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Remember, Prop. 13 is not a hard cap of property taxes. Levies are adjusted to current market value when property changes hands. And that happens all the time.

According to the latest info from the Board of Equalization [...] total property taxes collected in 2006-07 were $43.16 billion.

The oldest property tax stats I could find were for 1980-81, from caltax.org. That year, property tax revenue was $6.36 billion.

So since shortly after Prop. 13's adoption, property tax revenue increased by 579 percent. That is not a typo. It went up 579 percent.

During the same span, population went from 24 million to 38 milion -- an increase of 58 percent.

As for inflation, as of January 1981, the rough midpoint of the 1980-81 fiscal year, the Consumer Price Index -- which gauges inflation -- was 88. As of January 2007, it was 202.4. That is a 133 percent increase.

So property tax revenue has increased by more than triple the combined rate of inflation and population growth -- 579 percent versus 191 percent. [...]

[I]n 1980-1981, the total of all general and special fund revenue for the state of California was $22.1 billion. For 2006-07, it was $120.7 billion. [...] That is an increase of 555 percent.

You follow? PROPERTY TAX REVENUE WENT UP FASTER THAN OTHER SOURCES OF REVENUE!

Just last week, Denver Post and Reason.com columnist David Harsanyi asked, "Is The Abortion Debate Changing?" Based on a recent Gallup Poll, which found that a majority of Americans considered themselves "pro-life" for the first time since the question started being asked in 1995, Harsanyi suggested "that Americans are getting past the politics and into the morality of the issue" after decades of legalized abortion. And, he argued, the morality of abortion is a lot more complicated than most pro- or anti-abortion slogans let on.

Earlier today, in response to killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, Jacob Sullum asked why anti-abortion activists rushed to condemn the death of a man who by their own accounts was slaughtering innocents. Jacob understands why the activists might say that, but argues that it's really a tactical response: That they need to distance themselves from murderous extremists.

So what do Reason readers think? Will the killing of George Tiller push more Americans to identify as pro-life? Or will it push voters in the other direction? Does it matter that Tiller was known for doing late-term abortions, which are statistically rare but gruesome?

You go back to that Gallup Poll and one thing sticks out on the basic question of whether abortion should be legal under some circumstances: Since 1976, the percentage answering yes has been around 50 percent or higher (there are a few years where it dipped into the high 40s). That is, it's been pretty stable at or around a majority number.

And the percentage of people saying abortion should be illegal under all circumstances has rarely cracked the 20 percent figure (though it has again in recent years). Similarly, the percentage saying abortion should be legal under all circumstances, which peaked at 34 percent in the early 1990s, has always been a minority position (which currently stands at 22 percent and has been dropping lately).

I suspect that as abortion becomes rarer (as Reason's Ron Bailey pointed out in 2006, abortion has been getting rarer since the 1990s and also occurs earlier in pregnancies than before), it's quite possible that the either/or positions might change, but that their movement will have little effect on the middle position of abortion staying legal under some circumstances. Even those, such as Harsanyi, who is plainly troubled by the logic of abortion, generally concede that prohibition would cause more problems than it would fix ("I also believe a government ban on abortion would only criminalize the procedure and do little to mitigate the number of abortions.").

Back in 2003, on the occasion of Roe v. Wade's 30th anniversary, I argued that regarding abortion the country had reached a consensus that

has little to do with morality per se, much less with enforcing a single standard of morality. It's about a workable, pragmatic compromise that allows people to live their lives on their own terms and peaceably argue for their point of view....

This isn't to say that the debate about abortion is "over"-or that laws governing the specifics of abortion won't continue to change over time in ways that bother ardent pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike. But taking a longer view, it does seem as if the extremes of the abortion debate - extremes that included incendiary language (including calls for the murder of abortion providers) - have largely subsided in the wake of a widely accepted consensus. Part of this is surely due to the massive increases in reproduction technologies that allow women far more control over all aspects of their bodies (even as some of those technologies challenge conventional definitions of human life).

That isn't an outcome that is particularly satisfying to activists on either side of the issue or to people who want something approaching rational analysis in public policy. But it's still where we're at and it's unlikely the Tiller case will do much to move things one way or the other. The one thing that would likely change it would be if there was a massive shift toward later-term abortions, which seems unlikely based on long-term trendlines and technological innovations.

