Reversal of fortunes

Sinking home values call for property tax reassessments

By Eva Rosenberg, MarketWatch
March 20, 2008

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- With home prices dropping dramatically in the past year, are you paying too much property tax?
According to Standard and Poor's Case-Shiller index, home prices have dropped an average of 14% since March 2007. And perhaps as much as 20% since the peak values in June 2006. When was the last time your home was assessed?
Sue, a reader in New York, brought up the issue by asking: "Now that home prices are falling shouldn't we all be getting our homes reassessed so that we pay less property tax?"

You bet it's time. Since it doesn't look as if there will be an immediate let-up in the price decline, this is a good time to take steps to determine the current value of your real estate, whether it's home or investment property.
There is no single procedure to outline. Property valuations are handled differently in each state. Sometimes even in each county or municipality.
New York State's Office of Real Property Services, for instance, reports that communities in New York State have two different ways of valuing real estate: 100% of current market value or a percentage of market value.
The assessed values are spelled out on the tentative assessment roll, which is released on May 1 of each year in most communities. You have the opportunity to look up your property. If you decide the value is no longer correct, you can follow the instructions in the ORPS pamphlet entitled "What to Do If You Disagree with Your Assessment." Check the pamphlet.
California's unique situation
California has a unique situation. On June 6, 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, tying property taxes to purchase price instead of current market value. It was a revolutionary concept, spearheaded by Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, two private individuals who'd had enough of soaring property taxes as the market prices rose along with California's fortunes.
Now, 30 years later, homeowners who bought their homes at the height of the market are undoubtedly paying property taxes on phantom home values. Are they locked into the purchase valuations?
No. According to Christina Sciupac, the Property Owners Advocate for Los Angeles County, there is a special provision, called Proposition 8. It allows homeowners to file a request for a temporary decline in value after a market crash, earthquake, disaster or any other valid reason.
You can file the application between July and November. You will find the new application for 2008/2009 on the assessor's site this summer. Visit the site.
Sciupac cautions applicants that this is not a permanent reduction in your property taxes. Your property's market value will be reviewed each year. If there's an increase in value, your property taxes will increase.
For some folks, especially those homeowners who got the benefit of the Proposition 8 reduction after the Northridge earthquake or other earthquakes, it has seemed as if their property taxes were rising outrageously -- and quickly -- over the last few years. One woman wrote to AARP The Magazine recently, saying she wished she had never asked for the reduction. It caused her to lose the protection of Proposition 13.
Not so, says Sciupac. The valuation only rises until it reaches the original, purchase valuation. Then it locks back in. After a sharp cut in taxes, the annual increases can feel like painful hits. So, even in California, it's worth getting your property's value downgraded.
What do you do, in general?
First, find your state or locality's assessor's Web site to get specific instructions. Look for the application or instructions for the procedure to challenge your assessment. If you can't find the site easily on your own, drop by Assessor.com to find a link to your state assessor's Web site. See the site.
Just in case you're expecting an argument, get some objective proof that your home declined in value. If you've recently refinanced, your lender insisted on an appraisal. That would help. Some homeowners with long-term equity lines have just gotten letters from their lenders cutting the amount of the equity line. One homeowner in Dana Point, Calif., was just notified by Washington Mutual that his home equity line was cut from $225,000 to $72,500.
If you have know a local real estate agent, you can ask for a printout of comparable home sales for you.
In a market like this, you probably won't have to fight much. Your assessor already knows the values have declined. The question is, will you agree with the amount of the decline proposed by your assessor.?
If you don't, there is always an appeals process. The whole process of revaluation can take months -- or years, depending on the volume of applications. In the meantime, property tax payments are coming due. What should you do? Pay the taxes, then challenge.
When you file your request for revaluation, ask the assessor to look back for as many years as you think the market has been declining in your area. And file a claim for refund, or overpayment, for the excess property taxes you paid in the past.
The Los Angeles County application, for example, includes a box to check asking the Los Angeles County Assessor's office to treat it as a claim for refund as well. Perhaps your assessor's office has similar foresight. And, like Los Angeles, it may also have an in-house advocate or ombudsman to help you.

3 candidates' passport files breached

What is the reason and who is behind this stunt. We again deserve a full and truthful investigation of this matter, something that is hard to come by lately in the US.

Thomas


BY DESMOND BUTLER and ANNE FLAHERTY Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - The passport files of the three presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain — have been breached, the State Department said Friday.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the breaches of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the privacy violation regarding Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.

McCormack said the individual who accessed Obama's files also reviewed McCain's file earlier this year. This contract employee has been reprimanded, but not fired. The individual no longer has access to passport records, he said.

"We are reviewing our options with respect to that person and his employment status," McCormack said.

In Clinton's case, an individual last summer accessed her file as part of a training session involving another State Department worker. McCormack said the one-time violation was immediately recognized and the person was admonished.

The incidents raise the question of whether the information was accessed for political purposes.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with Obama and Clinton on Friday and expressed her regrets. She planned to speak with McCain as well. State Department officials headed to Capitol Hill to brief the staffs of all three candidates.

"The secretary has made it clear . . . to them that this is top priority," McCormack said. "There's nothing else that's more important than make sure go through and do this investigation."

The State Department said the Justice Department would be monitoring the probe in case it needs to get involved. The Justice Department declined to comment on its role.

McCormack declined to name the companies that employed the contractors, despite demands by a senior House Democrat that such information is in the public interest.

"At this point, we just started an investigation," he said. "We want to err on the side of caution."

Sen. McCain, who was in Paris on Friday, said any breach of passport privacy deserves an apology and a full investigation.

"The United States of America values everyone's privacy and corrective action should be taken," McCain said.

It is not clear whether the employees saw anything other than the basic personal data such as name, citizenship, age, Social Security number and place of birth, which is required when a person fills out a passport application.

Aside from the file, the information could allow critics to dig deeper into the candidates' private lives. While the file includes date and place of birth, address at time of application and the countries the person has traveled to, the most important detail would be their Social Security number, which can be used to pull credit reports and other personal information.

The violations were detected because electronic files of high-profile people are flagged.

New Crisis, Old Isms

By David Sirota

The Federal Reserve Bank’s decision last week to address the housing crisis by extending $200 billion of taxpayer-financed credit to Wall Street banks was met with a stunned reaction typical of surprising events. But really, the move was the expression of longstanding isms that routinely package corruption as sound public policy.

Some background: During the housing boom, banks doled out home loans to financially strapped borrowers, often on predatory terms. On the creditor side, these same banks packaged many of the loans as complex securities and sold them off to unwitting investors, generating a handsome profit on the paper transactions. At the same time, Wall Street used campaign contributions to coerce Congress into blocking anti-predatory-lending bills and repealing a landmark law regulating how banks could buy and sell securities.

Predictably, many borrowers are now defaulting on their loans, meaning losses for financial institutions that hold mortgages and mortgage-backed securities. The Fed responded with what author Naomi Klein calls disaster capitalism—the age-old practice of using a crisis to enrich corporate interests. In this case, the Fed is using the housing emergency to justify giving taxpayer cash to Wall Street in exchange for its worthless mortgages.

“What the Fed really did was lend money to banks and accept the counterfeit currency as collateral, treating it just as though it were real money,” says Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

But this is not only disaster capitalism, it is also Big Boy Bailout-ism—the kind we’ve become accustomed to since the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. It is an ideology that rewards wealthy political donors for irresponsible behavior and ignores the real victims.

If you are a banking executive whose risky loans go bad, your industry’s campaign donations get you Big Boy Bailout-ism that makes taxpayers “take the bad loans off the banks’ books,” as one financial analyst gushed this week. If you are a regular Joe who can’t pay your home loan, you get foreclosed on.

The Fed’s scheme also embraces Feed-the-Beast-ism—an ideology that prescribes pumping taxpayer money into a crisis, rather than demanding reforms.

Confronting an energy and climate emergency, Republicans’ answer was not massive alternative energy investments, but a 2005 energy bill giving tax breaks to the carbon-belching fossil fuel companies that finance the GOP. In the face of a health care catastrophe, the Bush administration’s 2003 Medicare bill didn’t crack down on pharmaceutical industry profiteering, but instead created a system that effectively subsidizes drug industry campaign donors. The list of examples goes on, and now includes the housing crisis.

