Squatted Upon in America

SCANALYZER The Happening World
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In olden days before porcelain fixtures, one squatted to do one’s business. And it seems we have returned - after a fashion - to those olden days where the average Joe finds himself a recipient, beneath the business end of a squatter. How many ways can the ordinary hard-working citizen be defecated upon by the so-called “rule of law” under which he is forever told he lives?

What a strange juxtaposition. You work to support your family, somewhere between 40 - 60 hours a week, depending. You pay your taxes, federal, state, local and real estate/school - close to 50% of what you earn. You are law abiding. However, as documented in Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate, on average you commit three felonies a day, completely unwittingly. Should you be so unfortunate as to come t the attention of some petty official, you will feel the full weight of the law. Roll through a stop sign ever so slightly and you will feel the full weight of the law. Fail to report “child abuse” (definition highly variable) - if you are a licensed professional of some kind - the law will summarily lift your license and put you out of work. You didn’t DO it. You just (maybe) observed it and failed to report it. Such is the power of the law - as it is applied TO the law abiding.

Now, suppose said law abiding citizen goes on vacation for a week and locks his house up properly upon departure. He returns home to find an illegal immigrant (it might also be a domestic low life) is now occupying his home. Guess what? In many states, the squatter’s rights supersede those of the homeowner! You’ve probably read about it, it is so prevalent. You go in and change the locks of your own home - and YOU will be arrested! The homeowner are told the police they can do nothing. There’s supposedly no law broken!

Now compare the situations. The law-abiding citizen can be prosecuted at the whim of any bureaucrat or law enforcement type, because there is a rule against virtually everything you may do in the course of ordinary bourgeois life. At the same time, we have no criminal recourse against someone who breaks into and occupies your own home! It is a CIVIL matter, say the police and that means a minimum of $20K in legal expenses and a 2 year wait for “justice” if you’re lucky. I could well take longer.

Now, inventive prosecutors (all of them), when it comes to prosecuting the law abiding, follow the law according to Stalin’s Lavrentiy Berea: “You bring me the man and I will find you the crime”. When it comes to “squatters”, suddenly there is no chargeable crime? what is going on here? Why do obvious criminals’ rights erase those of the law abiding? There is surely some agenda at work here. It is, after all, an obvious invitation to “self-help” and any legal system is designed to obviate such circumstances by criminalizing acts which enrage any lawful community. If someone stole the largest single investment and the shelter I slaved for, for my family, and the police told me they could do nothing - let your imagination loose as to what happens next; it won’t be 2 years in a civil courtroom and forfeiture of scores of thousands of dollars. That, after all, is why anyone agrees to pay (exorbitant) taxes in the first place! To have civilization.

This is not civilization. This is the post modern dis-united States, which obviously does occupy the aforementioned porcelain fixture, even as it swirls, Coriolis-fashion, toward the drain on its way to history’s sewer.

There must be a “progressive” agenda at work here, because the claim that this is not a criminal matter is absurd on its face. Just off the top of my head, since everything material I own is in my house, there has been obvious felony: grand theft by conversion of every item I own - and that’s just for starters. No imagination required, but the police and prosecutors just can’t be bothered to add 2 + 2. There may be prescribed controlled substances in my house. They are now criminally possessed by another. Maybe there are guns, now criminally possessed by another. To say nothing of the theft of the house itself. This situation, where the average guy is at risk of prosecution by merely living his life, yet cannot leave his home unattended for any period of time lest it be “legally” stolen - is beyond third world living. It is chaos. Oh, maybe that’s the point. The Second Amendment has never been more important; the authorities are no longer on your side, unless you are a reprobate, career criminal and/or officially “oppressed”.

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I think the law is on our side in Pa. It takes 21 years to establish adverse possession (at least ten even in some urban situations) and, if you ask trespassers to leave, and they refuse, they are then committing “defiant trespass”, and the landowner should be able to arrest them.
Problem is whether the police will be too timid to act on this.
I can see a problem though if they originally came there with landowner’s permission, like to an Airbnb (everybody: pull those ads NOW!) or if they are holdover tenants.
If they have some colorable claim to tenancy, at least you can use the expedited procedures on the Landlord Tenant Act , in small claims court. And if you win the Sheriff will evict.

But I agree with you: this is the most infuriating development so far. And I think it is deliberately being engineered to disabuse us of our despicable attachment to PROPERTY. They’re going backwards: life, liberty, and property: they experimented with and did take away our liberty during the lockdowns. Now it’s property. “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”. I now think that means: “You’ll damn well be ‘happy’ with whatever the state provides for you—because what’s the alternative?”
Even if Trump wins, can this bleak future be averted? I hope so. A faint hope.
And who is this “they”, who’s doing this to us? The WEF, the Davis crowd, our own American Dems? How did they get so powerful? 30 years ago we never could have imagined America would change so much.
We have had the best of it, that’s for sure.

