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To: LLCF who wrote (50451)	5/3/2006 12:26:57 AM
From: shades	Respond to of 116555

It won't be long before you'll be snarfing up commercial space 50% under replacement cost again and STILL losing money on it if you can't beat the crap out of the local tax authorities and get your taxes down. This was one of my biggest problems in towns where I didn't have friends. You know - the kind you go fishing with, meet at church, have a beer with, go play golf with, meet at the strip club when thier wife is nagging them too much - hehe etc etc In south ga - the only LARGE property investors that I saw make it in many towns long term had a wife or relative that was in the city council or tax office - the poor people were so busy working 9 to 5 and getting drunk afterwards they all knew about the corruption - but could NEVER get enough rednecks or blacks together to really make a difference. It was very unlikely you were a millionaire unless you had the right connections. Progress was so SLOW in those places. Every so often we would have a rich non-local millionaire think he was gonna come into town and throw some weight around - but rarely did the locals allow that. I remember the son of saft battery man (a frenchman - norbert I think his name was) came to town and although they gave him all kinds of concessions on his battery business - when he started trying to make some "other" investments in the area - things would get delayed at the court house or the real estate attorneys wouldn't have time to return calls - kenny rogers the country singer - came to town and tried the same stunt and learned the same lesson. He had married one of the local girls and I guess thought he would come to her hometown and throw some weight around. Walt Disney found the same thing out 50 years earlier when he tried to buy land there - the local kings only gonna share so much power. Some of the local newspapers started making a stink on all the corruption in so many areas - well some conglomerate came in and bought them all and there were lots of staff changes - hehe. It seemed to me the ripping articles on corruption seemed to tone down after that. You know what broke some of that power hold? Not mega millionaires from france or famous gambling country stars - as the mexicans started coming in - hordes and hordes of mexicans - the "entrenched" power class began moving farther and farther north to get away from them - strength in numbers! The white cops started becoming mexican cops and over time it they got other positions of power too. I see it happening in west palm the last time I was there.