"I am Rahm Emanuel, so people say that a lot."

-- White House chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, quoted by the Reliable Source, to a woman who asked him if anyone ever tells him he looks like Rahm Emanuel.

[The] incredibly user-friendly smartphone has captured the North American public's imagination and their wallets into the realm of mobile multimedia customer interactions. It has pushed competitors to make their handsets more user-friendly and functional.

Blame too the suppliers who are developing new user-friendly applications that are enabling their workforces and consumers to more fully utilize the wireless channel. These complete a virtuous circle that will prompt even more wireless use.

Blame also the expansion of 3G and faster networks and more competitive rates. Wireless has become so feasible and cost-effective that more households are dropping their landlines and that some businesses are not buying or are doing away with bulky laptops. Why have multiple boxes, phones, and connections when one multichannel go-anywhere device does it all?

The faster speeds are prompting more firms and users to deploy and enable browsers to access consumer and work applications in real time via the web, observes Angie Hirata, worldwide director of marketing and business development, Maximizer Software. More Web sites are becoming optimized for mobile users while instead of mobile-only browsers more devices now have full browsers that can render desktop applications, adds Vidya Drego, Senior Analyst, Forrester. Full browsing she says makes searches faster and easier.

Martin Schneider, director of product marketing, SugarCRM, says that in turn mobile browsers have sufficiently matured to enable bandwidth-intensive consumer activities like e-mail and view YouTube on iPhones and FLASH animations and JPEG files as on fixed computers. That bodes well for business applications which tend to but not always smaller: the exceptions being graphics-heavy fields such as media/entertainment.

"These innovations open the floodgates to anything you can do on a fixed desktop or laptop computer you can do on a mobile browser," says Schneider.

He has also seen mobile applications grow from a very limited set of uses such as warehouse...

As I stated in the last update the Book,
WILL begin printing this month, June 2009 and I will have and begin signing, numbering and shipping the copies to those who ordered a signed/numbered copy THIS month, June 2009.
As for the process inwhich Barnes and Noble goes through in ordering books I cannot tell you at this point. I will tell you that Barnes and Noble has not once listed information correctly as is listed by Books In Print or Bowker Indentifiers.
I will receive the copies ordered directly from the printer when printing begins shortly and when that starts I will post it here for all to see as well as on the company web site at http://www.sinclairpublishingllc.com/ .
Once printing begins I will then post a link on the Company web site where the book can be ordered directly through Sinclair Publishing, Inc for anyone wanting to do so.
Again, let me make it clear, printing of the book WILL begin this month as will shipping of those signed/numbered copies ordered through this blog.

Copyright 2009 by Larry Sinclair/larrysinclair.org/larrysinclair-0926.blogspot.com/LarrySinclair0926.com and Larry SinclairBarackObama.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Roosevelt particularly liked Holmes' opinions in labor cases, for he expressed more sympathy for labor unions than most judges of his day. But TR was mostly interested in Holmes' views on the emerging American empire. Shortly after the Spanish-American War, President Theodore Roosevelt was concerned that the Supreme Court might insist that all constitutional guarantees extended to our newly-acquired empire-in popular parlance, that "the Constitution follows the flag." In 1902, TR sought and obtained a pledge from Holmes that he would not apply this standard. Holmes then lied to the press about his secret meeting with the President. He dutifully voted with the majority in the so-called Insular Cases, which held, for example that the right to a jury trial did not extend to Filipinos or Hawaiian....

For most of his career, Holmes really didn't believe that there were any constitutional limits at all to government power. He advocated the complete separation of law and morality, writing, "I often doubt whether it would not be a gain if every word of moral significance could be banished from the law altogether," he wrote, "and other words adopted which should convey legal ideas uncolored by anything outside the law." He continued, "Manifestly... nothing but confusion of thought can result from assuming that the rights of man in a moral sense are equally rights in the sense of the Constitution and the law." Essentially, he thought that the majority had the power to impose its will on the minority, for good or ill. In 1873 he wrote that "It is no sufficient condemnation of legislation that it favors one class at the expense of another, for much or all legislation does that.... Legislation is necessarily a means by which a body, having the power, puts burdens which are disagreeable to them on the shoulders of somebody else." Holmes himself confessed in 1919 that he had come "devilish near to believing that ‘might makes right.'"