The Fed’s action says the solution to the credit crunch is not to re-regulate the banking industry or force it to clean house, but to loan Wall Street your hard-earned taxpayer money, allowing the same destructive system to remain and permitting the same vultures to stay in their jobs—and, of course, to keep writing big campaign checks.

But worst of all is the Trickle Down-ism. For three decades, our government has said economic challenges can be solved with tax cuts for the wealthy—the same people who, not coincidentally, underwrite political campaigns. Trickle Down-ism claims that the wealthy will spend the tax cuts and the benefits will “trickle down” to us commoners.

It’s the same nonsense with housing today. The root of the financial crisis is mortgage defaults—brought on, in part, by Trickle Down-ism’s original failure to raise wages. Yet, rather than help borrowers pay or restructure their mortgages, the government is covering the banks’ losses, claiming that aid will eventually “trickle down” and benefit the rest of us.

During the Great Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt said, “We need not fear any isms if our democracy is achieving the ends for which it was established.” It’s the “if” part that has become the problem.

David Sirota is a bestselling author whose newest book, “The Uprising,” will be released in June of 2008. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network—both nonpartisan organizations.

How will you be affected by the latest FDA mix-up?

The FDA recommends consumers don't go outside of the US to buy less expensive prescriptions but............ Come on FDA, just do your job.


Even I've grown tired of hearing myself beat on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Believe me, I'd like to lay off these guys, but they keep making the gaffes that make me nuts. And I feel compelled to pass this info on to you because everyone should know that the government agency that's allegedly responsible for protecting is often, well … out to lunch.

And this time, it's a big screw up.

The good news is that FDA officials were in China to look into the safety of a Chinese- made drug that's found in heparin, a blood thinner made by Baxter International, that's been linked to four deaths due to allergic reactions. The bad news? They actually evaluated the wrong factory.

The next time you reach for your prescription bottle, remember that it's been approved by the Keystone Kops.

Instead of inspecting the suspect manufacturer, the FDA confused it with another company in the agency's database that has a similar name. Worse still, even though they THOUGHT they had the suspect company, the company that they were inspecting had a history of positive inspections … SO THEY DIDN'T RE-INSPECT IT. You can't make this stuff up, unfortunately.

After discovering the error a month after the fact, the FDA immediately dispatched investigators to the suspect company.

Keeping in mind that there are over 2,000 characters in written Chinese and who knows how many dialects of that language, I'm inclined to say that it was an honest mistake for Western bureaucrats to get a little mixed up with the name of a Chinese company. Given all the recent news stories about shoddy and potentially deadly products from China that have been finding their way into America, it's hard to believe that the FDA wouldn't check and triple check the DRUGS coming from the same place—ESPECIALLY when the ingredient in question could possibly be linked to DEATHS.

In my opinion, the U.S. government should have immediately banned ALL Chinese imports the second the first tube of poisoned toothpaste was discovered. But of course, that would cost big business too much money. And you know that Big Pharma has repeatedly assured their friends in the FDA that the Chinese companies who supply many ingredients to for Big Pharma's vastly lucrative drug brands (at cut-rate prices) are surely on the up-and-up.

So of course the FDA had no need or desire to do the most logical thing: RE-INSPECT EVERY SINGLE CHINESE DRUG PLANT THAT EXPORTS INGREDIENTS TO THE US. And to halt the sale of drugs containing those ingredients until, in the case of heparin, the source of the allergic reactions that caused the deaths could be determined.

Am I naïve to think that the government agency charged with the inspection of drugs sold in the U.S. should do their job? To be fair, the FDA did tell physicians across the country to immediately cease the use of the Baxter's brand of heparin, which has had as many as 350 reported cases of side effects in just 2008 (there were 100 reported cases last year). And Baxter has recalled nine lots of the injectable drug and stopped production while the source of the allergic reactions is investigated.

But like so much with the FDA and Big Pharma, the measures are just temporary and don't go far enough. I write so many negative things about the FDA and Big Pharma that you may get the impression that I think they're out to harm people. I know that's not the case. And I'm not at all surprised that both the FDA and Baxter International have done the right thing and brought an immediate halt to the distribution and manufacture of heparin while these lethal side effects are investigated. What bothers me is that, because of money, they won't take the logical next step which – to my mind – is to stop the use of Chinese drug imports as ingredients in drugs sold in the U.S.

