I just got a robocall from a group calling itself "Citizens for a better Orange County" that opposes the Transfer Tax. It calls the tax the "Home Tax," which is clearly wrong on two levels. Firstly, the proposed tax is on all land sales, and secondly it is an attempt to falsely personalize this tax for local homeowners. Oh, and it fails to mention an important detail: the tax rate would be 0.4%. That's right: four tenths of a percent. That's one thousand dollars on a $250k hypothetical home. Sounds like too much money? Well, what are the alternatives? If this is defeated, the only two alternatives that have been seriously discussed are a sales tax (the most regressive tax possible) and a property tax increase. A property tax increase would be a home tax. Everything about the robocall was misleading and dishonest.
The call directs people to a website that I won't link to here. The website refers to "Tom Holt" as their treasurer and "Mark Zimmerman" as their spokesperson. A bit of googling gives:
So you’ve got Barack and Hillary all figured out, but what else is on the ballot?Yes, it’s my periodic profile of the lesser known races on the ballot this May. I will be partisan and leave it to some other writer to profile the Republican Primaries (there are some). And I am skipping over the US President, NC Governor and US Senate races, presuming that you can find some good info on those somewhere else. I am also skipping the Orange School Board and the District 2 Commissioner races because I don't live in either of those districts and have not really followed those races.So what else is out there? A bunch of stuff and some of it is even fairly important. I have bolded below the names of folks that I think are the clear choice. In a few races you will see two bolded names in cases where I think progressive voters have an interesting choice to make. I personally have an opinion about those races as well and that may come through in my commentary.Lieutenant Governor – No Incumbent There are four candidates for Lieutenant Governor, but only two of them seem to have much of a following in this area: Hampton Dellinger and Dan Besse.
I voted at the Planetarium (2d floor this time) at about 12:30 pm and I was voter 235. There were 12-15 people waiting in line and another 8 to 10 completing their ballots. I saw two people who were registering. Best of all --- most of the voters that I saw fit the college-age demographic!
I don't think I've ever seen this many folks on the first half day! Also, there was plenty of excitement outside with the various campaigns represented. The Obama group had lots of folks working and I saw Kevin Wolff (R) out there campaigning for his wife (D)!
We have a big primary in North Carolina this year. I'm overseas and will be voting as soon as I get that ballot in hand. So, please share your endorsements here! Especially for the local and state offices; I'm already pretty clear on the presidential primary.
Editor's note: Joan wrote this a month ago, when many of us hadn't made up our minds. I think now people will have more to say. Consider this an official special rules thread. That is: You may only mention candidates that you are endorsing, please do not discuss people you don't support or why you don't support them. Comments that don't follow these guidelines will be removed. Thanks. =Ruby
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