Michael Snyder
The American Dream
Property rights are being absolutely shredded all over America. Buying a piece of land and enjoying it with your family has always been a big part of the American Dream. Unfortunately, in the United States today you don’t actually own your own home. If you don’t pay your rent (property taxes) your home will be taken away from you, and you are only allowed to use your property in very narrowly defined ways. The control freaks that run things tell us what we can build on our own property, what we can grow on our own property, what types of gatherings we can have on our own property, how many visitors we can have on our own property and they have imposed very strict rules about how our property must be maintained. If we get “out of line”, they will use “zoning ordinances” and “code violations” to make our lives a living hell. All over America today, brutal Gestapo tactics are being used against homeowners that just want to be left alone. Anyone that has ever dealt with a “compliance officer” or a “nuisance abatement team” knows what I am talking about. But if we have so very little “freedom” on our own properties, then how in the world can we continue to call this country “the land of the free”?
Thug Wakes Woman Up And Yells At Her In Bed For Letting Her Grass Grow Too Long
Down in Georgia recently, a huge male “compliance officer” let himself into a woman’s home, marched into her bedroom and started yelling at her for letting her grass grow too long while she was still in bed….
A woman got the shock of her life when she woke up to find a stranger in her bedroom, yelling at her to wake up because her grass was too long.
Erica Masters was asleep when Columbia County Code Compliance Officer Jimmy Vowell entered her Martinez, Georgia, home without permission to serve a violation notice for her overgrown lawn.
After knocking on the woman’s door a few times, Vowell let himself and made his way into her bedroom, which was captured on surveillance video.
How would you respond if a strange man barged into your bedroom and started berating you about the length of your grass?
Elderly Americans Being Evicted For Not Paying Property Taxes
All over America, homeowners are being evicted from their family homes because of unpaid property taxes. In some cases, the amount that is owed is only a few hundred dollars.
Big banks such as Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have been buying up tax liens all over the country because they are extremely profitable….
Tax liens can yield an incredible rate of return, as high as up to 50%. Many state laws permit tax lien purchasers to charge homeowners extremely high interest rates and fees to redeem their property in order avoid foreclosure. (For example, redemption penalties in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Texas all exceed 20%.) For these reasons, tax lien sales are often marketed as “get-rich quick” schemes on websites. Investors take advantage of the fact that the tax sale process is arcane and rarely understood by homeowners. And states do little to inform homeowners about steps they can take to avoid foreclosure. Very few states have enacted procedures to protect owners’ equity interests or to avoid windfalls to purchasers, and almost no states have updated tax lien laws to reflect current economic conditions or to ensure that proper safeguards exist to avoid unnecessary loss of homeownership.
In many cases, elderly Americans that don’t even understand what is happening are being forced from their homes just so that the “investors” can make some quick money. Just check out what one recent report said happened to an 81 year old woman living in Rhode Island….
The report cited a case of an 81-year-old Rhode Island woman who fell behind on a $474 sewer bill. A corporation bought the home in a tax sale for $836.39. The woman was evicted from the home she had lived in for more than 40 years and the corporation resold the place for $85,000, the report said.
Most investors, however, buy tax liens for the interest. That’s because many states allow investors to charge rates of 18% or more on the outstanding debts. And, in some cases, as much as 20% to 50%, the report said.
Here is another example of an elderly woman being evicted from her home over unpaid taxes….
One elderly Montana woman, who lived alone and had no close family to help her, fell more than $5,000 behind on taxes, the report said. After she failed to respond to letters from the company that bought her home in a tax sale, she was evicted from her Missoula home. As a result, she lost about $150,000 in equity in the property, according to the report.
Could you do that to an elderly woman?
Shame on those that are pulling these scams, and shame on the states for not changing their laws to prevent this from happening.
40 Years Of Home Improvements Gone
All over the country, control freak bureaucrats are using “code violations” to force homeowners to tear down beautiful home improvements.
This is especially true for homeowners that have gone “off the grid”.
For example, a 67 year old man in California has spent 40 years transforming his property into an amazing “off the grid” self-sustaining habitat….
Four decades ago, Hoffman started some home improvements on his house in the wooded hills of the Marin County town of Lagunitas. He harbored ideas and theories of how people could live more sustainably. He started building.
