West Burlington, Iowa

Falcon,

I can never understand why people who live on outer islands in states such as New Jersey would build homes just a stone’s throw from the ocean.

Just how stupid could a person be to build a home jutting out into the ocean on a sandy strip of low land and not know it’s capable of being blown away every hurricane season or damaged just from high seas?

It’s very hard to feel any sympathy for people who challenge Mother Nature in this way, a way in which they’ll come out on the losing end every time a hurricane or high seas occurr.

One can see homes in California that overhang cliffs with posts holding up parts of the house that hang over the cliff.    The last I heard is California is prone to earthquakes; so why would the state allow people to build homes overhanging cliffs with a few posts holding up the front of the house.  California is also prone to fires that in return can cause mudslides after heavy rains yet in California people build homes on hillsides in forested areas and then wonder why they get hit by mudslides.

I think Americans, who live in or on known dangerous areas such as on or near beaches prone to hurricanes, on earthquake faults, overhanging cliffs in earthquake prone areas, near rivers that constantly flood regardless of levees and so on should all be responsible for their own insurance and not be the responsibility of the taxpayer for their poor decisions.  If they want to live dangerously then it should be their problem should they lose their home.

Just take a drive along Highway 99 below the Burlington bluffs and one can see where huge sections of rock have fallen off and now lay in close proximity to the highway.  Some of those homes look like there at risk of a height adjustment sometime in the future, just take a look up there as you drive north on 99.  There’s a price to pay for the view and I would assume they accept the responsibility should their view vanish along with their home and they should not expect the taxpayer to be responsible.

People that risk their homes for a view or to be near water or overlooking town should also accept responsibility for their own risk taking and not be dependent on the taxpayer to bail them out.

There were pictures on the news of hundreds of homes or beach houses built on sandbars, at sea level just feet from the Atlantic Ocean with just inches between the homes all asking to be wiped out by a hurricane or high seas along the New Jersey coast, of course many states have the same problem along the U.S. coastal areas and not just New Jersey.

People that build homes in known dangerous areas should bear their own responsibility when disaster strikes over and over again by buying private insurance to cover their losses.   There are people along the Mississippi that have collected money from the taxpayer more than once for their losses caused by flooding and this is wrong simply because it’s a known risk and can be avoided if they didn’t build in the flood plain.  The taxpayer just shouldn’t be responsible for people that just make dumb decisions by placing themselves and their families in harms way.

-DG

Falcon,

This was written by Roger Hedgecock – former mayor of San Diego:

I live in California . If you were wondering what living in Obama’s second  term would be like, wonder no longer. We in California are living there now.

California is a one-party state dominated by a virulent Democrat Left enabled by a complicit media where every agency of local, county, and state government is run by and for the public employee unions. The unemployment rate is 12%.

yea.  Probably more like 25%.

California has more folks on food stamps than any other state, has added so many benefits and higher rates to Medicaid that we call it “Medi-Cal.”  Our K-12 schools have more administrators than teachers, with smaller classes but lower test scores and higher dropout rates with twice the per-student budget of 15 years ago. Good job, Brownie.

This week, the once and current Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown had to confess that the “balanced” state budget adopted five months ago was billions in the red because actual tax revenues were billions lower than the airy-fairy revenue estimates on which the balance was predicated.

After trimming legislators’ perks and reducing the number of cell phones provided to state civil servants, the governor intoned that drastic budget reductions had already hollowed out state programs for the needy, law enforcement and our schoolchildren. California government needed more money.

Echoing the Occupy movement, the governor proclaimed the rich must pay their fair share. Fair share? Consider this: The top 1% of California income earners already pay 50% of the state’s total income tax. (read that again all you Robin Hood wannabes) California has seven income tax brackets. The top income tax rate is 9.3%, which is slapped on the greedy rich earning at least $47,056 a year. Income of more than $1 million pays the “millionaires’ and billionaires'” surcharge tax rate of 10.3%. Brown’s proposal would add 2% for income over $250,000 . A million-dollar income would then be taxed at 12.3%. And that’s just for the state.

Brown also proposed a one-half-cent sales tax increase, which would bring sales taxes (which vary by county) up from 7.75% to as much as 10%. Both tax increases would be on the ballot in 2012. The sales tax increase proposal immediately brought howls of protest from the Left (of Brown!). Charlie Eaton, a sociology grad student at UC Berkeley and leader of the UC Student-Workers Union, said, “We’ve paid enough.  It’s time for millionaires to pay.” Go figure.

At least five other ballot measures to raise taxes are circulating for signa-tures to get on the 2012 ballot in California . The governor’s proposals are the most conservative.

The Obama way doesn’t end with taxes.

The governor and the state legislature continue to applaud the efforts of the California High Speed Rail Authority to build a train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco . Even though the budget is three times the voter-approved amount and the first segment will only connect two small towns in the agricultural Central Valley . But hey, if we build it, they will ride.  And we don’t want to turn down the Obama bullet-train bucks that Florida and other states rejected because the operating costs would bankrupt them. Can’t happen here because we’re already insolvent! If we get into real trouble with the train, we’ll just bring in the Chinese. It worked with the Bay Bridge reconstruction. After the 1989 earthquake, the bridge connecting Oakland and San Francisco was rebuilt with steel made in China . Workers from China too. Paid for with money borrowed from China . Makes perfect sense.

In California , we hate the evil, greedy rich (except the rich in Hollywood, in sports, and in drug dealing). But we love people who have broken into California to eat the bounty created by the productive rich. Illegals get benefits from various generous welfare programs, free medical care, and free schools for their kids, including meals, and of course, instate tuition rates and scholarships too. Nothing’s too good for our guests.  To erase even a hint of criticism of illegal immigration, the California Legislature is considering a unilateral state amnesty. Democrat State Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes has proposed an initiative that would bar deportation of illegals from California .

Interesting dilemma for Obama there. If immigration is exclusively a federal matter, and Obama has sued four states for trying to enforce federal immigration laws that he won’t enforce, what will the President do to a California law that exempts California from federal immigration law?

California is also near fulfilling the environmentalist dream of de-industrialization.  After driving out the old industrial base (auto and airplane assembly, for example, air and water regulators and tax policies are now driving out the high-tech, biotech and even Internet-based companies that were supposed to be California’s future. The California cap-and-trade tax on business in the name of reducing CO2 makes our state the leader in wacky environmentalism and guarantees a further job exodus from the state. Even green energy companies can’t do business in California . Solyndra went under, taking its taxpayer loan guarantee with it.

No job is too small to escape the regulators. The state has even banned weekend amateur gold miners from the historic gold mining streams in the Sierra Nevada Mountains . In fact, more and more of California ‘s public land is off-limits to recreation by the people who paid for that land. Unless you’re illegal. Then you can clear the land, set up marijuana plantations at will, bring in fertilizers that legal farmers can no longer use, exploit illegal farm workers who live in hovels with no running water or sanitation, and protect your investment with armed illegals carrying guns that no California citizen is allowed to own. The rest of us only found out about these plantations when a workers’ open campfire started one of those devastating fires that have killed hundreds of people and burned out thousands of homes in California over the last decade.

It’s often said that whatever happens in California will soon happen in your state. You’d better hope that’s wrong.

Roger Hedgecock

CALIFORNIA IS OBAMA’S DREAM

Is Iowa next on the list?

DS

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“In times of deception the truth is Revolutionary.”

George Orwell