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And to think the Founders held that property was among the singularly important items for the government to protect, since it is acquired by the sweat of your brow. Taking it is equivalent to enslavement. Serfs only gave the manor about 20% or what they made/grew.

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It’s useful to do some counter-intel:

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I am very happy because I think I may have found the germ of my next article here! (My last one was January 2024, on short term rentals, but as soon as one piece comes out I’m a has-been, hafta find a new topic…:thinking:)

CW’s post made me think about squatting in the context of my state’s “castle doctrine”, which gives a homeowner or landowner “justification”, (meaning you won’t be criminally prosecuted) for the use of force in maintaining OR RE-TAKING possession of property in which you have an ownership or legitimate possessory interest. Not “deadly force”; that is never justified in defense of property, but physical coercion short of that.

I think I’ll start with a scenario in which a family comes home after, say, a 3 week vacation and finds somebody else in their Keystone State home. What can they do, on their own? Then I’ll talk about the differences if there exists any colorable tenancy.

I pride myself on my titles, and the editor (usually) lets me keep ‘em. (example: my article on common law marriage is called “Nothing But The Troth”, hee hee! )

So what should this one be called, dear polymaths?

“You Cant Do Squat!” Or “You CAN do Squat!”, depending on the substantive conclusions)—or
“You don’t know squat!” …or
“Squat Happens!” ?

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Squat matters

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How about

“Keep Calm and Evict On”

“At Bat – Taking a Swing at Non-Violent Evictions”

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Nearly finished with this article, which I’ll submit to our Pa state bar magazine. I started out writing it for , like, a local newspaper, directed at lay people, but : I don’t think they can HANDLE the truth! Here my opening gambit:

CLIENT:
There’s somebody living in my house! Do they have any right to stay there, if they stay for a month or so?
YOU (the attorney] :
Not legally, no.

CLIENT:
Great! So I can just go in there and remove them and their stuff today?
YOU:
Not legally, no.

And my working title is “Squatting in the Shadow of the Law”

I’ve lost my taste for the squat/shit wordplay: it’s just….TOO apt. But thanks, everybody!

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This kind of legal morass is a deep problem – it is too easy for politiicans & bureacrats to pass a law or impose a regulation, and there are too many lawyers & activists pushing for new regulations.

A different example from my County – it put in place a new Land Use plan. This plan calls for expediting approvals for “zero emissions” power generation like windmills; it also calls for preserving viewscapes by limiting construction on ridgelines. Whatever one thinks of either of those aims, the obvious fact is that they are totally incompatible – the place to build giant windmills is on … ridgelines!

The County Commission could have sucked it up and made a decision about which aim was more important. But it was easier for them to duck the choice, make the two incompatible aims both legally required, and then let their lawyer friends fight it out in court.

My solution to this problem is quite simple: if a politician or bureaucrat imposes any law or regulation which is found to be inconsistent or incompatible with any other law or regulation, then all those laws and regulations are automatically cancelled; and the responsible bureaucrat or politician is publicly flogged. But that sensible solution which will have to wait until after the Coming Collapse.

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Here’s another example of government taking both sides of an issue rather than make a decision.

The Beautiful People have been pushing Electric Vehicles for years now through subsidies and regulations – save the planet from Global Warming! (The same governments have done nothing to increase the required supply of electric power – but that is another issue).

Now today the leaks from the “Joe Biden” Administration say that the Potatoe is going to impose 100% tariffs on the import of Chinese EVs – which are by far the lowest cost and (by many accounts) the most technologically advanced. This is the same government that allows effectively unlimited imports of automobiles from Japan, Korea, Germany, Mexico, Yugoslavia and who-knows-where else – with consequent major losses of manufacturing capabilities, jobs, and tax revenues in the US.

A high tariff against all imported vehicles (gasoline as well as EVs) along with greatly reduced regulations against building automobile factories in the US would be intellectually defensible – although the “Free Traders” would be upset. But allowing imports of some vehicles but not market-leader Chinese EVs while still pushing the Global Warming Scam is an incoherent policy.

Sadly, the incoherence of law on squatting is entirely of a piece with so much other incoherent law & regulation coming from Our Betters.

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I just read that gov. DeSantis signed a bill so owners could hand an affidavit to county sheriff, and sheriff will instantly clear the squatters out! See Karnick, “Protecting Property Rights from Squatters”, on Am Thinker today.) Oh pleeeeeze by some miracle let him be Trump’s VP!