He dug a massive valley near the slope of his home and installed a pond. In the middle of it he built a concrete boat to house a 15-foot well. The groundwater would refill the pond, through a sun-powered pump.
As the owner of a tea distribution business, Hoffman also built a tea-house with ornate metal carvings of dragons and a sloped tile roof.
He carved elaborate caves to dry his rare tea leaves. He constructed a tower bearing a solar shower that hovers over a moat carrying recycled water from the house.
“Most people come here, they see the visual, they see the structures,” said Hoffman. “For me what’s important is the systems behind it.”
But now authorities are making him tear everything down because of “code violations”. Hoffman has been charged fines that total over $200,000, and he is being forced to tear down “all 30 of his illegal structures” by the beginning of August.
Survival Garden Ripped Out By Government Thugs
I have used the following story before, but it is another perfect example of the kind of Gestapo tactics that are being used against homeowners all over the United States.
Just recently, one unemployed woman down in Tulsa, Oklahoma had her survival garden brutally ripped out and carted away by government thugs…
A Tulsa woman is suing the city’s code enforcement officers after she said they cut down her garden with no cause.
Denise Morrison said she has more than 100 plant varieties in her front and back yards and all of them are edible and have a purpose.
She knows which ones will treat arthritis, which will make your food spicy, which ones keep mosquitoes away and treat bug bites, but she said none of that matter to city inspectors.
Last August, Morrison’s front and back yards were filled with flowers in bloom, lemon, stevia, garlic chives, grapes, strawberries, apple mint, spearmint, peppermint, an apple tree, walnut tree, pecan trees and much more.
And for this woman, it really was a “survival garden”. She relied on those plants and trees for her food and for her medicine.
But the government thugs left her with nothing.
Now she will have to do the best that she can to survive on government handouts.
Other Examples
Sadly, there are so many other examples that could be discussed of brutal Gestapo tactics being used against homeowners all over America.
The other day, I wrote about how one man down in Arizona has been sentenced to 60 days in prison and has been fined $12,180 for hosting a Bible study in his own home.
Most of the time the gatherings were only of about 15 or 20 people. They were not unruly and did not make an unreasonable amount of noise.
If we can’t invite a few friends over to our own homes, then how much “freedom” do we really have left?
In the state of California, armed “nuisance abatement teams” roam around looking for someone to hit with a “code violation”. Preppers and those that prefer an “off the grid” lifestyle appear to be some of their favorite targets.
You can view a video about these “nuisance abatement teams” in California right here. But please be warned that the video is likely to make you quite angry.
Is This Still America?
We don’t get to do what we want with our own properties, but the government feels that it can do just about anything it wants to us in the name of “national security”.
In a previous article I detailed 14 cutting edge technologies that the government will be using to watch, monitor and control us.
The following are a few more ways that the “Big Brother control grid” is expanding….
-A new laser scanner that the Department of Homeland Security will soon be using at U.S. airports can search you from 160 feet away….
Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.
-Barack Obama has just signed a new executive order which many believe essentially gives him an “on/off switch” to the Internet.
-One TSA insider is actually claiming that the TSA is hiring criminals that have just been released from prison to do security checks on travelers at U.S. airports. Perhaps this explains why one TSA agent recently sifted her finger through the ashes of someone’s dead grandfather and then laughed about it after she spilled some of the ashes on the floor of the airport. Another TSA agent recently referred to a deaf man as “deafie” and stole his candy.
But how many of these stories do you hear about on the evening news?
Perhaps this is why a recent Gallup poll found that faith in television news is at an all-time low in the United States.
Instead of reporting on the destruction of our liberties and freedoms, the mainstream news is obsessed with Justin Bieber, Tom Cruise and the Kardashians.
It is truly disgusting.
The ability to own a piece of land and establish a home on it is absolutely foundational to the functioning of a free society. Even the most ancient societies understood this.
Sadly, our most basic freedoms are being steadily eroded with each passing day.
Once our freedoms are gone, they will be incredibly difficult to get back.
“The other day, I wrote about how one man down in Arizona has been sentenced to 60 days in prison and has been fined $12,180 for hosting a Bible study in his own home.”
