A 74-year-old blind woman was shocked when her daughter found a letter from the city saying a lien would be placed on her home unless she paid an overdue water bill.

The amount? 1 cent.

…The letter warned of a lien and a $48 penalty if the overdue bill is not paid by December 10. The charge was from the previous fiscal year, which ran from July 2007 to July 2008.

I’ve read this story at several news sites: CNN, Fox, Yahoo, etc. NOT ONCE was the point made that this woman was threatened with her home being taken away from her because she didn’t pay the full amount on her UTILITY BILL.

SINCE WHEN can a person’s home be taken from them because of an unpaid utility bill??? I don’t care if the amount is 1 cent or $1million dollars. This is outrageous, and I can’t believe this isn’t being screamed from the rooftops. A defaulted utility payment is warrant for the government to put a lien on a woman’s home?!?!? The woman has lived in her home since 1959. They were just itching to take her property away. Unconscionable!

And then the Attleboro government has the nerve to say that this issue was “blown out of proportion.” What happened to your guts, Massachusetts? It wasn’t even 300 years ago that you stood up to show the rest of the world what you thought of tyrants who want to take your property and liberty away.

I was at the gym a week or two ago and saw the most appalling “infomercial” I have ever seen in my life. (No, it wasn’t for maternity clothes or acne treatments!) It was John Beck’s “Free & Clear Real Estate System.” I’m not going to complain about what bunk the “system” is and how it’s a rip-off– I’m going to bellow at the top of my lungs the absolute tyrannical immorality of the governmental system that John Beck is using. I am still so angry about something like this!

Here’s what happens: a homeowner gets into financial trouble, for whatever reason. The homeowner cannot pay his property taxes. The homeowner may be keeping up with his mortgage payments, but not the property tax payments. In such a case, the government (usually the city or county) can confiscate the ENTIRE property and auction it off for tax default. Any capital the homeowner has gained from paying years and years of mortgage and tax payments disappears. The homeowner is evicted from the home and the government sells it. Usually, the property sells for a very low price, because all the government wants is the back taxes that are due.

This is absolutely unconscionable. I am outraged– apoplectic- that this can happen! What happened to property rights in this country? In all essence, there are NO property rights. If you do not pay your taxes, the government can take your hard-earned property and turn around and sell it to a speculator. (That’s where John Beck’s “system” comes in– he snaps up those properties and resells them at market value.)

The infomercial feeds on the greedy “small-business” American speculator. But no one stops to ask– Is this justice in America? And what old lady or impoverished family is being evicted, so that I can buy my new house real cheap? And a lot of times, it’s the government or banks that snap up the foreclosed property. It happens right here in Utica, NY. The government forecloses, owns the property, and sells it for a hefty profit. Criminal!

This tyrannical confiscation of property is not American. It is socialist/fascist. Let’s not pretend here– it’s the government that really owns all the property. If you don’t pay the “rent” in the form of their high property taxes, then you are thrown out into the streets (or jailed or fined, or both) and you lose EVERYTHING you have built on up to then. What kind of system is this? This is more akin to serfdom- slavery– where the lord is the government and we are the tenant farmer serfs. And the government works hand in hand with the banks and credit card companies to do this. And what’s worse is that the property tax is after the income tax and the sales tax, and all the billions of little taxes on top of that! There are so many taxes in this country that we lost the concept of what it means to be free. We are slaves to the taxation departments, the government, and the banks. What a hateful system.

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.” a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson.