The astounding thing about this four minute video is the level of ignorance among city council candidates in Hopkins, Minnesota. That’s the home of one of the nastiest HOA disputes in the country. But most of these candidates are clueless about what goes on in these gated communities.
It’s not often when a beleaguered homeowner gets a chance to beat up a bullying Homeowners Association, but I do love to see it happen.
I remember my own battles with a Homeowners Association in Morrison, Colorado. My wife had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She had no visible symptoms whatsoever, but the president of the HOA said he would not allow ANY accommodations for a disability. He told us, “well, you’ll just have to move downtown.” I was blown away at his bluntness. But this HOA president, Hatch Wroton, told me, “You know, in a restaurant people just kind of lose their appetite around gimps. They don’t want to see them.”
That was my new awakening that HOAs were too exclusive for blacks, gays, Jews and ‘gimps’ like my wife. Wroton was the former Martin Marietta scientist who designed some of the spacecraft which were destined to land on Mars. But this neighborhood will never escape from the legacy of this anti-Semitic, anti-homosexual, anti-Negro board and its president. There are others to take their place, of course, and the hatred will wax and wane.
But the message is that the extreme bigotry of my HOA is NOT unique. It goes on everywhere.
The story linked below is about a disabled Marine pilot from California who was also treated horribly. They wouldn’t give him access to the community swimming pool. It apparently made the other residents uncomfortable. Never mind that the federal government found their actions illegal. There’s a settlement. The HOA insurance company will pay the elderly couple a hundred thousand bucks if they just take their disabled, disfigured military hero to some other neighborhood.
(link to story on disabled Marine)
Well, prosecutors in San Mateo finally nailed a 64 year old HOA manager. She’s accused of embezzling 2.8 million dollars from the Woodlake Homeowners Association. She’s facing a growing heap of charges while police continue to investigate her partner.
Suspect Susan Marie Lambert
My question is, how the heck do you steal nearly three million dollars from a bunch of condo owners? Do you just assume that because they live in condos they must be stupid? Let me put that loss in actual numerals: $2,800,000.00! Where do you hide it? It can’t be in your pillowcase. It can’t even be under your bed. It would completely fill one of those condo units you supervise!
The big hoot in the story linked below is a quote from Chief Deputy D.A. Karen Guidotti, who says, “It’s obviously an enormous embezzlement. We certainly don’t see them of this magnitude very often.”
Well, Deputy Dawg. You’d better take off those rose-colored glasses and start looking across America. Denver, Colorado, Overland Park, Kansas, Las Vegas, Nevada, just about anywhere in Texas or Pennsylvania, Virginia or Florida. Really, 2.8 million dollars is just an average take in the HOA embezzlement business.
(link to HOA embezzlement story from San Mateo Journal)
In Florida, it’s an HOA turf war. St. Augustine turf.
Many HOAs mandate the stuff even though it soaks up water, isn’t native to Florida, demands pesticides and dies anyway. But if your St. Augustine gets a little bit brown there’s likely a big fine in the works by the Homeowners Association. Many homeowners have been begging for the chance to plant more environmentally friendly lawns, but the arrogance of many HOA boards is beyond description.
“You knew the rules before you bought into this HOA,” they scream. We’ve all heard that. We all know that. But if the EPA ever declared Homeowners Associations to be an illegal toxic chemical many of us would be a lot better off.
(link to Florida story on battle over grass)
All of a sudden, the boy arrested and kicked out of school for bringing a homemade clock to school is generating wild comments from columnists on both sides of the political aisle. “Racism!” yell some. “He deserved it!” yell others.
I’m among those who are appalled that this youngster was treated so harshly. And even though I was actually one of the reporters who covered the 1999 Columbine massacre in Colorado, I still think reactionary politicians are trying to create a national police state starting with our schools. Heck, when I was growing up we didn’t even get an annual school visit from Officer Friendly. Today, there are cops at every school doorway and inspections of every lunch box before kids can get to class. What gives? Is our society really so violent that we have be such knee-jerk fear-mongers?
It got me thinking: How quickly is school violence growing in our country? I thought readers of this blog might be interested if I could show a graph of how rapidly school violence is escalating. That’s what Wiki is for, isn’t it?
Well, I guess I was surprised. I actually found a pretty thorough list of school shootings dating all the way back to the 1700s! Keep in mind that there are currently 100,000 public schools in this country. Look at the number of school shootings and ask yourself, “Is it possible that this country is massively overreacting to the raging torrent of over-hyped headlines?
(link to list of school shootings in America)
You be the judge.
