I oppose the changes to law HR 347 brings. I am a member of DU in good standing,

[Cleita]

15. That's how taking away people's rights are done,

incrementally in tiny seemingly innocuous ways with huge repercussions afterwards. The Nazis were experts at criminalizing stuff that wasn't criminal without the Germans knowing it was going on until it was too late.

Proposition 13 in California, the Jarvis Amendment was just one such fix, not about criminality, but about our social obligations. It was sold as lowering property taxes so that old people wouldn't lose their homes to taxes rising because of higher real estate appraisals. It had support from both sides of the aisle. The effect was to eventually end our free university education system that we had, and to end our infrastructure of social programs that threw out in the street all the marginal and dysfunctional people who were taken care of by the taxes starting the institutionalized homelessness we see now. Property prices went through the roof bringing in foreign investors basically pricing many families out of ever owning their own homes.

It too began the mess we see today with the mortgage crisis, student loan slavery and the inability of people without health insurance to get needed health care. One little amendment led to this mess that is California and the nation at large today.