(cartoon by gapingvoid.com)
Q. Is your wife’s mother still living?
A. Yes.
Q. Does she live with you?
A. Sometimes.
Q. How much of the time does she live with you?
A. What would you say? 30 percent, 50 percent. She also rents a home in Charleston and goes between the two.
… That took place July 23, 2008. Maybe a lot’s changed in a year. Who’s to say. But if that was true on that date, then I’m not quite sure how living somewhere 30 to 50 percent of the time qualifies as primary residence. But what do I know? I just a universally hated, talentless, hack blogger who gets no readers to her Web site and writes all of her own comments while abusing the First Amendment. I wouldn’t trust me as far as I could throw me. And with your bad knee, Ed, you shouldn’t be throwing anybody.
(Bonus if you can ID that movie quote!
)
Now, here’s the law from West Virginia’s state code:
§11-6B-3. Twenty thousand dollar homestead exemption allowed.
(a) General. — An exemption from ad valorem property taxes shall be allowed for the first twenty thousand dollars of assessed value of a homestead that is used and occupied by the owner thereof exclusively for residential purposes, when such owner is sixty-five years of age or older or is certified as being permanently and totally disabled provided the owner has been or will be a resident of the state of West Virginia for the two consecutive calendar years preceding the tax year to which the homestead exemption relates: Provided, That an owner who receives a similar exemption for a homestead in another state is ineligible for the exemption provided by this section. The owner’s application for exemption shall be accompanied by a sworn affidavit stating that such owner is not receiving a similar exemption in another state: Provided, however, That when a resident of West Virginia establishes residency in another state or country and subsequently returns and reestablishes residency in West Virginia within a period of five years, such resident may be allowed a homestead exemption without satisfying the requirement of two years consecutive residency if such person was a resident of this state for two calendar years out of the ten calendar years immediately preceding the tax year for which the homestead exemption is sought. Proof of residency includes, but is not limited to, the owner’s voter’s registration card issued in this state or a motor vehicle registration card issued in this state. Additionally, when a person is a resident of this state at the time such person enters upon active duty in the military service of this country and throughout such service maintains this state as his or her state of residence, and upon retirement from the military service, or earlier separation due to a permanent and total physical or mental disability, such person returns to this state and purchases a homestead, such person is deemed to satisfy the residency test required by this section and shall be allowed a homestead exemption under this section if such person is otherwise eligible for a homestead exemption under this article; and the tax commissioner may specify, by regulation promulgated under chapter twenty-nine-a of this code, what constitutes acceptable proof of these facts. Only one exemption shall be allowed for each homestead used and occupied exclusively for residential purposes by the owner thereof, regardless of the number of qualified owners residing therein.
Again, I find myself not saying, but just saying.
Popularity: 3% [?]






To quote Nelson Muntz:
“HA-HA!!”
I’m not saying.
I’m just saying.
That’s all.
Bueller…
Bueller…
Here’s how this is going to go down, ultimately: Mark’s going to continue saying “well that’s what I said but what I REALLY said was…” and more or less announce to the world that he continually lied under oath.
Balls in your court, pooky.
As stated earlier, she moved to her Charleston home as did my wife, due to construction noise. This move lasted for a very short time. The construction animals should be ashamed of themselves for driving an 80-plus-year-old woman and her daughter out of their home. We also evacuated her once due to smoke from burning trees on the Walmart property. Fortunately, the WVDEP has jurisdiction over air quality and shut the burning down. That cost the construction company more money to grind the trees and haul them away, something that didn’t exactly break my heart!
When the construction noise in the neighborhood ceased, (Walmart, Arby’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Bank, she moved back. There is no percentage required in the law. It does say she cannot use the home for anything besides a residence. It is her residence. She owns no other property and does not have another homestead exemption.
Case closed.
Well, that’s cool. Thus far you’ve admitted to moving your business outside of city limits to avoid B&O taxes and using a loophole in a law to avoid paying full property taxes.
At least you’re honest about that.
Well, that’s cool. Thus far you’ve admitted to moving your business outside of city limits to avoid B&O taxes and using a loophole in a law to avoid paying full property taxes.
At least you’re honest about that.
BWHAHAA!!
And you still haven’t explained why you said in 2001 that your mother-in-law lived in Charleston. Last I checked, the Hurricane Wal-Mart wasn’t under construction in 2001.
That’s two times where Mark has stated his mother-in-law either:
A) Lives in Charleston
B) Only lives with them 30 to 50 percent of the time.
Either way, maintaining the homestead exemption is fraud.
JoAnn:
I never told you that my mother-in-law moved to Charleston in 2001. I AM saying that she lives here MOST of the time, and stays elsewhere, including Charleston (sometimes-with her sister) on the weekends. She is one of about six (surviving) siblings. Because she does not drive, we take her to a brother or sister’s house, or they pick her up and take her to their homes and she usually returns sometime Monday morning.
