D-Day in my family is a day that has always commanded reverence. I have five family members buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and June 6th was the date that marked the major turning point for the Allies in World War II. Ed and Big Matt were best buddies at West Point during the late 1930s, although they ended up in different divisions in the U.S. Army in the invasion of France. Big Matt, my mother’s first husband, came ashore with the 1st Division in the weeks after D-Day. He was among those caught up in the Battle of the Bulge in December of 1944. And when the Nazis surrounded Bastogne, Big Matt was killed on Christmas Eve during the American evacuation.
Ed landed in France with the 3rd Division shortly after his buddy, and he commanded a tank battalion under General George Patton. Ed’s tank was blown apart and he was critically wounded by a German bazooka in the town of Kaiserslautern, Germany.
After the war, while he was recovering from his monstrous head wounds, Ed ended up marrying Big Matt’s widow and I was born two years later. But throughout my life, the toughest two days of the year for my parents were D-Day and Christmas Eve. Christmas was always tough on us kids because Mom inevitably retreated to her room and endlessly cried as she re-read all the old love letters that had come through the Army’s V-mail system.
My father always told me, hate the evildoer and have a fire in your belly for rooting out injustice. He hated racial injustice. He hated injustice against the poor, the widows, the handicapped, the religious minorities.
I’ve never gone through the kind of pain and suffering that so badly damaged my family during those years. But it’s probably why I occasionally take up a crusade against the rank rotteness of those who try to abuse their power over others.
LOL! A recent Forbes Magazine article cites a survey that shows the happiest and the unhappiest occupations in the country. Apparently the unhappiest people are lawyers, and the most miserable of the unhappy are associate lawyers.
It just makes me wonder? Are lawyers, who spend their lives foreclosing on homeowners for such misdeeds as forgetting to cut their grass, parking their car in the driveway instead of the garage, and for planting too many flowers: are they happy…or unhappy? Sure, they make vast sums of money throwing people out of their homes and having their buddies buy those homes up at auction. But what goes through their minds?
Consider enacting a federal law that mandates the following: Any lawyer who forecloses on a homeowner must personally evict that owner, and personally carry all that homeowner’s belongings to the sidewalk. If the evicted homeowner is desperately ill or disabled, that lawyer must be the only one allowed to drag said homeowner out into the street. And every TV station and newspaper in the community must be notified in advance so they can dispatch photographers to catch the action.
I wonder if Forbes would have to create a new category on the unhappiest list? “The absolutely, positively, indisputably, unhappiest occupational category.”
Then again, those HOA foreclosure attorneys make a fortune. Not much will deter them.
Sales of my book, Neighbors At War, continue climbing. And this website is growing by leaps and bounds. But I was somewhat shocked to see the price offered by one Amazon bookseller for a ‘used’ copy of my book. He says it’s in very good shape, but the price? Drum roll, please!
Seller: TSCBooks $789.12 + $3.99shipping Used – Very Good Very Good Condition – Satisfaction Guaranteed – Excellent Customer Service – Used books may not include codes or supplemental parts
Tada!!!
Folks, I really do think my book is good. But it ain’t THAT good!
A reporter for Channel 8 News in Las Vegas tried to help a homeowner in the Terra West Homeowners Association. It seems the woman, Esther Sardina, had inadvertently underpaid her HOA dues by twenty cents. The woman wrote a check to the HOA for a dollar but they started hitting her with late fees anyway. So this reporter swung into action, confronting a board member.
Terra West dropped the fine. But that’s beside the point. This HOA board simply doesn’t want this woman living in the neighborhood. They want her gone. No HOA puts a 42 cent stamp on a fine for 20 cents…unless they’re intentionally trying to provoke an expensive fight where both sides have to run out and hire lawyers.
Now that Terra West has been publicly shamed the HOA will go out of its way to torment this woman in perpetuity.
Has this kind of nuttiness ever happened before? Oh yes, as I document in my new book, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association. A woman in West Boca, Florida had her house seized because she underpaid her dues by 78 cents.
Good Friends, there is no such thing as a benign Homeowners Association! Every one of the nation’s 335,000 Homeowners Associations is just one board election and one tyrant away from disaster.
When will the nation’s news reporters learn that? Someone tip off this reporter that he’s a fruitcake.
Yes, indeedy, a crook who’s been stealing money from Northern California Homeowners Associations has been caught with his fingers in the graham cracker jar. Chris Barna, of Manteca, California, figured no one would be the wiser if he swiped a million or so bucks from his employer, a company that manages many HOAs in that state.
Barna saved everyone the time and money it would have taken to prosecute him. He pleaded guilty in Federal Court and agreed to pay full restitution. But that’s a laugh. If he gets the 30 year federal prison sentence, which is the maximum statutory penalty for stealing a million bucks, it’ll be a cold day in Hell before he squares up with the folks he ripped off.
Thirty years in federal prison is way too good for creeps like this one.
