Property Tax Reform: The People lose to the politicians

We're going to end up with a 1% cap on homestead taxes and in exchange for this we get a one penny sales tax increase. You do understand that this gives the government power to appraise your house at anything they want and to continue wasting your money paying assessors to botch the job, don't you?


Repeal got pushed around until it finally ended up in a summer study. That's what they do to shut you up about it.

In my opinion the people could have won, but we did not fight hard enough and sometimes put party politics ahead of what is best for the people paying the bills.

I have held my tongue long enough and want to share with this blog's readers why I am leaving the property tax activism work I did.

I started out all innocently enough. I tracked the property tax crisis from the legislative session last year to the bills getting mailed. I knew when the bills were going to hit and what they were going to be before they showed up in my neighbors mailboxes. I knew it was going to be terrible and I knew that there were better ways for the taxpayer. My goal was simply to rally people and channel their anger toward a solution, which ultimately is putting a leash on government spending and adopting the FairTax. Sean Shepard and Andy Horning helped every step of the way.

Within mere hours of our first rally, Eric Miller hoisted his machine to hijack the Meridian Kessler neighborhood and its property tax anger to his christian conservative I-am-better-than-you agenda.

Then John Price and Eric Miller locked HFFT out of the statewide Property Repeal Alliance because of their judgment of me, the founder, the woman who first rallied you together when no one else would do it. John Price and Eric Miller are misogynists and took issue with me, a dominant freedom-loving woman, who the city could never prove broke even a single zoning law after spending your money on 20 months of litigation against me.

So, the alliance is personal property and belongs to John Price and is not for and of the people. John Price controls who gets in and who doesn't. Who gets a voice for property freedom and who doesn't.

Both men are also opportunistic and always have their hands out for your donations. In fact, Eric Miller pays himself nearly $250,000 a year in salary and benefits to be a lobbyist for Advance America and purposely used your tax anger to hitch up to his real agenda, the constitutional marriage amendment SJR7.

When John Price filed the constitutional lawsuit last summer, he begged for people to sign on to it. A lot of people were frightened to do so because they didn't want their names out there thinking they would be targets for government retaliation. I said I would sign on to the suit and was faxed paperwork by John Price. He was excited to have me, until he was told about my former career...an occupation that hurt no one, nor broke any laws. Immediately he denied me access to the constitutional lawsuit.

At the same time I was denied access to petition my government on the lawsuit, Price gave access to man who is a convicted felon, whose son is in prison for cold-blooded murder, a man who burned the American flag in public, and once publicly threatened to murder the children of our city prosecutor. That's ok though because this man is now an ordained minister of your social concerns.

Although I've done no wrong, not one of our activists has the kahunas to stand up publicly to Eric Miller or John Price even though they ALL denounce these men's agendas behind their backs and have done so with me privately in our homes many, many times.

Yet they allow Miller and Price to divide us with by their bigoted judgments.

John Price and Eric Miller threaten our higher level human needs by their judgment and condemnation. Our politicians threaten our lower level need for physical shelter and safety by keeping a system in place by which the government can take your property. These are the enemies of the people making it difficult for all Hoosiers to self-actualize.

I am sad, because I thought this fight could be won. Now I know it cannot. I cannot fight with people who betray me and worse, who betray their own sense of right and wrong.