Like most former/current Chicago residents, I was pretty astonished that Obama was starting his “change” administration with the quintessential face of Chicago Boss politics, one Rahm Emanual [sic]. It seemed something akin to inviting Al Capone to run the Treasury Department. Well, thanks to my old blogging home Illinois Review, we learn that high-taxing-Rahmy does not believe in paying high taxes himself:

According to the Cook County Assessor’s website, the Chicago home of four-term Democrat Congressman and likely new White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, doesn’t exist. While the address of 4228 North Hermitage is listed as Emanuel’s residence on the Illinois State Board of Elections’ website, there seems to be no public record of Emanuel ever paying property taxes on this home…

Why wouldn’t 4228 North Hermitage property owners Rahm Emanuel and wife Amy Rule not pay property taxes?

One reason may be because Emanuel and Rule declared their 4228 North Hermitage home as the office location for their non-profit foundation appropriately called the “Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule Charitable Foundation”. As a non-profit headquarters, they may consider their home as exempt from paying taxes.

I guess the change we can believe to see is “what is good for thee is not for me.”

UPDATE

From the Assessors Office:

1) The tax bill IS listed where the Emanuel home is located. They are on two lots.

2) By “for tax purposes,” I mean that this is the location associated with the PIN. But it’s the same property.

3) Yes, it was inaccurate to say that. Because it is the same house. It was listed in our records — and the Treasurer’s records — under a different address. Had you contacted either office to check this out, we could have told you that.

4) It would be highly misleading and irresponsible for you to say that, because we don’t assess property by address – we do it by PIN. And we do it because addresses change and get combined all the time, when owners divide and combine lots. Apparently, with this property, a previous owner had taken three lots and turned them into two.

Let me make one further point: Before posting this “story,” neither you nor anybody from the Illinois Review made an effort to contact the Assessor’s office to verify it. As a former newspaper reporter, I find this shocking.

Even after learning, when I emailed you at 10:46 this morning, that there were factual problems with the story, you kept it on your web site. Moreover, you deleted my effort to correct the story from the “comments” section. I’d be keenly interested in hearing your justification for this conduct.

The point is, it looks likes perhaps Emanual’s Dealings are above board. But when I consider what my two different tax burdens where in Chicago, it seems a bit low, maybe by a third. The blogger from IllinoisReason.com emailed me to say that “two other homes in the area are tallied at $6800 and $6000
respectively… None of those stats is anywhere near the Emanuel’s $13,000.”

The problem is, that 13,000 a year for a $600K+ home is about right. But he is on a double lot. In my mind the relevance of his neighbors is based upon not only the neighborhood, but the inside dwellings, and any upgrades. In other words, what are his other neighbors homes valued at, what is the size of their respective lots, etc. They could all be living in 400K homes, which is about what there tax burden seems to reflect.

Being that the assessor could give such a partisan/emotional response, I wonder as to the likelihood of Emanual getting even a 10% discount. And if he were, that alone would be cause for serious questioning. If I were Emanual (glad I am not- the guy is kind of a jerk), I would right away make sure my appraisal was update and 100% accurate, even if it came down to me paying slightly more.

[Update 2]

Here is an answer provided to me about the one of my points:

The $13,000 assessment would be the same whether it was a single- or
double-lot valued at 630k because the double-lot only has one PIN.

Still seems amazingly low, and being that it is a 1998 appraisal, it is. Perhaps Emanual should do a new one, and get all his P’s and Q’s in order before the move to 1600 PA Ave.?

…and this was exactly what my mission was like. I loved walking into peoples homes and sifting through their belongings and tearing up things. Especially with a sinister laugh.

But I never got the cool “Enforcement Division” badge. That would have have made my job a bit easier.

A couple thoughts:

1. These missionaries were in the wrong, since Missionary rules dictate that elders shouldn’t go into homes where they are the only male. I am just thankful the cameras caught this.

2. I actually did teach two good looking lesbians on my mission, one was Mormon and the other wanted to join, but they moved away or something. Needless to say, our first visits had a lot of parallels.

crossposted from race42008.com

The newest SUSA polling confirms California Proposition 8 (defining Marriage as between a man and a woman) leading by 3 percent thanks in a large measure to black voters who are in favor 58%-30% and to a small degree Hispanics who are in favor 47%-41%.

