Poll

What should the State of Texas focus on?

Illegal immigration
13 (34.2%)
The military
1 (2.6%)
Education
7 (18.4%)
Freedom of Religion
8 (21.1%)
Other - please state in your comments.
9 (23.7%)

Total Members Voted: 17

Voting closed: May 27, 2016, 04:04:42 am

Author Topic: What's the plan, fellow Texans?  (Read 10919 times)

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Offline Sanguine

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What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« on: May 17, 2016, 04:04:42 am »
I am of the opinion that working on reforming the federal government is useless.  The fed is just too big and too entrenched.  We don't have many choices.  The states have to reassert their rights and reestablish the correct relationship with the federal government.

However, in Texas we have a possible opportunity in that, for now we Texans are still Texans, and we have a state government (Abbott, Patrick, etc.) that is seems amenable to the idea of states rights.

I think we need to establish a fairly short list of goals and work towards them.  To that end, I've created the above poll and would really appreciate your votes and input.


Offline TheMom

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2016, 12:29:36 pm »
Texas should definitely focus on education.  Get away from those stupid standardized testing and go back to old school teaching.
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Online Bigun

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2016, 12:35:19 pm »
Tax Reform!

Texans are being taxed out of their homes and property and fixing that is job one IMHO!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Just_Victor

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2016, 12:51:39 pm »
I wish we could find a way to eliminate property taxes.
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Online Bigun

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2016, 12:55:46 pm »
I wish we could find a way to eliminate property taxes.

We can! All we need to do is expand the base of the sales tax to include services and we can lower the overall sales tax rate and eliminate property taxes entirely.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline Just_Victor

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2016, 01:24:31 pm »
We can! All we need to do is expand the base of the sales tax to include services and we can lower the overall sales tax rate and eliminate property taxes entirely.

The problem is going to be the effect on the real estate economy.  The driving force behind getting undeveloped land on the market is the property tax.  When land owners get sick of paying the taxes on unused land they unload it.  With no tax, most people probably wouldn't sell land because one can afford to just keep it and do nothing with it.  So the supply of land for sale dries up, and prices go through the roof.  Maybe if the state distinguished between residential and commercial/agricultural/industrial/undeveloped land for tax purposes.

I don't know.  The entire concept of property taxes means that the government owns all property and you are just renting it from them.  And I just really loath that.
If all I want is a warm feeling, I should just wet my pants.

Offline M1078

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2016, 01:33:05 pm »
Property taxes don't necessarily need eliminated but they certainly need reformed.  When I lived in WA I had 10 acres and a house and paid about 1/5th what I'm paying in TX for half the property (and WA doesn't have state income tax either).  The only thing saving me from having to sell and get something smaller is a disability lock on how much it can go up.  Luckily I live in the county and not in town or I'd be taxed out of my home.
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Offline ShadowAce

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2016, 01:34:35 pm »
If we could get illegal immigration under control, that would employ more Texans, which would allow us to work on taxes and education.

Of course, we'd also have to work on welfare benefits to encourage Texans to actually go back to work.

Offline M1078

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #8 on: May 17, 2016, 01:50:19 pm »
If we could get illegal immigration under control, that would employ more Texans, which would allow us to work on taxes and education.

Of course, we'd also have to work on welfare benefits to encourage Texans to actually go back to work.

I know an awful lot of folks in the oil and gas industry that would love to go back to work.
Former FR macnjac

Offline sinkspur

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2016, 01:57:22 pm »
We can! All we need to do is expand the base of the sales tax to include services and we can lower the overall sales tax rate and eliminate property taxes entirely.

That won't be near enough to fund state services. Plus, pieces of the sales tax go to local counties and communities. And, a large number of services are assessed sales taxes already.

We could lower property taxes but, as someone else pointed out, property taxes keep the value of land low by forcing people to sell land due to the taxes.  Housing prices would rocket with no or even low property taxes.
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Offline TheMom

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #10 on: May 17, 2016, 05:42:25 pm »
I know an awful lot of folks in the oil and gas industry that would love to go back to work.

