Proving Pictures

I’ve been out doing some errands today. I went around to my rental properties to take some pictures. The taxman is somehow claiming (again) that my properties are all worth SO much more this year than last. Most of them have gone up tens of thousands of dollars in appraised value and some even more than doubled!

Hard to believe? Yeah, it is hard to believe, especially since every single one of them has deteriorated since last year and the market sure as hell has not improved enough so that people are just throwing money at the kind of crap I own!

So, I was out taking pictures to prove to the tax assessors that they should not appraise my properties at such high values. No one in their right mind would offer anywhere near the price they claim my property is worth!

It really irks me that I have to do this EVERY year! I can only imagine how many people just can’t get out and around and do all the things necessary to protest every year. How many people wind up losing their property because of this crap! I can only imagine how much MORE of my money would go down the drain every single year if I wasn’t able to get down there to argue with them every single year!

I’m sure the tax guys are happy as hell that most people just never can get around to protesting the exorbitant property taxes we have around here. I can’t believe how much money is totally WASTED around here on total BS! Things we do NOT need, but make people feel better. The people who run this country/county/city/town just love to scare the hell out of people by telling them if they don’t raise the taxes then things will just go straight to hell! What a hell of a scam they have going on!

Then the cities get in on the act and fine the hell out of people for not doing the yard work and home maintenance up to their required standards. Knowing full well that they’ve made it too expensive for most everyone to comply. With all the added rules and regulations causing prices to skyrocket to do the work!  Eventually, the city comes around and condemns your property and then they steal it for a song!

Yeah, hard to believe. Little power hungry authoritarian ‘elites’ making decisions that completely change the course of someone else’s life! This used to be a free country. Not so much anymore. You think you own property here? Think again when your property tax comes due!

I just HOPE all my photos will prove that my property is NOT worth as much as they claim! I’m fighting a losing battle, my property has already gone up more than double since I bought it in 2005! I’m sure some people think that’s a good thing. Yeah, it might be IF you’re trying to sell. If you’re not selling, its a really BAD thing!

Sewer Line Blues

I haven’t been able to post on here much lately since I’ve been pretty busy for the last week or so. I left home last Monday and spent 2 days traveling to the rig. I got here on Wednesday the 11th and was lucky enough to be assigned to the midnight to noon watch (so I got to go to sleep pretty soon after arrival onboard).

I was just starting to get settled in, then we had drills Sunday and unlatched the BOP on Monday. We moved right over to our next well and stabbed in later that day. We should only be on this one a couple more days and then move on to the next one. So it looks like this hitch will be pretty much like the last one. Constantly busy with setting up, maintenance, moving around, rip tides to watch out for, etc. Not much time for taking care of other business.

I got news right before I left home that the plumbers will be asking around $3000(!!!) to repair the sewer issues at one of my properties. We had been trying to find a way to do it ourselves since it mostly consists of digging a hole.

I even went to talk to the city code enforcement officer about doing the job myself. He told me I could only do the job if it was my homestead and I would have to show him proof that I lived in that house. Owning it was not enough (WHY NOT???).

Since my drivers license did not have that address on it, I was SOOL (shit out of luck)!

He would allow me to dig the hole myself, which we had hoped to be able to do. Since that was by FAR the main part of the job, that would save us a hell of a lot of money. So, for the next couple of weeks at home I was trying to help find a LICENSED plumber who would be willing to do a little moonlighting. Let us dig the hole and he could just come at the end to supervise. All he had to do was be there to connect the pipes back together.

In the end, we could not find any one like that (I guess the plumbers union must be pretty strong). They all insisted that THEY must do the ENTIRE job.

So, I will have to spend an EXTRA $2500 (and up), for licensed plumbers to dig a hole (at $100 per hour and up)!

WOW! What a friggin’ RACKET these guys have going! BS your way into getting the government to FORCE people to hire you, even for jobs they’re perfectly capable of doing themselves! WOW!!

Does anybody else have a problem with this situation?

I mean, WHY the HELL should ANYONE be able to dictate what you can do on YOUR OWN PROPERTY??????

The principle of ownership implies USE of something. If you can’t use your property, the way YOU want, then you do NOT own it! Yet, you still have to pay for it, and you have to KEEP ON paying for it. Even after you have paid the full price (many times over if you financed it).

Property taxes, they mean that you NEVER really can own a piece of property.

The way I look at it is: if you want to dictate to me what I can or can’t do on what is supposedly MY property, then YOU can PAY for it, since you get to use it for what you want and I don’t get to use it for what I BOUGHT IT FOR!

Too bad there are so many busy bodies that just can’t control themselves. Our entire society has pandered to them for much too long (they should have been laughed out of town the first time they mentioned the subject!). Now, they even imagine that they are in the right (they are NOT). But there’s no fighting them anymore.

Oh wait, there IS one group that is having some success in fighting this sickening trend. The Institute for Justice does help people fight for their property rights (among other things). They’ve been doing an excellent job and I am happy to support them as much as I can (wish I could do more- so many people need their help).

We’re all between a rock and a hard place. Either you pay rent forever so you can never escape the rat race (and put up with even MORE restrictions on what you can do in your HOME), or you buy property so you can earn some income, but yet you are more and more restricted every year.

So, the figures you based your decision to buy an investment on are devalued every year until you wind up even worse than you would have been if you never even tried.

It’s absolutely shameful what we have allowed to happen in the USA. We used to have a free country (or at least one we could say was more free than anywhere else). Now, we are SO FAR from that idea, it is ridiculous to even mention those words together any more. They are almost opposites now (America-free).

I sure hope the sewer issues are fixed by the time I get home. I sure don’t want to have to deal any more with this ‘shit’! (But I already know I have another problem to deal with at another place- and it will also be very expensive!). 🙁