No, the problem was these meetings are not in his home.
He constructed a separate building for services for not “15 to 20”, but 120 people/week, open to the public.
His position is he doesn’t have to abide by either zoning or fire regulations that apply to any building for public use.
When our church bought an old commercial building to use as a satellite campus we still had to put six figures into renovating it to meet fire codes and have it re-zoned.
And everyone is safer now?
What Scott said…
Who was hurt by this? Whose business is it, then? Yours? The government’s?
Why?
Assuming his guests weren’t parking on other people’s property or causing actual problems (as opposed to violating “the law” or “regulations”) what they – and he – were doing on private property is no one’s business but theirs.
His “safety” (and the “safety” of his visitors) is no one’s business but theirs.
That this has to be explained to people is just another measure of the creeping Cloverism ruining this country.
I have no doubt the same hassles would befall me were I to host similar gatherings at our place – even though I have plenty of room (16 acres) for people to park on my land and for them to physically be only on my land – and so no one else’s concern.
But of course, the fact is “my” land (and the land of the man in the story) is a sad fiction. We are just tenants permitted limited use of the land/homes the government in reality owns.
Because to control something is the surest proof of true ownership. And government controls “our” homes an land as surely as an landlord – no matter whose name happens to be on the mortgage.
Eric
You forgot about the insurance co. The insurance company can inforce the contract, by using third -party enforcers. The insurance has a lot of clauses in the contract on what is church property, homowners policy,
buisnes use , fire safety ,ect. The safety is now the issue of the insurance co.
I know you non-clovers beleve in contacts between people. And by common law a insurace co. are people.
As such, the insurace is using the law as a third party
enforcer.
Rick,
Are you saying the government has no standing on what one does on their own property, provided they are not materially harming and/or defrauding another?
A private insurance company can (and does) pose limitations on what it will cover in a given policy.
Ex1: When I rent a car, the car company will charge extra if I want another person to legally drive the car I rent. Without the rider, if another unauthorized person is driving and gets into an accident with the rental, then the car rental company would not be liable for any damages.
Ex2: Some Insurance policies will deny a claim if it violates a clause of the contract.
What kind of enforcers did you have in mind? Are you thinking of Frank Nitti, the G men, or someone else? What purpose would the insurance company need an enforcer?
To: Mithrandir
The insurance companys need enforcers, G-men are fine, to avoid paying claims.
It is all abount money.
If I get hit by a drunk drive, in my state, MI, we have no-fault, my insurance pays me. But if the insurance co can get the drunk off of the road, by force,beatings, ect by the hired goons ( The State’s G-man) that is one less drunk driver that might hit me.
The insurance co, by bribes, make the Gov
pass laws that require people to have insurance.
Our country is run by insurance co’s.
So you believe corporations can have the state use violence for their benefit?
The civil option is for the insurance company to dissolve the contract because of the violations. Not have the state throw the other party into jail/prison.
To BrentP
When the insurance company writes a fire code( that is really who writes the codes),and insurance co ( a person) agrees to a contract the the city (a
person) agrees that the city will enforce the codes to guard againt 3 party claims( the person damged from a fire). To enforce the code the city puts people in jail.That is how the system works.If it did not work that way, the damaged third party would sue the city( which happens all the time) for not enforcing the fire codes.
Yes, insurance companys will use state
to throw people in jail. That is why drunk drivers wind up in jail.
The insurance companys lost alot of money because of drunk drivers. The insurance compays profit and loss statement suffered. When they get a drunk driver off the road and in jail they make more money. Pay less claims.
The insurance co. uses the law enforcment to enforce the drunk driving clause.
You’re speaking in terms of collectives. In “we” – not “I.”
What if I do not consent to what “we” decide? Will you shove a gun under my chin and threaten to kill me if I do not go along?
Is it not twisted that a person who isn’t causing you or anyone else any harm is constantly being threatened with physical violence by some collective, or its enforcers?
People can deal with one another in only two ways: By voluntary cooperation – or by force. I’d rather deal with other people on the basis of voluntary cooperation. I loathe the idea of threatening other people with violence as much as I loathe the idea of being threatened with violence myself.