I don't believe the Chinese can be trusted to follow safety regulations that are up to U.S. standards. Plain and simple. This country has exhibited a complete disregard for the safety of the drugs, food, and goods distributed within their own country – why should we expect them to have a higher standard for good meant for export?

The global economy is likely to be a dangerous economy. We need to hope and pray that our government is on its toes. If the FDA is going to allow the import of drugs from China, they need to watch both the Chinese and the U.S. drug manufacturers very, very closely. There's a great deal of money at stake, but patients within the American health care systems shouldn't become victims of a growing economy.

Unfortunately, this is the FDA we're talking about. I know that they don't always make the right decision. Now I'll always be wondering if they're even in the right place at the right time.

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

Inspector arrested in NYC crane collapse

Here we go again!!! The infrastructure in the USA is decaying and this type of action is inexcusable. The truth of the matter is that this employee has supervisors who are complicit to this horrible tragedy. Money's are being diverted to special political projects while America crumbles. Corruption and fraud are a way of life from the top to the bottom in government now days.

Thomas, Chief Editor


By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer
Fri Mar 21,

Inspectors began rechecking dozens of construction cranes after one of their colleagues was accused of lying about examining a crane that collapsed 11 days later, killing seven people.

Edward Marquette, 46, was arrested on charges of falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing, buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster said Thursday.

The accident occurred Saturday, when a 20-story crane broke away from an apartment tower under construction in a dense midtown Manhattan neighborhood. The crane toppled over, killing six construction workers and a visitor in town for St. Patrick's Day.

A complaint about the crane was logged March 4 to a city hot line, officials said, and Marquette said he inspected it. It was later determined he had not.

"We will not tolerate this kind of behavior at the Department of Buildings," Lancaster said at a news conference Thursday. "I do not and will not tolerate any misconduct in my department."

She said it is very unlikely that a March 4 inspection would have prevented the accident because parts of the crane that failed 11 days later were not on site then. The crane was inspected the day before the collapse, she said.

In addition to suspending Marquette, Lancaster ordered an immediate inspection of all cranes he had checked over the last six months. The Department of Buildings said Marquette conducted 423 inspections at 76 constructions sites, mostly in Manhattan, during that period.

Marquette, who earns $52,283 a year as an inspector in the department's division of cranes and derricks, was arrested Wednesday night, said Barbara Thompson, spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney.

He said nothing during his arraignment Thursday in state Supreme Court and was released without bail. If convicted, he faces up to four years in prison. His lawyer, Kate Moguletscu, had no comment.

The crane collapse created a blocklong swath of destruction not far the United Nations, pulverizing a four-story brownstone and damaging at least seven other buildings.

The gigantic piece of machinery fell over when a 6-ton steel collar used to secure the crane to the building came loose, plunging into another collar that acted as an anchor. Without that support, the spindly structure tumbled with terrifying force.

Neighborhood residents had complained for weeks that the crane didn't appear safe. Bruce Silberblatt, a retired contractor who called in the March 4 complaint, said he was stunned by the arrest.

"My first reaction was astonishment. My second reaction is anger that a person would have the gall to do this," said Silberblatt, who is also vice president of the Turtle Bay Neighborhood Association.

City officials would not discuss why Marquette failed to do the inspection.

Investigators first interviewed him Sunday and got a copy of his route sheet. He told them that he had conducted the March 4 inspection and that it revealed no problems with the crane.

Marquette was also listed in city records as having responded to a Jan. 22 complaint by another caller who complained about the safety of workers assembling the crane. Marquette said in his report, filed two days later, that he examined the crane and found no violation.

Other safety complaints were called in by neighbors Jan. 10 and Feb. 11, according to city records.

The contractor, Reliance Construction Group owner Stephen Kaplan, declined to comment on the arrest and referred inquiries to a company spokesman, who did not immediately return a phone message.

A publicist for the East 51st Development Company, which owns the site, said the developers had no comment.

Residents said they weren't surprised by the arrest.

"It makes me very suspicious of the whole situation. I'd like to feel that it's safe to live in this neighborhood with all the construction going on," Sandra Graham said. "If he's been arrested, I think he should be made an example of."

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