 :seeya:  Not waving, I'm raising my hand.   Lost my job in August, having a bear of a time finding another one.
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Offline Ghost Bear

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2016, 08:53:22 pm »
I voted for Illegal Immigration and Education.  Make the state less "friendly" to those here illegally (as some other states have done) and many will self-deport, while new ones will choose to go to other destinations. This will have the benefit of reducing the costs of healthcare and education (among other costs) and increasing wages and employment.

Education reform is desperately needed. Get rid of the influence of the teacher's unions, start ignoring more federal mandates, go back to the teaching methods of the 30s, 40s, and 50s that worked. Start teaching children to think critically again.
Let it burn.

Offline austingirl

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #12 on: May 17, 2016, 09:40:16 pm »
Secession. The overreach of the federal government will not be stopped with the two candidates running. Texas sends more to DC than it gets back.
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Offline Ghost Bear

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #13 on: May 17, 2016, 09:43:55 pm »
Secession. The overreach of the federal government will not be stopped with the two candidates running. Texas sends more to DC than it gets back.

I almost put secession down as my "Other" vote.
Let it burn.

Offline Sanguine

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #14 on: May 18, 2016, 12:35:28 am »
I caught Mark Levin's first hour today, and he was on a righteous rant.  Reminded us that we don't and won't have any real influence over the federal leviatian.  The power resides in the states, and if we got off our big, lazy butts (my wording) and reassert our power, we could turn this around.

Offline Sanguine

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2016, 12:40:47 am »
Secession. The overreach of the federal government will not be stopped with the two candidates running. Texas sends more to DC than it gets back.

I agree.  But, we have to be in a position to do so, and I don't see that we are at this point.

Offline Sanguine

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #16 on: May 18, 2016, 01:00:56 am »
Quote
Texas to blackmailing Obama: Maybe you can just keep your federal funds

Surely you heard this past weekend about the Obama threat to withhold federal education funds from states who don’t immediately embrace Obama’s transgender bathroom policies. The current shell game of collecting money through the IRS and then sending it back to the states in the form of federal aid is merely a way for the federal government to dictate to the state how they must operate. It’s certainly not a new phenomenon, either. Remember the nationwide 55-mile-per-hour speed limit? That was never a law passed by Congress. It was a gambit of Jimmy Carter to deny federal highway funds to any state that didn’t play ball.

Typically, states meekly capitulate to these threats because they don’t want to lose the funds. Obama knows that perfectly well, and figured he could use the threat of withholding federal funds to force his transgender bathroom agenda on the entire nation.

But what will happen if the day finally comes when the federal government has pushed too far, and some state tells Washington it can take its federal aid and shove it? And if some state were to do that, which one do you supposed it might be?

You guessed right:
....
http://canadafreepress.com/article/texas-to-blackmailing-obama-maybe-you-can-just-keep-your-federal-funds


Offline Night Hides Not

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #17 on: May 18, 2016, 02:07:50 pm »
I applaud the Governor's stand on the bathroom issue. I looked it up, federal funds comprise 13% of education funding in Texas. I think we all have a pretty good idea what those funds go to.

Robin Hood has to be scrapped and replaced. I live in Coppell ISD, and over 50% of our local dollars go to other districts in the state. As a result, we get nickeled and dimed on extracurricular activities. The "participation fee" is at least $150 for each activity. My youngest son enters HS in the fall, and he will be in band and cross country at a minimum.

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Offline Sanguine

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #18 on: May 18, 2016, 03:11:00 pm »
@INVAR and @bootless ' responses on another thread were so relevant and well stated that I'm copying them here:


Quote
Re: Given today's FR activity...
« Reply #184 on: May 17, 2016, 11:33:35 PM »

    Quote

Quote from: bootless on May 17, 2016, 10:23:16 PM

    In the meantime, this has been an interesting one... with some fine support by some Constitutionally-focused folks. The most startling admission by some of the die-hards? That we are apparently already post-Constitutional and that there's basically no point in returning to it.


