Government is very good at breaking things – including people – and leaving other people to clean up its mess. Armed government workers are especially good at this.
Witness the ruin visited upon 75-year-old Vicki Baker of McKinney, TX. She was in the process of selling her home when armed government workers destroyed it – and left her to pick up the pieces.
And the bill.
Because her daughter made the mistake of dialing Hut! Hut! Hut!
She did so because a man who had been doing some work on the house decided to hole up there with a 15-year-old girl he’d abducted. The daughter – understandably – dialed 911 in the hope that she’d get help.
Instead, she got Hut! Hut! Hut!
The AGWs reportedly fired 30 tear gas canisters into the home, used explosive charges to blow up her home’s garage door and used a military-spec armored vehicles to crash around the property like a berserk mechanical elephant.
After the sturm und drang cleared, Baker was left with a ruined shell of what had been her home – and the loss of what had been a contract to buy it. Once the buyers saw what was left, they vamoosed.
Baker got the bill. Neither the city of McKinney nor her homeowner’s policy would cover the loss, both claiming “immunity” from liability.
“I appreciate that the AGWs did what they thought was necessary to protect the community,” Baker said in a statement. “But it’s unfair to place the costs — replacing or redoing all of my flooring, the burst pipes, the damaged roof, the blown-out garage door, the broken doors, the toppled fence — on me, just because the guy happened to pick my house and not someone else’s.”
She’d have been better-advised to not call 911 for Hut! Hut! Hut!
As the late and very great Will Grigg used to say, there is no situation so bad that calling an armed government worker won’t make worse.
Because there are no consequences for all this Hut! Hut! Hutting! The AGWs behave like feral boys given deadly toys because that’s what they are – or at least, are not held accountable for behaving like.
In this case, the object of their attentions wasn’t going anywhere. Why not wait it out? Or at least try that? Instead, the reflexive resort is to the Hut! Hut! Hut!
And that’s why it is a very bad idea to ever dial 911.
. . .
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Let’s say my car was stolen. Let’s say I managed to track it down on my own. Let’s say I took my spare key, started the car, and drove home in it.
You think I WOULDN’T be in trouble with the law for not reporting it? Even though they wouldn’t have had to lift a finger, even though none of their personnel would’ve been “endangered” getting it back, even though no cop would have had to do any paperwork, I’d still be the bad guy.
Even though I agree that “calling 911” was a bad move, the initial one was that this woman naively engaged the services of an UNLICENSED contractor. Now yes, I’ll hear all the “pure” Libertarians pontificate about how one should not require any “license” to freely transact in products and/or services, and while that sounds good, this is a reason WHY we have such a setup. It’d be better if it were all left in private hands, of course, rather than with Collin County and/or the State of Texas, as relatively good among local and state “Gubmints” as those outfits are. Still, that’s no excuse for this homeowner to fail in her DUE DILLIGENCE…i.e., engaging some “handyman” b/c he “worked” cheap. What a “bargain”, to get some psycho who’d harm a teenaged girl under your roof! And while you may be right about engaging LEOs to allow them to “play with their toys”, with dire consequences to one’s property, the safety of a 15 y.o. girl was at issue, and the cops could have cared less about the homeowner’s legal and/or financial situation that their “handiwork” left.
This reminds me of the infamous Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case of nearly 20 years ago…in that particular matter, the young lady’s father, though well-off and a pillar of the Salt Lake community, was a naive MORON, in allowing Brian David Mitchell to likewise work as a “handyman” on his home, with his young, naive CHILDREN present, out of some misguided libtard notions of helping an “unfortunate” out. Look at what it wreaked on his daughter and his family! Idiot. Of course, it’s come out that he did (i.e, he’s a homo), so an explanation for his defective thought processing is obvious.
Folks, your home is supposed to be, under the English “common law”, your “Castle”, where even the “King” may not freely enter. Such was supposed to be enshrined under the Third and Fourth Amendments, which both have been badly eroded in the past few decades. But what’s the point of having a “castle” when you keep the Gott-damned drawbridge lowered and you INVITE the “ruffians” in?
