Land Surveyor Weblog, Knoxville TN

“Tennessee is in the bottom half of a new study that measures the tax burden businesses would face in each of the 50 states.”

“Tennessee is 29th in both categories, which means it has a heavier tax burden than most of the country.“

I just created a Google Plus page for Professional Land Systems and I can be found on Linkin. Always looking for new business contacts. Give me a shout on one of these networks.

I’ve spent months (because I’ve been inconsistent, it’s a lot of work) updating my website. It just went live today. I received plenty of compliments on the old one, but I think this represents an improvement. I hope everyone likes it. I could not count the hours that I’ve put in. Quite a few just building the flash presentation, partly because I taught myself how to do it as I went. We have plenty of resources on the site for people who want to learn about land boundaries and due diligence. I built the old site in 2010 and just thought it was time for an upgrade to keep things fresh.

The National Association of Realtors has been caught manipulating housing data to over-represent optimistic housing numbers. Despite wishful recovery talk, housing and the economy remains stagnant. Some predict unemployment will soon surge again above 9 percent. “The latest weekly Mortgage Brokers Association… [statistics] showed that refi applications were down 4.8% W/W, while purchases slid 2.9%, after collapsing 8.4% in the past week.” Bear in mind that this is happening while mortgage rates are at record lows, which is supposed to be enticing buyers. Low rates are failing to provide the desired (and predicted) effect.

It’s a sad state of affairs. You can help improve my economy by getting your property surveyed. But feed your family first.

Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Sales of new U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in December for the first time in four months, capping the slowest year on record for builders.

Purchases of single-family properties decreased 2.2 percent to a 307,000 annual pace, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists called for a rate of 321,000 home sales. Last year marked the worst year for the industry in records going back to 1963.

Continue to Bloomberg

They keep telling us that things are getting better, but my reality reflects otherwise.

I want to know where to get one of these bumper stickers.

Make Welfare as hard to get as a Building Permit

Everyone who has been through the process can identify. H/T Legal Insurrection

Many times, when one does a “cut and paste” between various documents there are hidden line breaks which make the result look terrible. You can fix the whole thing manually, or you can use this tool to remove them. I have used it after OCR scanning as well. The tool has proved to be very handy to me on many occasions. A real time saver. Thanks so much to the creator.

“We only want to help you.” Public servants or totalitarian masters? You decide. First up, we have a family harassed by the government over their small vegetable garden.

Nanny-State Madness: Woman Faces Jail Over Veggie Garden | Breaking news and opinion on The Blaze.

Next, we have Cedar Falls government demanding universal keys and unlimited access to an entire community’s private property at their discretion. It is “necessary” they are told, for the “public good.”

City Government demands all keys to properties belonging to Cedar Falls residents.

Traditionally, property ownership was said to include a “bundle of rights. That was then. This is now. Once the constitution is off the table, so are your rights.

Update:

Additional coverage on VeggieGate from The New American.

Please consider that trees are a renewable resource. When a tree is cut, more trees are planted. Disposition of private property is fundamental to all rights. ~30 percent of U.S. Land is owned by the federal government, with more falling every year. However, even the USE of that land which is still privately owned is heavily restricted in many ways. There is a current ongoing war against capitalism and private ownership. Refusing to print an email means giving in to anti-business and anti-human sentiment. Be part of the solution. Print this email, help create a job. After all, it’s your printer, your paper, your electricity, your ink, your computer… and, as a reasoning human being, you are guided by your own intelligence. — Ned D. Ferguson, Professional Surveyor

“There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right to personal freedom” — Thomas Jefferson

I do care about responsible use of the environment. However, the environment was created to serve man, not man to serve the environment. Every breath taken, every morsel eaten, every scrap used for my benefit is no affront.

UPDATE 2/22/2012: It looks like I am not the only one who is tired of being chastised by the new enviro-religionists.

Please Print That Email

No one has incentive to protect and preserve property like private owners, as these photos attest. Meanwhile, those dependent on government are… disappointed.