Why is that some people reverence violence so?
So this is why government is forcing us to buy insurance?
How about I come up with a product or service and with this it comes with all sorts of rules for you obey. Basically you have to do things the way I say. Then I have government’s armed thugs come and enforce these rules on you or you get to suffer a beating, go to jail, whatever it takes? Sound good to you?
What you’ve outlined Rick, is the company town. A 19th and early 20th century of idea of enslaving people and making them conform to central social plan. Through this process we were to find utopia. The trouble was americans rejected being kept slaves in another person’s vision of utopia. As americans rejected this, as they would no longer play along voluntarily in the private world, no longer be so easily tricked, the move was to use government to achieve the same ends.
I long suspected the insurance industry was yet another piece of that puzzle. Your insight makes me more confident that it is.
Rick, do you want the company town back? To me, it appears you are arguing for it. Rule by corporations. But instead of hiring their own thugs that us mundanes could fight back against, they’ll use the state.
“I know you non-clovers beleve in contacts between people. And by common law a insurace co. are people.”
That’s a bit of a stretch. Common law discusses the rights of a natural person, which deliberately exclude the so called “rights” of corporate entities (artificial persons); those are pretty much the purview of Admiralty law.
An artificial person has no unalienable rights recognized under the Magna Carta, where a natural person does. Under Common Law, an insurance company is not a person, it is a legal fiction brought into being by contract.
BTW, this is why the SCOTUS was wrong to extend First Amendment rights to corporations.
Rick- you can find a higher production value version of my clarification here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkbxoyGSJBg
This stuff is at best naive.
Don’t get me wrong – I get the idea. And I agree with the idea. The system is illegitimate; as individuals, we never gave our consent – etc. A “driver” is not the same thing as a person who is traveling. And so on.
All true. Conceptually, or rather, morally speaking.
But ultimately, what matters out in the real world is that the government – which has limitless force at its command – does not agree with the idea.
Good luck telling the cop who pulls you over – or the IRS – that you are a natural person and not subject to their jurisdiction. They’ll laugh at you as they cart you off to jail and seize your assets. These arguments have no standing in government courts – because the government controls the courts.
“The law” is indeed the law. It sucks, it’s not right – but it is what it is.
It may not bind us morally; we may – righteously – reject its immoral, unjust and tyrannical hold over us. But that hold is no less real for our having rejected its control in our minds (and hearts).
In my opinion, the only real hope as regards recovering our rights is making more people aware of them – and so, demanding they be respected.
This will lead to a change in the nature of “the law” – at which point, the problems (mostly) go away.
Dear Scott,
Just finished watching the YT video you suggested.
I feel like I just took the red pill.
Dear Eric,
The natural person argument, for me at least, has two salient aspects.
One, it was a real eye-opener how the statists pulled off the scam. The name in ALL CAPS insight was like the red pill. It was a real “Aha!”
Two, although it’s highly instructive how the scam was perpetrated, as useful as an educational tool, I don’t think it’s necessarily a fruitful approach for recovering our liberties.
I feel the same way about it as I feel about the Strict Constitutionalist, status quo ante approach of Ron Paul. I don’t think it’s going to work either.
I will be overjoyed if either does. But I don’t see them working in the real world.
Morning Bevin!
Exactly.
Who here doubts the result of going before a court after having been charged with some offense and declaring that one is a natural person not the (ALL CAPS) legal entity listed on one’s birth certificate or other government document?
We’re agreed on the concepts – and that our rights have been trampled upon.
But I have to throw water on the natural person argument as a legally viable defense against “the law.” It won’t work. Anyone who tries it will be in for a rude awakening.
We have to change the law itself. That is the only real solution.
As a practical matter, the “sovereign citizen” thing is useful only to people who have time on their hands (to sit in jail, or wrangle in court) and very little in the way of either steady employment or material possessions – or who are prepared to sacrifice all that in a futile charge of the light brigade (so to speak).
Such a person can afford to be (or is willing to be) arrested for not having a driver’s license, insurance and so on. He can afford to – or is willing to – spend a few days in the clink. Eventually, he’ll be let out – if only because his “crimes” are petty and the system becomes bored with him. Especially if he has no significant assets.
