Keep the CNMI free forever

An article in the latest issue of Money magazine reveals something very special about the CNMI: We currently have no property taxes. While the article itself did not specifically highlight our lack of property taxes, it did dramatically illustrate the harmful effects of property taxes upon the average American family in the states.

In 1992, for example, Ruben and Beverly Rivera bought a small three bedroom, two-bathroom house in Glen Rock, New Jersey. They paid $180,000 for it. After five years of ownership, the confiscatory hand of big government reappraised the home and valued it at $288,300. The government then tried to force the Rivera family to cough up $7,554 in property taxes–a 60 percent rise over their previous tax bill, vastly outpacing the low rate of inflation.

Although the Rivera family, through a protracted and frustrating legal process, was eventually able to contest the assessment and cut their property tax bill down to $5,808, I still could not help thinking: “This whole sordid mess is one atrocious moral outrage!”

Five, six or seven thousand dollars to the government, for the expressed privilege of owning your own home? Why doesn’t the government just impose a special tax on the ownership of expensive, appreciating jewelry?

This is yet another blatant, glaring and alarming example of the government’s ceaseless, merciless attack upon liberty and the rights of private property.

Can you imagine the CNMI–or for that matter, the federal–government forcing property taxes upon our citizens? Such a policy would not only defy our deeply ingrained cultural traditions, it would also destroy the CNMI as a special, free political entity.

The danger is manifestly clear. The threat to liberty is very much alive, insidiously festering against the backdrop of wasteful state spending amid diminishing–no, collapsing–government revenues. The PSS Teachers Union, for instance, has already called for the imposition of a sales tax in the name of ineffective public education. Representative Rosiky Camacho, a former state educator, has also recklessly called for an additional tax upon our vulnerable garment industry? Could property taxes really be too far behind?

Let us not forget: The CNMI government has already moved to loot estates or private inheritances. Larry Hillblom’s estate was the immediate target of CNMI government looting; the real victim will be every succeeding generation that wishes to impart their assets to their designated heirs.

The battle for individual liberty is ongoing and eternal. In prior days, feudalism was the system designated to rob peasants of their productive efforts upon the land. Today, feudalism is annihilated. But property taxes still exist. Liberty is still at risk. The arbitrary tributes are still with us, only the aristocratic land barons have just been replaced by the centralized, bureaucratic collectivist state. Yesterday: King and vassal-subject. Today: Big Government and docile, obedient citizen.

Don’t let it happen here. Keep the Northern Marianas free forever.