I didn’t move my business to avoid B & O taxes as when I started it, I wasn’t even aware Hurricane charged them. I put it elsewhere because, at the time, the office had faster Internet access than our home could get and because my wife did not want people harassing us at the house for my reporting on their arrest, etc. Several years later, I received a letter asking about B & O taxes and I met with Mayor Raymond Peak and told him where the office was, bank accounts were, and point of publication (then in California). He told me that I did not have to pay B & O taxes, and that if I ever moved the office to our home, that they don’t tax home-based busineses “Or we would have to go after every Avon lady, Fuller Brush man, Vacuum cleaner sales guy, and Amway salesperson.” Admittedly, I had to have him explain what a Fuller Brush man was. I’d never heard of such a thing.
So, wait, you moved your office so you wouldn’t get harassed at home…and…yet….
Basically I don’t think you thought your clever plan all the way through.
for the record…this is how I react to roughly 96.2% of the stuff Mark and his many alter egos post here:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b331/theprincessofpain/Gifs/treymattwtf.gif
(wouldn’t let me embed it)
[i]Only one exemption shall be allowed for each homestead used and occupied exclusively for residential purposes by the owner thereof, regardless of the number of qualified owners residing therein.[/i]
Well Mark cannot operate PutnamLive out of the house making it a the base of a home business which would make the homestead exemption for the property null.
hahahahahahahaha
pwn3d!
Mark, either you or your wife said your mother-in-law lived in Charleston in a document either you or your wife wrote back in 2001. Either way, she lives in Charleston.
And you said your wife moved to Charleston to live with her mother to get away from Wal-Mart … but now they’re all back? See, Mark, the probably with lying is it’s so hard to keep your stories straight. Apparently, they’re living in the house when it suits your story and hiding out in Charleston when it suits your cause. Makes a person dizzy.
Regardless, there are two reasons your family should not have a homestead exemption on the house. 1) It’s not your mother-in-law’s primary residence. 2) You apparently run a business out of the house, if you can call that a business.
Either way, you’re just creating more problems for yourself. I’d hang it up and go back to harassing the colonel.
Does mark always run to his office to post information on his blog? Because, if even once, just once, he updated his blog from his house, wouldn’t that make his house an office too? Do you update your blog from your house markus?
He’s getting ready for the town council meeting tonight at city hall…. may be an interesting meeting.
If someone’s going to this tonight and there’s anything to report, please let me know.
I won’t be at the meeting.
The business was set up away from my home for security purposes and high-speed Internet access. At the time, I was not aware Hurricane charged for B & O taxes. It’s that simple.
I will be looking forward to getting the names of all of the speakers at tonight’s meeting. All one of them masquerading as 10.
All I’m saying is you’re the last person who should ever call someone out for posting under multiple names.
Right, Putnam Johnny?
Considering how many lawyers and doctors live in Hurricane, if they charged every one of them B & O taxes for every time they wrote a brief at home, called their secretary from home, or dictated notes for a medical file, there would be a mass exodus of residents over taxes.
Really, Mark? That’s the best you can come up with. This is just getting said.
Sad, rather.
I said it earlier but i’m gonna expand on the thought: so, you…a BLOGGER…moved your “office” out of your home for Security Reasons. And, yet, everybody and their MOTHER knows where you live because you bitch and bitch and bitch about the Walmart in proximity to your house…trying to sell said land (at a ridiculously inflated price) so you more or less announce to the world “THIS IS WHERE I LIVE!”
So…the way I (and anybody with the common sense Buddha gave a fire ant) see it…
A)you’re full of shit
B)you didn’t think your cunning plan through all the way
C)you’re dumb as a box of hammers
D)all of the above.
I still say this PutnamLIVE.com deal isn’t a business. He’s like the rest of us. Just a blogger. He doesn’t make ANY money from this site. He likes to tell us he does to make himself feel self important. He’s not paying any B&O taxes because he doesn’t owe any because this is NOT a business.
As for the accusation that I suggested quantcast because I had signed up for the service against others that have not, I had not heard of it until this week. Someone provided a link to anoher site, and quantcast was linked from THAT site. So, I got curious, and found out what it was, a ratings service for web site hits. All you do is change the name of the site after the / as in http://www.quantcast.com/girlofwords.com and it will rate that site for you.
Admittedly, I was stunned to learn that I am outdrawing local radio station web sites that are able to promote them all day long. Despite my detractors here, I obviously am doing something right.
That site is useless. It says it doesn’t have data for me. Alexa.com has data for me, and my page rank. Alexa also is pretty much industry standard.
And sorry to come back at it, but the only way you can get measured by quantcast is to embed something on your site to enable them to track you. Seriously. Just happened. I asked it to look up my stuff and it told me to embed their script. Eff that.
Alexa tracks regardless.
Mark,
Are you stunned or stoned?
You should know where the lawyers are Mark, that’s for sure.
Mark, of the sites you compared on you trash quantcast.com, only V100 is applicable in a comparison. Yes, you do beat it, but you also get beat by Electric102 and WQBE.
Mark, you are the chode that connects the ball sack and the asshole.