Doug,
While I’ve engaged the services of an unlicensed handyman, he’s my neighbor; he lives across the street; and he’s done work for everyone in the neighborhood. I’d see him doing jobs when I took walks. He does the small jobs licensed contractors DON’T want to do, so he’s a godsend! I had a lot of small jobs that needed doing, so I hired him. That would be my only caveat: if you use an unlicensed contractor or handyman, make sure it’s someone you know well, preferably someone in the neighborhood.
My parents have owned four homes since they were married, and the middle two each needed roof repairs. My dad could never get a single contractor to REPAIR the few leaks each one had – they all wanted to replace the entire roof, at the cost of a nice used car and at least a month of time each. All each roof needed was some patching.
My dad’s not the handyman type. He has his abilities, but fixing things isn’t one of them. Since I wasn’t there myself during those times, I couldn’t do the work for him. He would’ve loved to have just given some neighborhood Mr. Fixit $500 to patch the holes, but no luck.
Thanks a lot, licensing.
Hi Doug,
I agree completely with you that the woman was foolish to open her home to a sketchy person; I don’t agree that licensing prevents this sort of thing. It’s arguably true it engenders a false sense of security. Much preferable as I see it is to exercise due diligence – and supervision. I never farm out work to people I haven’t looked up and (usually) either know personally or have had people I know personally provide a reference. Then I hang around and make sure there are no shenanigans. If I had kids, I’d be double hawk-eyed regarding this.
“Gubmint” isn’t necessarily the cure for our own common sense and good judgment, Eric, you’re right about that. We have laws for reasons, many good, others…not so good. The entire contracting system is intended to deal with responsibility and malfeasance, so had the employee(s) of a LICENSED contractor gone ape-doo-doo, there’d likely have been recourse by the homeowner and her insurance would have been more inclined to pay.
The trouble with Libertarian principles is that they’re all well and good for those that are inherently SELF-governing. Folks that govern themselves obviously have little need of the “Gubmint”, save to leave them the hell alone. There was a time when most governments did exactly that. These days, most of our experiences with Government are negative, not b/c we’re lawbreakers and/or scofflaws, but we don’t “game the system” as well as the politicians and/or scofflaws or grifters do (yeah, what the hell’s the DIFFERENCE?).
With regard to the issue of my attempting to sell my ride(s) myself, I just don’t to any comer(s); the hassle and risk just aren’t worth it to me. It’s easiest to just buy the ride new or nearly new, then hang on to it until I can either hand it down to a child or grandchild, or just have Pick-N-Pull come get it or donate it to “Cars-4-Kids”. I expect to keep my current ride until at least 2030 unless a wayward driver, myself included, intervenes.
A governmental work license does not preclude the possibility that the person you hire has several violent priors and may randomly revisit the job site several years later in some kind of predatory and suicidal episode. The video says the guy released the girl and then the fireworks started. So, at that point, it wasn’t for her “safety.”
It doesn’t matter what prompted the “coppers” to play with their “toys”, it’s just that neither they personally, nor their employing municipality, are usually held responsible under the “qualified immunity” doctrine, which means that YOU don’t qualify to be reimbursed by them.
Ok. But that’s a different matter than what you mentioned in the comment above.
I’m just coming back to Eric’s post as to that it’s not usually a good idea to summon law enforcement, save that you’re prepared to deal with the consequences. I’d rather not go into detail, but I have the bad fortune of likewise calling the sheriff for help and getting anything BUT. Fortunately, my home wasn’t destroyed, and my corpus remained intact.
Morning, Douglas!
My rule – as a rule – is to handle things myself and have found it to be a good rule. Thirty years ago, it might have been reasonable to resort to calling cops in certain situations but today, we have AGWs – and they are dangerous creatures best avoided.
Licensesing isn’t all its cracked up to be. Hired a licensed hvac guy to install a new condenser and air handler at the house. Reccomended from a trusted contractor who had worked with him before on projects. Ended up paying almost as much to have another hvac company come in and fix the first guy’s work. 2nd guy said the work the first guy did is what he would expect an apprentice to do if left alone. Tried to go after the first guy but he had already had his license pulled and was in jail for assault and attempted murder.
One of those ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ situations. They’re nuts, those new age Schutzstaffel.