Now, any person who has a job he can’t afford to lose cannot afford to spend a week in jail, then weeks wrangling the courts. If he gets a paycheck, or has a bank account, or has assets – he knows (and rightly fears) that these may (and will be) seized, all his “sovereign citizen” and “natural person” claims notwithstanding. Hence, he plays along – because he has no real choice but to play along.
I file the required tax forms and send the payment demanded – because I know perfectly well what will happen to me if I don’t. I also carry a driver’s license, for the same reason.
I know some will accuse me of cowardice or complicity in my own enslavement – but it’s a silly argument in my view. It’s like accusing the Auschwitz inmate of being complicit or cowardly for obeying the rules of the camp. I don’t see it as cowardly or complicit to accept the reality of being trapped and faced with overwhelmingly superior force against which a direct challenge is as pointless as Steven Hawking going into a cage fight with Brock Lazar.
Suicide is not a solution in my book.
Dear Eric,
Right.
I think the sovereign man argument is valuable as an educational tool, to help people realize their autonomy has been taken from them and to apprise them of the need to reclaim it. But I can’t see relying on it as a courtroom tactic.
A parallel that comes to mind is Irwin Schiff’s legal reading of the Income Tax Amendment.
One of his strongest arguments was that the Internal Revenue Service, in enforcing the income tax, seeks to impose a tax not authorized by the taxing clauses of the United States Constitution.
Both morally and legally speaking, I believe he’s actually on solid ground. But tragically he’s also behind bars.
I admire him for calling the clovers on their bullshit. But I’m not about to emulate him.
I think guys like Jeff Berwick have a more workable approach than Schiff.
Dear Eric,
“It’s like accusing the Auschwitz inmate of being complicit or cowardly for obeying the rules of the camp.”
That has long been my position as well.
I compare it to a home invasion. Our country is our home. By country I mean the land, the people, and the civil society.
Our home has been invaded and occupied, by “The Government.” Government officials = home invaders.
Unfortunately these home invaders have vastly more firepower than us. What’s worse, many of our neighbors are actually in cahoots with them.
Therefore unless we are willing to abandon our homes and flee, i.e., expatriate ourselves, they have us held hostage.
So we cope as best we can, all the while not really giving in, but attempting to eject them from our home, and to convince enough of our neighbors to stop colluding with them.
Exactly!
I don’t want to get into squabbles with people who are on our side – the people who are anti-authoritarian and pro-liberty. But I think they’re being unrealistic – even self-delusional – when they advocate the “sovereign man” approach to dealing with the system as it is.
Dear Eric,
Agree.
We are few enough as is. If we bicker over tactics when what matters the most is underlying intent, then we weaken our already tiny company of idealists.
That’s why I don’t argue too hard with anyone who falls on the libertarian side of the line, whether minarchist or anarchist, whether constitutionalist or voluntaryist.
If anyone on our side of the line can make their approach work, I say “Bravo.”
But in the meantime I will stick to my long range psychological transformation approach to political revolution.
To BrentP,
I am not saying it is right or wrong. Just telling how this country runs and how much the insurance co. run the country.
Back in the 80’s when I drove through the UP of Mich the road houses parking lots were full and insurance co lost money to DWIs. So they contacted the enfocers to sit by the bars and write tickets. So the drunks went on ATV/snow sleds. Then the insurace co got the Fish and Game people to sit by the bars and write tickets for DWI’s on ATV/snow sleds.
Now the roadhouses are all close.
Yes, the country is a company town run by the insurace co’s.
Patrick Henry. Against the Federal Constitution. June 5, 1788:
“Virginia is as large as England. Our proportion of representatives is but ten men. In England they have five hundred and fifty-eight. The House of Commons, in England, numerous as they are, we are told, are bribed, and have bartered away the rights of their constituents: what, then, shall become of us? Will these few protect our rights? Will they be incorruptible? You say they will be better men than the English commoners. I say they will be infinitely worse men, because they are to be chosen blindfolded: their election (the term, as applied to their appointment, is inaccurate) will be an involuntary nomination, and not a choice.”
Patrick Henry’s hostility to the government under the Constitution was so strong that he refused to join it.
