Category Archives: Make it Viral!

Goats Going Great Guns on HOA Grass!

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Egads, the stories we’ve done on doggie DNA!

Many HOA neighborhoods are demanding that all dogs in the neighborhood have their cheeks swabbed for DNA. That way, if an uninvited poop is deposited on the board president’s lawn, he can send it to the lab and then have the dog owner nailed with a fine, lawsuit and foreclosure because of the ‘errant doodle doo doo.’

In the meantime, the Japanese (clever people, huh?) are hiring herds of goats to do the mowing in their Homeowners Associations. I’ve long advocated using goats for lawn mowers. The City of Denver has done it successfully for years. Herds of goats are efficient common area grass munchers. And their methane isn’t nearly as awful as the gas fumes put out by gasoline powered mowers.

Ah yes, and goats are far more cuddly than your run-of-the-mill Briggs and Stratton.

More power (bad pun) to the Japanese!

(click here for Japanese lawn munchers)

 

More On The Colorado Flood

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Now that I’m out of and away from the Colorado flood I’m watching aerial video of the damage. I’ve seen some bad disasters in my life, but nothing like this one. This single cloudburst caused damage across Eastern Colorado from the Wyoming border to the New Mexico border.

Colorado has about 8000 Homeowners Associations, many of them in eastern Colorado, right in the flood ravaged areas. At some point, all those HOA members are going to be told they don’t qualify for disaster relief since the federal government considers Homeowners Associations and co-ops to be non-profit private associations where ‘homeowners’ are actually shareholders or groups of investors in a neighborhood and its common areas. They can still apply for federal loans, but by living in an HOA they have removed themselves from the ability to get federal aid. 

Congress could change that, of course, but with the country facing sixteen trillion dollars of debt there’s a huge question as to whether the feds would change the rules. Perhaps China would help us? After all, we’re their biggest customer. All those COSCO container trucks and ships you see on the roads and the seas are owned by the Chinese government. The acronym stands for “China Ocean Shipping Company,” owned by the People’s Republic Of China.

Well, I’m going back to watching video feeds. A pretty good one is being hosted right now by the New York Times.

(click here for flood video feed)

 

LOL! The Drones Are Here!

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It’s so much fun to a see a prediction come true. For several years, now, I’ve been talking about the coming wave of inexpensive drones; flying machines equipped with incredibly clear spy cams. They’re light as a feather and designed to be astoundingly invasive. If you and your gal pal or boy toy use the backyard Jacuzzi at midnight, understand that your underwater antics are going to be displayed at the monthly HOA board meeting. From five hundred feet in the air you’ll be able to count the freckles on your lover’s shoulders. At night!

If you leave your second story bedroom shades open, these spy cams can hover and record all the action.

“Not fair!” you rant. “Not fair!”

Well, get used to it, folks, because the FAA doesn’t regulate these spy toys. Unless you’re invading federal air space there are no rules at all. And if your backside shows up on the community center’s big screen how are you going to stop it? Invasion of privacy? Heck, there’s a long list of Homeowners Associations that routinely violate privacy. Some California HOAs are doing unannounced inspections of the interior of members’ homes. It’s all in the name of stopping hoarders, of course.

Slander? HOAs routinely slander targeted homeowners. Your extra pounds aren’t slander because you did it to yourself.

Harassment? Forget about it. The ‘H’ in HOA means harassment.

Remember all those covenants and standards that you signed on your real estate documents? Well, hidden inside those documents is a clause that lets your HOA board change the covenants at will and as needed. If your HOA needs to force a targeted homeowner out (think race, religion, gender bias, marital status) then it will do so. Your lawsuit against the HOA will cost you a bloody fortune, and in the end it’ll be tossed out of court because you gave your permission to your HOA to sue you. Not only that, you agreed to pay all your HOAs legal expenses.

So, hot tub lovers, start dieting now. Your privates are no longer private.

http://tinyurl.com/mwocfal

 

Want To Do A Guest Blog?

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20,000 people a month are now logging into NeighborsAtWar.com.  I like to keep you up to date on what’s going on in ‘HOA Amerika’, but keeping track of it all is a daunting job. So I want to invite each of you to consider doing a guest blog on situations with which you’re familiar.

Just a warning: I’m a tough taskmaster. After 40 years of investigative reporting and television news editing, I want total control over the final edited product. That’s because I have to take responsibility for what we publish. And I want to make sure each guest blog is short, pithy, to the point, and has punch. It has to be absolutely factual, and whenever possible, it has to link to an original published source.  This helps keep us out of legal hot water.

But I encourage you to join in. From everything I can see, our movement is growing and it’s only through YOUR efforts, NOT MINE, that we can eventually get the whole country educated about the organized crime element that runs through the entire national HOA system.

As I’ve said before, the dozens of indictments produced by the federal investigation of racketeering in Las Vegas Homeowners Associations could probably be reproduced in every city in America. This isn’t just a case of homeowners irritated by covenant restrictions. It’s hard-core violations of RICO statutes aided and abetted by a tort industry willing to violate professional ethics in order to create a massive income stream that comes straight out of the pockets and the equity of homeowners and into the pockets of HOA lawyers and HOA ‘insiders’.

Lastly, each one of us who have Homeowners Rights websites have to work hard to increase our SEO rankings so more homeowners can find us. This means leaving frequent comments on each others sites, and the frequent linking of our sites to one another.

KLOUT score is also becoming a big deal in the cyber-world. Each of us (whether you know it or not) has a KLOUT score, which measures the degree of your influence in the Internet community. Your KLOUT score measures the kind of influence you have over your contacts, your friends and associates. The higher your KLOUT score, the more people will find us. That means creating good content, and bringing as many people as possible into your circle of contacts. 

We used to be powerless as individual homeowners. But the Internet has given each one of us amazing power to attack and correct the wrongdoing of evil or misguided institutions.

You can reach me privately at ward (at)  NeighborsAtWar.com.

Definition of an Arrogant Jackass?

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I always love to blog about, and link to, Darcy Spears and the HOA Hall of Shame feature she does for KTNV television in Las Vegas. She was one of the first television reporters in the nation to regularly investigate and expose the wrongdoings of Homeowners Associations. Of course, the criminal empire in Las Vegas generously provides her with lots of material. Nevada has some of the most notoriously felonious HOAs in the country, as evidenced by the dozens of indictments in the ongoing FBI/U.S. Attorney investigation.

In Darcy’s current expose’, she notes how federal FCC law gives homeowners the right to set up satellite dishes, and no HOA in the country has the power to supersede that federal law.

But then, we’re talking about the Pallatine Hill Homeowners Association in Henderson, Nevada. And its president, Barry Tedesco, is mind-numbingly idiotic about federal law. He’s sent out a flood of letters saying homeowners would be fined if they didn’t remove their satellite dishes. Even an appearance in front of the Pallatine Hill HOA board showed homeowners that Tedesco is in serious need of either a brain transplant, or a recall election. He apparently feels he’s above federal law. And he’s willing to risk ever last cent of this HOA’s budget to sue, lien and foreclose on all those homeowners using satellite TV. I honestly hope someone will walk my blog post door-to-door in this HOA.

Darcy Spears is too mannerly to call Tedesco a complete jackass.

mule1[1]But I’m not.

The president of the Pallatine Hill Homeowners association, Barry Tedesco, is a jackass.

(Note to KTNV General Manager: Darcy Spears deserves a raise. She’s getting you national publicity!)

http://tinyurl.com/kxqs5r6