UT Coach Tells USC Recruit ‘He’ll Be Pumping Gas’

This article in The State Newspaper may seem long and a little boring to most people, but the subject matter is sort of a big deal.

The POS “Point of Sale” policy that was voted on in 2006 has not only affected real estate sales, but our schools as well.

Here’s the rub; When we voted for the property tax relief provision, we were largely voting for a tax break on our primary homes. Great! The plan was to replace this with a larger tax on secondary homes, investment and commercial property. To help even more, we inched up the sales tax on goods sold. Sounds wonderful!

Here’s the problem. Taxes on investment property has absolutely skyrocketed. Commerce has all but halted in the commercial real estate industry and out of state investors are taking their money elsewhere. That’s only one side of the story.

The other problem is that even though the sales tax on goods was increased to compensate for the property tax reduction …No One is Buying Anything!

I have to admit I thought it was a great swap. Actually, almost all of us thought that it was a great idea for us to lower our four digit property tax as we “financed” it via purchasing a computer, tennis balls or whatever you can think of.

The logic runs far deeper than I can type about in this post. All I know is that something has to be done and soon.

Out of state investors are tearing up their sales contracts, rental properties are now “upside down” every month and some schools can’t even afford substitute teachers. The entire new system has created at plethora of problems.

The reason the law is going to be so difficult to alter is because taxes on primary homes has been reduced, which we are all in favor of. Since it’s obvious no one wants to change this part of the law, we’re in a precarious situation.

I don’t have the perfect answer, but something has to happen…quickly.

Schools and businesses were closed, TV shows were interrupted, local beat reporters were sent to the outskirts of the county and the city’s emergency response nerve center was all booted up. It rained.

I don’t know how much the local news meteorologists but they got avalanched tonight on social media sites like Facebook.

They certainly do their own research, but I have to think that they have to rely on national weather experts for their information. Huge amounts of money must be spent to prepare for a snowstorm and enormous amounts of work hours are lost as businesses and schools are cancelled. On the other hand grocery stores are packed. After everthing is accounted for, I’m sure it’s a huge net loss.

Sunday’s entire 11pm news broadcast (except for a few minutes of Gamecock sports) was prepared in anticipation for the big snowstorm. It didn’t happen. I feel sorry for the local “messengers” that report the news.

Columbia’s kids are dissapointed but this is a good lesson in ‘Safety First!’

As I was cruising around Facebook tonight, I noticed one of my buddies updated his blog with an interesting story on YouTube from CNN. Thanks Nathan!

The story speaks to how much money a trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000.) actually is. Some of their illustrations are actually quite amazing.

The mathematician sort of hits the nail on the head. The public hears the words million, billion and trillion and doesn’t really ‘feel’ the difference when a politician or economist spouts out ‘illions on TV. OH how they’re different. Pretty interesting…