In June 1787, Virginia’s delegates and not its citizens had voted be the 10th state to ratify the new Constitution. New York followed a month later on July 26, 1788. The new government, far worse than England’s system, began operating with eleven states on March 4, 1789.
http://www.wfu.edu/~zulick/340/henry.html
Hi Eric –
don’t get me wrong either, I’d no sooner try using a common law defense in an admiralty court than stand on my head and whistle Dixie. I was just pointing out the difference between the two.
I think it’s telling there *is* a difference but it isn’t recognized by the government. The law of the land as it used to be called has been almost completely replaced by the law of the sea.
Roger that!
And: anything that helps awaken people is ok by me. That’s the critical first step before viable action becomes possible.
@Bevin–
Wholeheartedly agree. I’ve read Schiff’s work, among several others including the ex-IRS agent’s book (his name escapes me at the moment).
The income tax is illegal. It does not fund the government; it goes directly to the fraudulent Federal Reserve member banks, most of them offshore. It starkly represents our enslavement.
But I pay it.
Because the consequences of NOT paying it are too dire for my children.
I read Jeff Berwick too; in his last missive, he alludes to something I’m considering as well…besides frankly expatriating, having a sailboat with which to do it seems like a very sound plan.
Buy a condo somewhere–whether it’s in Acapulco with Jeff or elsewhere–and have a boat to bring you there. Bypass the slave grid, which, at the next false-flag event, will stand out as nakedly as the green bars in a jail cell.
Dear methylamine,
“But I pay it. Because the consequences of NOT paying it are too dire for my children.”
That’s it. When we strip away all the bullshit legalisms, including those trotted out by the biggest bullshitters of all, the SCOTUS, a bunch of shyster lawyers who clawed their way up to the top of the dung heap, the bottom line is they are home invaders who have guns to our heads.
We simply have no choice not to pay up. It hardly means we libertarians endorse what’s going on either morally or legally.
It merely means that as hostages we have little choice in the matter. The only choice the status quo leaves us is to flee and abandon our homes.
Some choice that is.
Eric, I call it seeing the bars or walls or chains. Other people think they are free. I know I am not. It is debatable if this is “better” but at least it’s not living an illusion. And like you I really don’t see a point in a one man prison riot.
I suppose with a ball and glove I can amuse myself in the cooler, but that’s about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wnqu_jysQVc
Rick I am well aware of how this country runs. However from my POV you clearly were trying to argue that it is legitimate. It’s not.
I am tired of the company town.
He knew the zoning laws before he bought the property.
Neighbors did complain about the amount of traffic his church is generating, presumably they wanted him to abide by the zoning laws and not bring in such heavy traffic.
Is it your position that a private property owner can simply ignore the local zoning laws, even when he knew of them before he purchased the property?
The above doesn’t address fire code regulations for buildings open to the public.
Now, to be fair, he claims the meetings are private, though he refers to himself as ‘pastor’ and advertises the meeting times on a billboard in his front yard.
I assert that any official can always refer to some nebulous “complaint” and enter any property at any time for any reason.
Please explain to me how homeowners are any more secure in their dwellings than any resident of San Quentin State Prison?
I’m sure you’d love it if your neighborhood also instituted a “lights out” and “quiet time” policy at 9pm on your cell block, I mean neighborhood, right?
I’ve typically pointed out that the court rulings with regard to drivers and vehicles have left the home wide open. All the same logic applies to the home and we are seeing it be applied.
People know about the racetrack, tannery, farm, whatever before buying their property yet still have the government attack the business in question. Knowing about something before hand doesn’t seem to be an issue when it’s the other way around, at least for government.
Then there are the various instances where a person can look up all the relevant laws be compliant and still the government will go on the attack. Those operating the government will make things up, they will often enforce what for this forum call ‘clover law’. Clover law is something clovers believe to be the law but isn’t.
For instance where my house is, it is legal to store an operable car on private property without plates. However under clover law this is believed to be illegal by those operating the government. Soooooo… it’s effectively illegal, but there is no law making it so.
The exact laws are only to be used in government’s favor and when the person has a good lawyer. Otherwise clover law dominates.