacks is 38 and for Hispanics is 44, compared to whites’ average score of 55. These scores reflect the similar racial gaps on other standardized exams.

This is more problematic than it appears at first glance, going back to my post about licensing and certification. Every applicant for the military has a high school diploma- a piece of paper issued from their school district certifying that they can read, write, and perform arithmetic, yet are dumber than two thirds of the test takers. Even worse, if you extend this to those who have dropped out of school before high school graduation, a whopping 60% of US blacks can’t pass this exam. Our education system is a waste of money that is largely accomplishing nothing but grooming children to become liberal sexual deviants.

Now there are many who will claim that this is caused by some sort of racism, using the stupid metric of “anything that results in disproportionate results for blacks is racist” instead of looking deeper into the causes. Why? Looking deeper is difficult and exposes uncomfortable realities.

By Divemedic, ago

Tax Question II, the Search for More Money

If you get the movie reference in the title, bonus Internet points for you. Don’t use them all in one place.

So it seems like I have an answer to my tax problem from Monday. (I am posting this so I won’t lose my train of thought before I talk to the attorney on Thursday.) I would rather set a stack of $100 bills on fire than pay it to the IRS so crooked bastards in politics can use it to make themselves rich, so any way that I can avoid paying taxes that won’t see me land in Club Fed is a good idea, in my book.

The TL:DR version is that I need to sell the old house to an S corporation that my wife and I own. To do this, there are a few things that need to happen:

  • Form a Florida corporation. No sweat.
  • Within 2 months of forming, file an IRS form 2553 (pdf alert)
  • Get the old house appraised
  • Have the newly formed S corp buy the old home for the appraised value (since the sale was not an “arms length” sale, the appraisal proves it was being sold for fair market value)

This allows me to do two things: take the capitol gains deduction for the difference between the original purchase price and the appraised value that the S corp bought it for, and resets the cost basis for the property. This second part is nearly as important. The reason for that is called “Save Our Homes.” To understand Save our Homes, we have to first understand how Florida calculates property taxes.

Ad Valorem

In Florida, the county property appraiser is an elected position that estimates what your house is worth each year, called your “market value.” If your house is your primary residence, you can take a deduction called the “homestead exemption” of $50,000 from that market value. The result is called your “assessed value.” Each July, the property appraiser mails out the proposed value of each property to the property owner. If you don’t think that the value is fair, you have 30 days to appeal that valuation. Most people want it to be as low as possible, because that is the value that your taxes are based on.

The tax collector (also an elected position) charges a “millage rate” as an “ad valorem” property tax. Each “mill” is 0.1% of your home’s assessed value.

It seems complicated, but it really isn’t. For example, let’s say that your house has been deemed by the property appraiser’s office to have a fair market value of $100,000, and your county charges a property tax rate of ten mills. You would take the $100,000 market value and subtract your homestead exemption to arrive at an assessed value of $50,000. The tax of ten mills on that would make your property taxes to be $500 for the year. Clear so far? Good. It gets a bit more complicated.

Save Our Homes

Back in 1995, the voters of Florida passed an Amendment to the state Constitution that limits the annual increase in the assessed value of your homestead to the lesser of 3% or the consumer price index. Since real estate increases more than that in value each year, the longer you own your home, the better. The gap between the market value and the assessed value is called your “Save Our Homes” credit.

In most cases, you want the property appraiser to set your assessed value as low as possible. The only reason you don’t, is if you are about to move to a more expensive home. The reason is called portability. If you are moving from an old house to a new one, you can take your Save Our Homes credit with you. That can mean a significant tax savings.

So how will that help me?

As an example, let’s say that I paid $200,00 for a house, and 10 years later the tax assessor says it has a market value of $300,000. The Save Our Homes credit would be $31,000. If I buy a new house worth $400,000, that house would be assessed at $31,000 less. If the millage rate was ten, this would save me $310 a year in taxes. But what if I could get the tax assessor to admit that my house actually had a market value of $350,000? That would make my Save Our Homes credit $81,000 instead, and this would save me an additional $500 a year in property taxes at my new house.

