Christian Academy schools city council on buying real estate

Column as I see ’em …
Congratulations go to the folks from the Christian Academy of Lawrenceburg on their purchase of the old Early Childhood Center.
That property continuing to be used for educational purposes is ideal.
And what a bargain! The academy made the only bid on the property and will pay just $75,100 for a 45,500 square foot building and nearly 7.5 acres of land in downtown Lawrenceburg.
By comparison, Mayor Edwinna Baker and the Lawrenceburg City Council spent around $100,000 about a year ago to purchase an empty lot 1-acre lot just a short walk up the street, which is now the Lawrenceburg Green.
Let’s go through that again. The academy buys a 45,500 square-foot building on a 7.5-acre lot complete with a playground, cafeteria, gymnasium and athletic field for 75 grand. The city buys a 1-acre empty lot and forks over 100 grand.
Hmm.
Of course the academy folks had an actual real estate expert doing their bidding, and were able to score a great deal — less than half the appraised value — and used their own, private money.
The city, on the other hand, never bothered to even have the property appraised and used your money.
Being that the academy will have plenty of extra room in its new facility, maybe it could set aside a classroom and invite the mayor and city council to attend a class in Real Estate Buying 101.

Speaking of forks … It’s amazing how quickly political animals will eat one of their own when a member of the herd dares to jump over his or her party’s barbed-wire fence.
Following his vote last week to uphold portions Obama Care as constitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts was excoriated by Republicans who thought they had an ace up their sleeves, or at least one in the hole.
They didn’t, and have spent the past week doing everything but burning him in effigy in front of the Supreme Court steps.
The blue-blood Republican establishment has no tolerance for a lot of things, but to it going rogue is tantamount to treason.
Don’t believe me? Ask Sarah Palin.
It’s amazing, too, how political cannibalism is by no means confined to our heroes and villains in Washington, DC.
A good local example played itself out over the past year and concluded last Friday morning when Howard Phillips was not reappointed to the Anderson County Board of Elections.
Like Roberts, Phillips strayed from the reservation by voting his conscience — some would say his morals — and approved the closure of some rural voting precincts due to handicap compliance issues.
Statutorily appointed by the local Democrat committee (Republicans get one, too), Phillips served on the board of elections for eight years, and almost certainly would have served another four had he been reappointed.
But voting to close those precincts was akin to Roberts blessing the bulk of Obama Care, which meant Phillips simply had to go.
That decision would be understandable had Phillips openly opposed the Democrat party, campaigned for a Republican or committed some other crime against Democrats.
But he didn’t. The man was appointed to serve the county and make decisions to the best of his ability.
His perceived crime? Coming down on the side that figured being disabled is difficult enough without having to struggle getting in and out of a voting precinct — if the person could get in at all.
That hardly rises to the level of treason, unless the party’s hierarchy secretly harbors some anti-handicap bias that I’m not aware of.
Which it doesn’t. Right?

Speaking of Obama Care, leave it to the Republicans to get the meaning of the Supreme Court decision flat-out wrong.
The day after it was announced, the talking heads were manically depressed but thankful that Obama Care was declared a tax instead of being found constitutional under the Commerce Clause.
In essence, the court’s majority concluded that Congress has the power to tax, that Obama Care is a tax, and therefore it’s fine.
That’s a bit frightening, don’t you think? That precedent expands Congress’ taxing power many times over, leaving us wide open for all sorts of congressional hi-jinx.
It’s no secret that many politicians and their supporters would love to take away or at least severely restrict gun ownership.
What’s to prevent them, then, from forgoing another 2nd Amendment fight in court and simply order an annual tax on all firearms? It certainly could be viewed as political suicide, but nothing beyond that would prevent such a move.
Consider, too, that along with mandating a tax, doing so would require that gun owners register their firearms with the IRS, creating the master list of firearms anti-gun zealots so desperately crave, but legislatively have not been able to achieve.