What are your state's "hot issues?"

[Joe Jordan]

Sounds like the Texans could still be a little gun shy about the whole Branch Davidian Compound. Memories may still be a little too recent? Can't say I blame 'em, they're well within their rights to make sure everyone is operating safely down there.

Live and let live, I say! If a preacher wants to carry, let 'em. Not like he's gonna go lookin' for a fight, now is he?

 

[chickened]

Nonsense, absolute clattering nonsense!! Any civil union would be between consenting adults. How does this allow anything not human? Consenting adults...children aren't adults so they are exempted, animals can't consent so they are exempted, inanimate objects are neither adult or able to consent. The part civil refers to a legal definition, like civil rights or civic responsibility. There simply are not indications that a child, animal or inanimate object can enter into a legal agreement. How does this lead to anything non-human being able to engage in a civil union?

It doesn't matter how much you love bacon, you are never going to be able to marry it.

Animals have rightsand as far as I know they have never actually requested those righ and there have been plenty of legal arguments made on their behalf so don't speak too soon stranger things have happened.

 

[chickened]

There is actually a huge lawsuit going on here in Texas, again, about school funding and who gets the money. The issue is that when school funding is based almost exclusively on property tax, how to you keep the property poor districts funded? How do you allow growing, property rich districts to raise funds for new schools, and facilities? How do you make sure that the funding is as equitable as the fund raising? In my community, there is no will to raise school taxes, because it means that our money would just be funding a poorer district. Everything then becomes a bond issue because those funds are particular to the bonding authority. But you can't pay for day to day expenses with bonds.

They are called tax foreclosures.

 

[chickened]

We have another pot vote which is no surprise. And another attempt to take our kicker check.

 

[punk-a-doodle]

Without even getting into the whole separate but equal thing...civil unions are different than being legally wed. Marriages offer couples more legal protections and more rights. Civil unions are not recognized in all states. If I moved to Alaska, Vermont, Kansas, or Virginia, it doesn't matter. My marriage will be recognized. If my husband and I had a civil union, this would not be the case.

Marriage is not a contract between you and God (though it can be that on a personal level). Atheists, agnostics, and polytheists all can and do legally get married. So can celebrities and others who really aren't concerned with the 'sanctity of marriage'. My suggestion would be to come up with a name that applies specifically to a personal or religious branch's definition of marriage, and call your union by that name.

I know quite a few people who chose not to be legally married for reasons such as feeling that legal marriages are then owned by the state or country. They instead chose to actually have their marriage be a union purely with God. They have not tried to dominate and control the word "marriage", and either used it knowing that it holds other meanings, or called their union by another name. Problem solved for them.

 

[mom'sfolly]

Here in Texas the tax laws have gone round and round on school funding...no foreclosures involved. The law is written so that rich districts have to send money to poorer districts. Because school funding is by property tax, a district in west Texas with only grazing land has a much lower tax base than a city/suburban area with businesses, and homes. My school district has over 10,000 high school students. Its tax base includes Dell corporate HQ, State Farm HQ, an outlet mall, plus all the other small and large businesses, homes etc. There is no way an agricultural district can compete with that. We don't get to keep all our tax money, even though our rate is maxed out...money gets sent to smaller, poorer districts, often who still have rates under maximum. Poorer districts need money, but districts like ours do too. Texas, a small government state, constantly ends up in court over funding issues for schools and prisons.

As for marriage...the government has a responsibility to treat them the same...if you are married in one state, you should be married in all. I think the legal and religious aspects of marriage should be separate. Then when you marry in the legal sense, you are conferred all those rights, regardless of sexual orientation. Your religious ceremony would be a completely different matter; something between you and your church. I know many of you hate hearing about a European model, but in France, and other European countries, no marriage is legal unless it is preformed by a civil authority. You register your marriage at the courthouse, then go on to your religious ceremony. Your marriage is not official if you skip this part. You can be married in the eyes of the Church, but if it unregistered, it is not legal. In most of Scandinavia the laws are equally applied to all couples.

Again, marriage is between consenting adults. Animals and inanimate objects cannot say "I do" so they don't. Children are not adults, so they can't marry either.

 

[sezjasper]

Thank you, Mom'sfolly, for some very interesting and informative posts! Here's a question that confounds me about the tax district issue...assuming acre for acre the districts are the same size, why would the agricultural district be "poor" (when it is probably home to the most obscenely rich landowners) while the other district would be "rich" (and home to regular Joes on their quarter-acre lots)?

 

[oldrooster]

Here in Texas the tax laws have gone round and round on school funding...no foreclosures involved. The law is written so that rich districts have to send money to poorer districts. Because school funding is by property tax, a district in west Texas with only grazing land has a much lower tax base than a city/suburban area with businesses, and homes. My school district has over 10,000 high school students. Its tax base includes Dell corporate HQ, State Farm HQ, an outlet mall, plus all the other small and large businesses, homes etc. There is no way an agricultural district can compete with that. We don't get to keep all our tax money, even though our rate is maxed out...money gets sent to smaller, poorer districts, often who still have rates under maximum. Poorer districts need money, but districts like ours do too. Texas, a small government state, constantly ends up in court over funding issues for schools and prisons.

As for marriage...the government has a responsibility to treat them the same...if you are married in one state, you should be married in all. I think the legal and religious aspects of marriage should be separate. Then when you marry in the legal sense, you are conferred all those rights, regardless of sexual orientation. Your religious ceremony would be a completely different matter; something between you and your church. I know many of you hate hearing about a European model, but in France, and other European countries, no marriage is legal unless it is preformed by a civil authority. You register your marriage at the courthouse, then go on to your religious ceremony. Your marriage is not official if you skip this part. You can be married in the eyes of the Church, but if it unregistered, it is not legal. In most of Scandinavia the laws are equally applied to all couples.

Again, marriage is between consenting adults. Animals and inanimate objects cannot say "I do" so they don't. Children are not adults, so they can't marry either.

Indiana got away from property tax funded education a few years back but there is a small push to go back that way but in this economy only people who rent property who don't realize that if you raise property tax=higher rent would ever vote for it.

 

[mom'sfolly]

Rural Texas, especially west Texas is empty in a way that few on the East Coast can imagine. Much of the West fits this model. Additionally, west Texas is dry, and many acres are required for grazing, and even irrigated, it isn't the greatest land in the world. In our neighborhood, the average home price is about $180,000 on 1/5-1/4 acre lots. Ten acres of homes would have about $8 million in property value (180,000 x 4.5 homes/acre x 10 acres), the same ten acres in Fort Davis Texas would have a property value of between $4.5 million in town to perhaps only $200,000 outside town. Ft. Davis spends over $7000/student and Round Rock about $4500/student, but one Round Rock High School has more than double population of the entire town of Ft. Davis In addition to home property taxes, Round Rock has businesses, some of them very large.

It is truly a rural vs urban issue. This issue plays out far differently in most areas of the country than it does in the East. Here in Central Texas, rural land can range from about $3000/acre to $100,000+/acre for close in, Hill Country acreage. In West Texas, some acreage goes for $1000/acre.

http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/07/us-farmland-average-price-per-acre.html

 

[oldrooster]

Mom's folly that is why Indiana went to income tax to fund schools the state redistributes it according to the number of students of course there are adjustments for special ed. but that is probbably true in any state due to federal law and common sense.