It would seem to be a wash, since I am keeping the old house as a rental, but remember that the old house’s taxes are deductible as a business expense, and if the millage rate is higher for the new house’s location (which it is), the savings are even larger.

By Divemedic, ago

Summary Dismissal?

Gaige Grosskreutz is suing Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting him. Now I want you to watch this video clip and tell me what you think will happen. (I have it queued up to the relevant part)

I know that later, Grosskreutz claimed that he only pointed the gun at Rittenhouse because he was in fear for his life, but he didn’t testify to that at all until that point. He never once mentioned self defense.

By Divemedic, ago

Voting With Feet

Hawaii and California are the two states with the lowest percentage of whites at 20 and 36 percent, respectively.

Hawaii started that way, with native Hawaiians being the majority. California is becoming increasingly less white as taxpayers flee the high taxes, crime, and general loonieness of the Golden State.

Mark Wahlberg lowered the asking price of his home by $32 million in order to cut ties with the place before the wealth taxes that would tax unrealized capital gains went into effect.

Please, California refugees, when you get to your new home state, don’t continue to vote for the same policies that made you flee California.

By Divemedic, ago

Tax Problem

My wife bought our current home 5 years before we met. It’s still deeded in her name only. When we move, we want to convert it into a rental.

The problem is this: That house has appreciated by $200k since she bought it, and unless we sell within 3 years of moving out, we will have to pay capital gains taxes on that $200k.

My position on this, is that we should sell it and use the proceeds to buy a different rental so we can reset the tax basis. My wife is vehemently opposed to this and wants to keep it. She remains convinced that there must be a way to avoid the capital gains taxes.

I have an appointment with a tax attorney this week, but my own research says that we either sell within 3 years of moving, or we will owe the taxes when we eventually sell, even if that sale is 15 years from now.

By Divemedic, ago

Glad

One of the reasons why I am glad to be moving is that the area is changing. It used to be a solid middle class area with no homeless on the corner, no real crime (aside from the one burglar that was behind several break-ins and got caught).

That neighborhood is changing. It began in 2019 when the beggars started showing up on the street corners. I went to the grocery store (Publix) that is about a quarter mile from the house this weekend, and this is what I saw:

Screenshot from my dashcam

Now you might think that the problem I have is that she is black, and you would mostly be wrong. The problem that I have is that she was covered in dirt, braless, wearing slides, and looked like shit with her lack of caring about her appearance. It’s a sure sign that the area is on a downward economic trend.

To make things worse, there is a low income housing development going in about a quarter mile away: it will be a mix of 200 apartments and 150 homes. All what they call “affordable” housing. yay.

By Divemedic, ago

Poof, debt free

It’s the law in Nevada that a casino has to have enough money to pay off every bet in that casino. That is, if every single chip and bet were to be called in at once, they have to have enough cash on hand to pay it off. For the slot machines, the casino has to have $1,000 per .01-.50 machine, plus $1,800 per $1 slot, and $5,000 each for slots of higher denomination. The idea here is that the casino needs to be able to pay the obligations it incurs by losing its bets.

Banks have laws that require them to have a certain amount of funds in reserve. All banks with more than $124.2 million on deposit must maintain a cash reserve of 10% of deposits. Banks with more than $16.3 million but less than $124.2 million must reserve 3% of all deposits.

So when I see a story telling me how a Florida insurance company, faced with having to pay out hurricane claims, is going to use insolvency as an excuse to get out of paying, it boils my blood. These companies are in turn owned by other companies, and the use that structure to move money from one place to the other to avoid having to pay out claims. They collect billions in premiums for decades and send that money off to their parent companies, then when they have to pay out a large number of claims, they claim to be cash poor.

Perhaps the state needs to make sure that there are more cash reserves required to do business as a Florida insurer. United Property and Casualty had about 135,000 policies in Florida. That means they are collecting at least $150 million a year in premiums in Florida alone. It claims to have losses of more than $35 million each year since 2017. The thing is, it is owned by a larger company, United Insurance Holdings Corporation. That company was making $10 million a year in profits until 2018.

By Divemedic, ago