Quantcast is only reliable if a Web site has a tracking pixel included. Otherwise, the data is unreliable. That’s probably why the radio stations numbers are low. I would bet their internal tracking numbers from their servers would show they actually have much higher traffic than what Quantcast shows. Again, without the tracker, Quantcast misses a lot.
Mark, what you also still do not grasp is that many of your detractors check your site on a regular basis to follow up on what you are doing, and for entertainment value. Just because you get traffic doesn’t mean that it’s the kind of traffic that supports what you’re doing. (Note that I did not say “it’s not the kind of traffic you want” because I think you honestly do not care if the readers support you, so long as you continue to get hits.)
JoAnn/GOW:
I didn’t put anything special in my web site to be tracked. I just found the link and looked up my numbers.
Just tried it again. Specifically tells me to register and install their script. So, I mean, awesome for you it works.
How was the council meeting tonight Mark?
I had to work, I couldn’t go Peachy. However, I plan on going and dealing with the B & O issues.
wait…
Well, it is working because I have been giving Putnam Live a few extra hits because of Mark’s pathetic replies on this site.
Yeah, I still read every day. I got no shame in admitting it. I don’t like it as much because there’s no Wal-Mart blog … weak.
I think what amuses me is I don’t find this to be some childish pissing match of whose site gets more hits. I couldn’t care less, really. My DC traffic (and traffic from other areas) still eclipses my West Virginia traffic.
girlofwords, you rock! This is my first time reading your blog, and I am having more fun than a puppy with two peckers (that’s an old Putnam Co. saying). I am a radio guy on the outskirts of DC, but grew up in Hurricane WV and started my radio career in Charleston. Mark is a nut, there is no doubt about that. I was in town visiting family, and went out for a beer. I happened to run into some old friends who are in local Putnam Co. government. These guys rank Mr. Hallburn just below the Cat Lady on The Simpsons. I have quietly followed Mr. Hallburn’s “adventures” since the pre-Walmart days. I don’t normally comment on him, but this has just become too funny and outrageous not to.
I’ll be in Hurricane in a couple of weeks for a family visit, and plan to take my camera. I’ll get a bunch of pictures of the Hallburn estate, the WalMart, and the rest of the area in question. I will then post a link for all to enjoy.
Here’s the only problem I have with all of this. Mark is right about one thing, Hurricane has always been the most corrupt city you could ever imagine. Bad cops, crooked city workers, the list goes on and on. It’s kind of sad, if Mark didn’t come off as batshit insane, he may have been able to make a difference. I also must say that I really do use his webpage for news from home. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s the only place I can keep up with local news, and I check it seven days a week. It’s poorly written, and Mark will bounce back and forth between first and third person in the same article, but how the hell else am I going to see which of my highschool buddies has been popped for DUI?
Oh shit…Schaffer done stopped in and dropped knowledge.
I would like to draw attention to this converstaion copied from my Blackberry Messenger starting at 12:25 yesterday afternoon:
Tracey: Ooh! Ooh! Oooooooohhhhh!!! ::waves hand frantically:: Miss Jacque I know the answer!
Tracey: I just can’t comment your page on my blackberry
Jacque: Hahahahahaha. I love when you know rhe answer!
Tracey: What is ‘Ferris Beuller’s day off’
Jacque: I know! I hate that! I wish there was a way!
Jacque: Correct!
Tracey: Do I still get the points?
Jacque: Of course, darling
Neener, Neener, and Mark once again ruins another of Jacques blog’s by vomiting all over it. Pshaw!
Schaffer! Welcome! Thanks for commenting. I love first time callers.
Your PutnamLive is my Wetzel Chronicle. I need to keep track of the class of ’97s arrests, and that’s the best source, hands down. Even if reading it makes my editing heart stop.
Also, I know I’ve said a couple of times that Mark’s message is lost in his delivery. I’m not attacking the message. I’m attacking the delivery. I don’t think he realizes that. If he does, he refuses to separate the two. Just some armchair psychology there.
Tracey: Hahaha! You do get the points!
Schaffer…you would win the “Mark Hallburn STFU Sweepstakes” if you did that!
BTW…where is pork chop, today?
Shaffer, I love your last paragraph. It is so typical that the person who is trying to work and right the injustice of corruption in an area turns out going from walking on the edge and trying to correct the problems of the world to slipping off the side of the cliff and falling in a mental state of total insanity. As they fall deeper into that state, the more and more they try to grasp everyone they can to drag into their delusion of wackiness. What is really sad is that everybody around them will walk away and enjoy their life without the psychotic ideas of mania being presented by the a former idealist.
Former, being the key word. Remember the boy who cried wolf? There really WAS a wolf, but the boy’s ass got eaten for a good reason.
Mark, just in case you missed my question under the other thread, I’m also posting it here:
DID YOU CALL RICK ATKINSON AT HOME ANYTIME THIS MONTH USING A TELEPHONE, WHETHER IT WAS YOURS OR SOMEONE ELSE’S?
(Again, any cell phone, landline, pay phone, Internet phone, pay phone, coconut telegraph, CB radio, smoke signals or other form of communication device applies.)