Sometimes there are days that The Gadfly finds it very difficult to feel any pride in his country -- especially knowing that our elite overlords are allowed to get away with bullshit like this:
On the day Bennie Coleman lost his house, the day armed U.S. marshals came to his door and ordered him off the property, he slumped in a folding chair across the street and watched the vestiges of his 76 years hauled to the curb.
Movers carted out his easy chair, his clothes, his television. Next came the things that were closest to his heart: his Marine Corps medals and photographs of his dead wife, Martha. The duplex in Northeast Washington that Coleman bought with cash two decades earlier was emptied and shuttered. By sundown, he had nowhere to go.
All because he didn’t pay a $134 property tax bill.
The retired Marine sergeant lost his house on that summer day two years ago through a tax lien sale — an obscure program run by D.C. government that enlists private investors to help the city recover unpaid taxes.http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2013/09/08/left-with-nothing/?hpid=z1
"Investors" --- The Gadfly's fucking ass. More like vultures, as in the type of vulture capitalist that our elite overlords attempted to foist upon us with Mitt Romney's nomination.
Some less sympathetic types might say - "tough shit, if you don't pay your bills on time, it's your own fault." That view would be a pretty fucked-in-the-head on it's own merits to begin with, but when you read further in to the article and discover the details as to the process that is leading to situations like the one that resulted in former U.S. Marine Bennie Coleman sitting in the street on a folding chair watching as his home is being swindled out from underneath him, that's when anyone with an ounce of decency and fairness in them should instantly become raging, blood boiling fucking infuriated:
For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.
But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.
As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.
Families have been forced to borrow or strike payment plans to save their homes.
Nobody, under any scenario, can convince The Gadfly that this man's life could not have been spared this indignity, humiliation and moral offence through some form of mediation or other payment arrangements. He was only $134 in arrears. That averages out to around $11.15 a month. Are these fucking people seriously suggesting that they could not have made some type of arrangement with this man to pay an extra $11 a month in order for him to stay in his home?
The Gadfly is unflinchingly certain that these tax lien "investors" had no intention of working with Mr. Coleman to make good on the debt and instead were wholly intent on robbing the old man of his property for their own profit -- which, if you think about it truly puts them in an entirely new category of scumbag that even The Gadfly has difficulty fathoming.
What is going on in this country when an elderly veteran, who has done more for his nation than all of these wealthy fucking "investors" collectively, is unceremoniously tossed out in to the street like a sack of garbage and his home taken and then resold for an obscene profit? Perhaps we need to change the official definition of the word "investor" to be:
in·vestor
[in-vestor] Show IPA
verb (used with object)
1.
any of several large, primarily carrion-eating Old World birds of prey of the family Accipitridae, oftenhaving a naked head and less powerful feet than those of the related hawks and eagles.
2.
any of several superficially similar New World birds of the family Cathartidae, as the turkey investor.
3.
a person or thing that preys, especially greedily or unscrupulously: That investor would sell out his best friend.
Hopefully this Washington Post story will get enough exposure and generate enough outrage for people to truly get sufficiently disgusted and angry to the point of holding these pieces of shit tax lien companies and their thieving corporate officers and "investors" accountable. Even if it's only running them out of town on a rail, that would be the least level of retribution the yellow dogs could suffer.
----TFG
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