Every bit of it all is now just plain madness. Time for somebody to conduct a study to examine just what in the world is going on here.
Well, that’s been done too over at the National Institutes of Health.
Published February 3, 2021, some of what it says:
COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria
In a mass hysteria, people of a group start to believe that they might be exposed to something dangerous, such as a virus or a poison. They believe a threat to be real because someone says so, or because it fits their experience. Due to the threatening delusion, a large group of people gets collectively very upset. In other words, a threat, whether real or imaginary, causes collective anxiety. The group members may even start to feel sick. Group members might also get symptoms of sickness including weakness, headaches, or a choking feeling, which are propagated to other persons. When a mass hysteria causes physical symptoms, it is called mass psychogenic illness or epidemic hysteria. The symptoms are caused by the stress and anxiety people experience due to the perceived threat. Mass hysteria is infectious and may be a contributing and amplifying factor in real epidemics.
Continues to the nocebo effect:
It is well known that in addition to placebo effects, so-called “nocebo” effects also exist. Due to the placebo effect, a person recovers from an illness because they expect to recover. When a person suffers from a nocebo effect, on the contrary, they get ill just because they expect to become ill. An intriguing and famous case of a nocebo effect is the case of a man who tried to commit suicide. The man was involved in a clinical study taking an experimental drug. In order to kill himself, he swallowed twenty-nine capsules of the drug, believing he would not survive. However, the capsules that he was taking were placebos, as he was a member of the control group in the clinical study. Believing that he was going to die, he developed serious symptoms and arrived at the hospital with extremely low blood pressure. When, finally, the doctor directing the medical trial arrived, the doctor told the patient that he had swallowed placebos. As a consequence, the man recovered within fifteen minutes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7913136/
It’s a funny ol’ ride.
Thank you so much for sharing! This is a plain-English, thoroughly cited confirmation of the intentional devastation that has been inflicted, and names specific entities, not only the US’ current “welfare state”, but others such as the German gov’t. and Fauxchi. The fact that it is shared via NIH’s website adds an additional layer of mind-blowing irony.
A must-read!
and download before it disappears
If only Will Grigg was still alive to narrate this final solution zombie apocalypse hoax.
Hi Macly,
Amen. I miss Will. I never had the opportunity to meet him but read his work regularly. He was one of the greats!
Bill,
“If a gang of cops did this to my house”
Your house?
In Illinois?
You may want to rethink that Bill.
Why do you continue to lie to yourself?
As human livestock residing on the Illini tax farm, I find it humorous that you would perpetuate that myth.
Do you know what obsequiousness means?
Do you understand why the tax farmers want you to actually believe you “own” the government approved and inspected building you are currently allowed to sleep in?
Fortunately, this case is now in the hands of the Institute for Justice, a freedom-oriented national litigator who not only kicks ass and takes names, but wins victims compensation and forms binding precedents.
https://ij.org/case/texas-swat-destruction
The facts of this case seem extremely similar to that of Shaniz West’s, also an IJ client:
https://ij.org/case/west-v-city-of-caldwell
“Never Under Any Circumstances Call 911. This Means You.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
that’s my personal motto.
the downsides are much worse than the up
“I appreciate that the AGWs did what they thought was necessary to protect the community,” Baker said in a statement.
I see this type of idiotic kowtowing just about every time I read a story about SWAT raids. The groveling, the subservience, the obsequiousness is enough to make me throw up. If a gang of cops did this to my house, the last thing I would be doing is praising them and thanking them for a job well done.
My thoughts exactly. As soon as the “victim” spouts off that kind of nonsense, I no longer feel sorry for them. Time to take your medicine. Maybe learn a lesson?
What’s “necessary to protect the community” is for a mob of enraged citizens to inflict this amount of damage on the police chief’s home.
There wasn’t even a thought given to what was necessary to protect the community. The only thought included was “How can we do this with zero risk to ourselves, regardless the risk to the community, given the arsenal on hand?” The idea of taking a modest risk and two or three AGWs simply walking in the door and subduing the alleged criminal never crossed their so called minds. So much for AGWs “putting their lives on the line to protect us”. They are however quite happy to put YOUR life on the line to protect them.
Correct. Ask the UPS drivers.