One of the arguments constantly espoused by Gay Marriage advocates, or even those who just don’t have a problem with it, is the old line, “How does gay marriage hurt your marriage?” It’s a nice black and white oversimplified question to a complex question with larger ramifications than those who oppose prop 8 will admit to (common-sense restraint=stealth slippery slope, but I digress).

Well honestly if gay marriage was to be enacted, I am sure me and my wife would continue our marriage just fine. All the gays in the world could marry, and I would still love my wife and children.

But we aren’t protecting the one-man-one-woman definition of marriage to protect my marriage. We are protecting marriage to protect a whole host of other principles:

1. Freedom of Though
2. Freedom of Religion
3. Freedom of Association
4. Freedom of Speech
5. Freedom to Educate our Children

…and many more.

You see when gay marriage is allowed, it only serves to codify gay couples and their relationships as a protected status. In other words, if I disagree with their actions and I act out my thoughts through refusal to offer a service or even refuse to accept their lifestyle against my conscience I am now violating their status, and unfortunately for me, that trumps my religion, thought and speech.

A few examples:

• A Christian photographer in NM is fined for refusing to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony. The New Mexico’s Human Rights Tribunal (that alone should be enough of a warning) decides the photographers right to photograph as a method of freedom of speech, photograph the subjects she chooses and follow the religious dictates of her own conscience is far out weighed by the lesbian couple’s right to forcibly use any photographer they choose for their ceremony. Link, Link.
• Federal Judge in MA rules that elementary schools are free to teach Homosexuality unabated without parental notification or opportunities for parents to opt out children. The reasoning? Here:
  

  “It is reasonable for public educators to teach elementary school students about individuals with different sexual orientations and about various forms of families, including those with same-sex parents, in an effort to eradicate the effects of past discrimination, to reduce the risk of future discrimination and, in the process, to reaffirm our nation’s constitutional commitment to promoting mutual respect among members of our diverse society.”

  The other option I would assume for Massachusetts parents who want final authority on what their children are taught would be homeschooling. Yet that is under attack from the liberal left wing as well:

  “You know, just to put it frankly, the evangelical movement that I grew up in as a child used to be a fairly respectable and respectful group of people. They regarded themselves as Americans and part of the system. And now, I really think it’s been taken over by a group of people that have to be described fairly as just wingnuts…And the fact of the matter is, the movement has gone off the rails. ”
  

  Mr. Schaeffer raises an important point that cannot be overlooked here. The advent of home-schooling, once the purvue of only a tiny sliver of the population, has boomed in recent years. Public schools were considered secularist, even anti-God, and so more and more Christian homes began to teach their children at home, even as private, church-supported Christian schools also began to proliferate. Link

  The systematic, forced indoctrination of our children has begun. Education and freedom of thought are clearly hanging by a thread.

• The California Legislature passed a bill that forced school to devote an entire day to honoring Homosexual Activist Harvey Milk. From Milk’s wiki:
  

  Milk has become an icon in San Francisco and “a martyr for gay rights”, according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak.[1] While established political organizers in the city insisted gays work with liberal politicians and use restraint in reaching their objectives, Milk outspokenly encouraged gays to use their growing power in the city and support each other. His goal was to give hope to disenfranchised gays around the country. In 2002, he was called “the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States”.

  The bill was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger.

When Connecticut Courts legalized Homosexual marriage a week or so ago, the AP reporter Dave Collins wrote a chilling line in his report: “It was a logical next step for a state that was the first to voluntarily pass laws affirming and protecting civil unions.” Confirmation of the slippery slope (not a theory), and a real open ended statement: If this was a logical step after civil unions, what is the next logical step? See Canada.

The point is gay marriage does not operate in a vacuum. The agenda to give marriage to homosexuals is driven by the same group of people who drive the other agendas referenced above. We aren’t protecting our marriage from Homosexuality, we are protecting our freedom of thought, freedom to practice our religion, and freedom to speak our conscience from those who feel they know best.

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