A general election will take place in less than two weeks. The ballot in Texas will include eleven proposals for amending the state’s constitution. For those of you who live in Texas, you should already know that the Constitution of the State of Texas is highly detailed and sets forth not only how the state’s government is to be constituted but how it is to operate as well. That includes telling the legislature what it can and cannot do. Because the founding document is highly detailed, in many cases before the legislature can change the statutes, the constitution must first be amended by the people. That is what is going to happen in a few days.

The following is what my research shows:

Proposition 2, 3 & 5 are all really part of the same issue. For some reason, simplicity or law they have been separated. First of all Texans have always been taxed in Texas on property both real and personal. Real property is land and anything permanently attached to the land. Everything else is personal property. It makes no difference whether it used for earning income, it is all personal property, either private or business. Generally speaking property is always taxed on an ad valorem basis. Ad valorem is a Latin term meaning "at the value of."

Even though it is now just a little house, it can be said that the land would be worth so much more if the house were torn down and parking garage built there. In other words making the taxable value of the land much higher based on a better use of the land. The owner of the house might be required to pay a much higher tax on his property even though was still being used only as a residence.

The first part of the amendment, Proposition 2, addresses that problem by limiting the state to allowing nothing more than the residential value of the land on which your house sits regardless of the highest or best use to which it could be put. The owner must live in the house and it must be a Texas Homestead to get the protection but right now, you don't even have that. So vote on Preposition 2 accordingly.

Currently, the methods used in establishing the ad valorem value of property are set by the local taxing authority. As a result there are many different methods followed. Those differences often produce vast differences in the amount of tax collected.

The second part, or Proposition 3, attempts to take care of the problem of varying methodologies by standardizing the method for all taxing entities. It will provide for the administration and enforcement of uniform standards so that all taxing authorities are on the same page in how they determine the value of your property and therefore how much tax you will owe.

Presently if property you own is in two or more taxing districts, such as mine, you can have three or more taxing authorities evaluating your property, determining the tax rate and collecting taxes from you. It is very confusing. In my case I am in a county which taxes me. I live in a municipal utility district which taxes me. I live in a hospital district which taxes me and two school districts which tax my property. All of them tax at different rates. They each set values on my property following different methods and reaching far different results and each has its own equalization board. It can be a nightmare.

Proposition 3 will, if passed, authorize the legislature to allow a single board of equalization for two or more adjoining appraisal entities that elect to provide for consolidated equalization. That would be something you could control through your voting rights in the taxing entity.

So, most of what has been written about those three propositions has either been mis-leading or outright false. The faulty interpretation lies, I think, in the lack of knowledge as to how the Texas Constitution works and what it says. I would not recommend voting against any of these three propositions. In fact I intend to vote for them in the interest of protecting my own property.

Have you ever heard someone say, "If we’re not careful, one day they’ll be taxing the air that we breathe?" Well, that day has come. The United States House of Representatives is considering HB 2454, a so-called Cap-And-Trade bill.

Just What Is Cap-And-Trade? Although being touted as an environmentally responsible system of controlling the amount of pollution released into the air by businesses, it is nothing but another federal government tax. The bill is over 900 pages long and, like the 800 billion dollar so-called stimulus bill passed earlier this year, no one in Congress knows what it really says. It is too long to read.

And maybe the biggest insult of all is that in order to get it passed, the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives has hired a speed reader to rush through reading the monstrous thing out loud to the members of the House. Such an act is not only insulting to us, it is ridiculous. How many times have you listened to a commercial on radio or television which closed with a high-speed reading of the "fine print" of some offer? Have you ever been able to understand any of what is being said? Neither have I.

And neither will the members of the House of Representatives. What I cannot understand is why any member of Congress to allow such a travesty to continue!

Cap-And-Trade is a scam. It is actually a tax on the air that we breathe! It is further an outgrowth of Al Gore’s now discredited "Global Warming" theory. There is a total absence of scientific evidence to prove that any of the climatological changes occurring in the earth is being caused by human activity. But if this bill is passed, Al Gore and his friends will make billions of dollars in profit from the buying and selling of "pollution credits."

These "air permits," as I like to call them, will be issued by the government according to what ever the government decides that each company or industry should pay for the privilege of using the air around their business locations. If a particular company doesn’t use or need all of the "permits" that company could then sell those extra "pollution credits" to some company which needs more.

Are you paying attention? Do you realize what I am saying? The government is going to first, tell each business enterprise how much carbon dioxide it can release into the air. Then the government is going to regulate how those allowances are used even to the point of reselling them from one company to another. The United States government will be creating an entirely new Black Market in which formerly free air will be sold and traded between businesses in the United States! Air!

You know what carbon dioxide is, don’t you? It’s what comes out of your lungs each time you breathe out. It’s what trees create. It’s a part of nature. The government doesn’t own the air. They don’t own the carbon dioxide in the air. They don’t, in fact, own the air that is in your lungs right now which you will expel into the air in the next few seconds. But they are going to regulate it. They are going to tell us how much we can ‘breathe out’ - they are going to buy and sell air!

Oh. I didn’t tell you, did I? The original "pollution credits" issued by the government? You have to pay for them. You have to buy them from the government. Can anybody say TAX? This is the tax that candidate Obama talked about when he told us that the cost of energy would go so high that some companies might be forced into bankruptcy because of it. The same tax which is going to cost each American family thousands of dollars in increased energy costs. That is one of the changes he promised and it looks as though it will pass Congress unless we all act to prevent its passage into law.

Understand that you won’t pay the tax. But you will pay for the electricity and the gasoline and the heating oil, the prices of which will, in Obama’s words, "skyrocket" once cap-and-trade is the law of the land.

The Republicans, to their credit, objected to the bill saying it must be read before voting on it. So, the Democrats decided to have the bill read at a super fast speed, a speed at which no one could possibly understand its provisions, just in order to say that the bill had been read. Then they’ll vote on it. Just like spitting in your face. They think we are that stupid. And if we do not rise up against this outrageous increase in our cost of living right now, perhaps they will be correct.

Contact your congressional representative as soon as possible. Call them on the telephone. Tell them you want them to reject HR 2454 and all other cap-and-trade schemes. You may not be able to get through on the telephone. If not, send an e-mail saying the same thing. If you have access to a fax machine, send them a fax. The form is of little importance. Be polite, but tell them that you are opposed to cap-and-trade schemes and other attempts to raise our taxes. I’m afraid that it is too late for regular letters through the mail. You must call, e-mail or Fax them now. Air is free. So is CO2. It’s a part of nature. Tell your congressman or congresswoman that you do not want them to put a tax on "the air that we breathe." Reject HR 2454.