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The core of Buffett's criticism is that his examples involved not two, but three houses, two in Laguna Beach and one in Omaha: "The first Laguna Beach house is a property that I bought in the early 1970s. It has a current market value of about $4 million and, because of the limitations embodied in Proposition 13, carried taxes of only $2,264 in 2003 vs. $2,241 in 2002. The second house, located just in back of the first, is one that I purchased in the mid-1990s. It has a market value of about $2 million and, simply because I bought it later than the first, carried taxes of $12,002 in 2003 vs. $11,877 in 2002. I pointed out to Joe that these figures mean that the tax rate on the second house — same neighborhood, same owner, same ability to pay — is roughly 10 times the rate on the first house.

"I then referenced my house in Omaha."

These examples, Buffett wrote to the Journal, were intended to convey "two highly important but uncomplicated points":

"1. Residential property taxes in California are wildly capricious....

"2. In the case of properties that a homeowner has held for a long time, residential property rates in Omaha are far higher than in California."

By omitting any reference to his second, more recently purchased, Laguna house, Buffett argued, the Journal had seriously distorted his views. Borrowing the hypothetical case proposed by the paper's follow-up editorial, Buffett wrote, "My sympathies clearly are with the 'non-billionaire' family purchasing a $300,000 house in Chico today that faces real estate taxes materially higher than those borne by this non-resident billionaire on his $4 million house in Laguna. This family, because of Proposition 13, has been selected to subsidize me."