Psst! Please don't let this get out to the liberals in Sacramento...........
Wasn't it just last year when we were all fearful of government drones hovering over our back yard? It seems to me we were fearful of being caught playing a little "slap and tickle" with the wife or girl friend out on the chaise lounge? Or being caught sunbathing nude next to the pool? Or mowing the lawn in that holy sweatshirt that you told your wife you had thrown away?
Well folks, it looks far worse than those petty fears. I was just sitting here at the table this morning, enjoying a leisurely read of the Sunday paper, when I came across a story that had me spewing coffee all over the front page.
It seems we indeed do have an emerging liberal contingent up in Coconino County, up around Flagstaff, who are monstrously hungry for more of your property tax dollar.....so much so that they are considering implementing the use of drones to fly up and down the county and doing aerial imaging of county properties, residential and commercial.
The reason? More property tax moolah! They want to see if you've put in a pool, thus raising the value of your property, something an occasional appraisal will not reveal. They want to see if you've erected a gazebo or a garden shed, or a children's playground, or a grove of fruit-bearing trees, and if you have, they want to assess you higher property taxes.
You see, government knows that citizen taxpayers will go to any lengths to keep from paying higher taxes (even liberals; they just want the OTHER guy to pay more) so the bureaucrats desperately need a means to bust you! And what better way to do that than keeping you honest by sending drones to hover your house!
I can see where these government drones may be the wave of the future. If these "pioneering" county bureaucrats succeed in hiking the tax bounty on your properties I can see the IRS getting into the act. The revenuers can fly over your driveway, check out the kind of ride you have and, if it's a Cadillac or a BMW or a Lexus they might want to run an audit to see if you're reporting all your income. Or, better yet, outfit that drone with thermal imaging capability to see how many big screen televisions and other high tech gear you own. The possibilities are endless!
So don't sweat the "slap and tickle", don't fret about the feds seeing your tan lines....they've got bigger things in mind!
"Look, up in the sky! It's a bird, it's a plane!...no it's "Superfed Drone!"
6 comments:
Where I grew up in Kalifornia, Sonoma County, the telephone company would turn people in for improvements that were not reported to the proper pinheads. This was in the 70's when they used small planes to check the phone lines in rural parts of the county.
Yes, "1984" and then some. We had an opportunity to make drones illegal in USA and no one cared. It will be apathy that will kill us off.
Wow, Craig! That's scary! Was it Ma Bell?
Indeed, Jerry. Apathy is doing us in these days in all manner of things.
I was a Kali General Contractor. When I closed up a couple years back, satellite imaging and low flyover photography was already being used at several county and city building departments. They have the same programs we can now download for free, similar to Google Earth, that have measurement tools to check for property setbacks etc. These tools are also employed by the various state and local tax agencies to see if any new structures exist on any property. If they do and no permit was purchased prior to construction your entire home can be condemned at the most or very draconian penalties can be accessed at the least.
Saturday I passed by the "Brookstone" store in our local mall. They had hanging on a wall a "Quadcopter" with front and rear dvd cameras that broadcast to a receiver. The salesman said it flies up to a hundred and fifty feet in the air and he wasn't sure how far out it could go. It sold for just over $400. I guess we can all be spys now. I asked what the penalties would be for shooting one down if your neighbor flew one over your house. He thought I was kidding...Like Jerry said, "we had the opportunity to make them illegal" but nobody has the time to be bother with such trivial trash as that
Holy crap, Ken! I should have known Kalifornia would be trail blazing in this area! My sympathies.
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