Dan's Outside

It is shooting star season – in more ways than one

I originally posted:

Tom Stienstra has article at SF Gate with some useful information for those who may find themselves away from city lights in the evening over the next few weeks.

But shortly afterward I realized that an UPDATE would be in order:

Since many of you may be familiar with more than one kind of shooting star, let me clarify that Stienstra’s article is about the kind that flashes through the night sky and is otherwise known as a meteor.

Fellow Sierra Nevada travelers and others will know that the other kind of shooting star is a very beautiful flower that often grows in thick patches in wet (and, unfortunately, mosquito-infested) areas of the mountains at about this time of year.

If you time it right, you might be able to see both types of shooting star on the same trip! That’s what I’m hoping for this week.

July 27, 2009 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | Comments Off on It is shooting star season – in more ways than one

Close the Loophole

If you are as fed up as I am with California’s dysfunctional budget and tax system (not to mention the roadblocks in the legislature and our, ahem, “governor”) check this out: Close the Loophole.

This is a movement to set right the terrible problems created by Proposition 13 in California several decades ago. I’m not against reasonable control of taxation, but this thing has gone (predictably, I might add) out of control in a whole bunch of ways, including:

• The tax burden has shifted from steady and predictable property taxes to unreliable, variable, and regressive sales taxes and fees.
• Because people (like me!) who have owned their property for many decades are locked in to much lower levels of property tax, next-door neighbors pay wildly different amounts of property tax.
• The real beneficiaries of this proposition are huge commercial property owners in the state who don’t “turn over” their property and who now pay far less tax as a percentage to the state than they did before the proposition was enacted – and this trend will continue indefinitely and push a greater and greater percent of the burden onto individual homeowners.

Proposition 13 was a brilliant political calculation. It contained features that raised its short term appeal high enough to get it passed, it was offered at a time of great taxpayer anger, it pandered to citizen’s baser instincts and its passage made discussion of any changes the “third rail” of California politics – to go there was political death. But is also locked the state into a downward revenue spiral that continues to get worse and worse. But it has now become so painfully obvious that California’s system is badly broken – that groups such as Close the Loophole now have a chance of provoking much-needed change – and they need support from all of us now.

July 3, 2009 Posted by gdanmitchell | Commentary | 3 Comments