Mark Levin has actually created that phrase in regards to what we have been struggling to call what we have been transformed into the past decade-plus; A Post-Constitutional Society.  And, he is correct to note that the Constitution is in all practicality, irrelevant - because those charged with upholding it - have reneged and failed to do so.

I am a bit more pointed in describing what we have been transformed into, and that is a post-Constitutional Fascist Mobocracy with a dictatorship empowered by an oligarchy.

Quote from: bootless on May 17, 2016, 10:23:16 PM

    Also, we aren't there yet. Venezuela is there.


We are well on our way to where this system we have been transformed into is going to take us, which will be Venezuela multiplied.  Venezuela didn't have the crushing trillions in debt we currently do and they (to my knowledge) have not been invaded by willful foreign squatters invited by their own government to get on the government dole and conquer the country from within.

Quote from: bootless on May 17, 2016, 10:23:16 PM

    And Skippy's ongoing abuse of the Constitution (and by extension, us) doesn't mean that we just accept that's how it's going to be.


Congress and the courts let them get away with it, so now it is precedent.  Nothing you or I do is going to change or stop that short of what is necessary, and there are not enough of us willing to risk what is necessary to make that possible. Besides - we cannot even agree as a people what the definition of liberty even means - so the common foundation that forged us in the first place no longer exists.

Quote from: bootless on May 17, 2016, 10:23:16 PM

    Finally, one poster said the Constitution failed. I disagreed. It didn't fail - we did.


Exactly.  A moral and religious people would never haver permitted the Constitution, the rule of law or our culture be destroyed in the manner it was.  We bought the lies sold to us by our domestic enemies, and allowed our culture, religion and principles be redefined over the decades until we stood for nothing but ourselves and create rights for everyone to do what is right in their own eyes at the expense of common sense and liberty.

Quote from: bootless on May 17, 2016, 10:23:16 PM

    But it's not a lost cause, not by a long shot.


John Adams would disagree with you there, at least as far as history would dictate.

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it."- John Adams, letter to Abigail - July 1775

Offline Sanguine

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #19 on: May 19, 2016, 03:21:34 pm »
Reposting from another thread:

Quote
    05/16/2016Ryan McMaken

    Last year, we covered a story coming out of Texas in which the state government was planning to institute a state-controlled "gold depository" that would allow individuals to store their gold in a presumably safe place outside the United States banking system.

    This proposition was met with emotionally-charged denunciations from Americans in far away northeastern American states where it was claimed this measure was contrary to the "supremacy clause" and just a terrible idea in general because it undermined faith in the US's central government and the Federal Reserve System.

    Well, in spite of the disapproval of New Yorkers, the Texas legislature passed the bill, and the governor signed it into law last June. ...

    https://mises.org/blog/texan-plans-build-gold-depository

Abbott is willing to go to the mat.  Let's get behind that effort.

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #20 on: May 19, 2016, 03:34:45 pm »
Secession. The overreach of the federal government will not be stopped with the two candidates running. Texas sends more to DC than it gets back.

So does California.
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Offline GrouchoTex

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #21 on: May 19, 2016, 06:56:34 pm »
Secession would be my other.
Immigration and Education, as well.

Offline austingirl

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #22 on: May 20, 2016, 02:24:31 am »
Has anyone checked out the Texas Nationalist Movement? I belong and used to go to meetings when I had a different work schedule. I realize that most Texans are not in favor at this point, but I have to ask, what will it take?

http://www.thetnm.org/
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Offline Texas Yellow Rose

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #23 on: May 20, 2016, 02:48:00 am »
With recent events of the foolish setting out to destroy our country, I think secession should become the top priority.  I've thought about it somewhat the last four years, but now?  It seems prudent to regain our Republic.
Yes it does.

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Re: What's the plan, fellow Texans?
« Reply #24 on: May 20, 2016, 05:45:11 am »
Once the federal government completely disregards the Constitution, it has effectively seceded and the states should feel free to reform a new union elsewhere.