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I shed a tear for humanity. While on one level it is great that Gov. De Santis signed a new law to correct an injustice, it is sad that the answer to bad law is always to pass yet another law. Could we someday learn that the answer to bad law is to repeal the bad law, not to bury it under yet another layer of complexity?

In the more trivial example of the business world, I have seen an organization where the response to anything that went wrong was always to write an additional policy. As would be expected, the business suffered from this ocean of self-imposed Red Tape. Eventually, a new broom took charge, and took a hard look at the plethora of policies – sweeping away many, simplifying and updating others. Repeal definitely works!

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Yes but as I said in my first comment, Pa law IS on the landowners’ side. It’s just, like the cannons of the Maginot line, it’s not maneuverable. So repeal of the law isn’t the answer here; we need a mechanism to deploy it quickly and efficiently.

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What has really changed is people’s attitudes toward the law. People know trespass is “against the law” but there are now plenty of sources telling them it’s ok. There are online squatter how-to guides, with suggestions as to how to pick out an unoccupied home—very clever: put an orange cone in the center of the driveway and see if it gets moved. Tape a “notice”, I reckon it doesn’t matter of what, on the door, with a burner-phone number to call, and see if anybody responds…plus they read or hear about the NY cases where some bozo has been occupying a mansion for years, and every time the owner is on the verge of eviction, some NGO steps in and pays the rent……these things normalize trespass.
I think the most powerful message you can send anyone, and the most powerful re-inforcement for any behavior, is, “You are not alone.”

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As we are binge watching The Sopranos, I keep realizing this series - like most of our “entertainment” - is about the writers’ desires to re-normalize behaviors which literally millions of people died throughout recorded history to extinguish. Now, the hard-won system of laws which evolved to establish civilization
upon something other than repetitive exercises of brute force or “self-help”, is being intentionally dismantled while we watch!

The poor Everyman! He must defend himself against predators from above and below! From society’s increasingly aggressive and entitled lower classes, he is at the same time left undefended by the criminal justice system, but severely punished if he even tries to defend himself (or his family or his community). Simultaneously, what were formerly ordinary normal bourgeois behavior and customs - are increasingly remanufactured into deviancy! The range of safe behaviors is ever-contracting when it comes to middle class behavior. As has been written of deviancy (by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Charles Krauthammer), it has become not only non-punished, but deemed perfectly acceptable by leftist (democrat, neo-Marxist) politicians and their MSM propaganda arm, who relentlessly chastise normal middle class behavior.

To my way of thinking, this represents an intentional effort to disenfranchise a large segment of the productive and normal segment of the population. For all the Washington screaming about a “rules-based international order”, the goal at home can be nothing other than an invitation to violence by the large law-respectful majority of the population. The left and their media and corporate accomplices are clearly inviting the otherwise-peaceable to have no other option than violence, so as to permit their identification for violent state extermination.

The same strategy is on display, writ large in the Middle East. Arabs massacre Israeli civilians; the world is silent. Israel does what any nation would do to a constantly violent neighbor: it goes after the killers, who are supported by a large majority of the population. The (left) erupt at the “genocide”. What few overriding principles are still recognized apply only to the politically-favored party and that is most always the appointed “victim”. Jews need not apply for that category.

Does anyone doubt where we’re headed?

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No we don’t doubt it. Saruman has taken over the Shire. It’s time for Frodo and Sam to ride in and scour it!
(;I was disappointed Jackson leftt that all-important last chapter outta the LOTR movie. It shows we have to battle even—maybe especially—for the things we’ve always taken for granted, the blessèd quotidian….i also woulda liked to see Tom Bombadil, but…y’can’t have everything…)

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I hardly think The Sopranos normalizes criminal behavior. And it’s hardly a contemporary show — it premiered a quarter of a century ago. Crime generally, and organized crime in particular, has been a popular subject of film and television. The Godfather is over a half-century old. Dial M for Murder is another 20 years older. Strangers on a Train, The Postman Always Rings Twice, most Hitchcock films — classics all of them. I don’t recall anyone complaining that they normalized crime.

Violence and murder have been part of popular culture since the dawn of history because they’re great themes for drama. Hamlet and Oedipus Rex revolve around murder.

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This is true, but I think there’s a qualitative difference arising from something like 75 hours of programming which includes many perspectives on the lives of brutal, sociopathic murders, And their family lives, including their psychotherapy sessions. It is this dimension I’m responding to when I say the series normalizes deviancy- especially in the context of our entire society accepting deviancy, pretty much across the board.

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