Federal HOA
The Real threat to Democracy
I can only hope many of you have not had the misfortune to live in a community with a Home Owners Association (HOA). If you have, then what I am about to say will bring back painful memories. My apologies for picking at the scab.
For those of you who have not, I will sum it up here. Imagine you move into your dream home in a wonderful community. Great schools, good neighbors, nice yards, etc. As you are preparing to sign your loan papers in your stack of stuff is a long (sometimes really long) document describing the covenants of your HOA.
Maybe you read it, maybe you don’t. Perhaps you just glance at it. Paint colors, no cars on the streets, no RVs in the driveway. Two pets. No problem! You don’t even own a pet or an RV. So, you sign away and move into your dream house.
As time goes on, you decide you want to do some things to improve your lot. Maybe a different fence. Maybe a dog or cat, or three. Maybe a yard shed. Or plant a tree or two. Hang your Christmas lights and keep them up until twelfth night. Chances are you are going to run into the HOA police trying to do some or all of these things.
You see, if any of these are things they don’t like, you won’t be able to do it. Want to put a screen door on your front door? Better ask permission first. Chances are they have a rule about exactly which type you can add, or possibly even the manufacturer. And if you ignore them, or fail to get permission? Whoa Nellie. You can expect them to show up to tell you to take it down or you’ll get fined.
Sure, fine me, I’m not paying it. Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that little doc you ignored in your loan packet? It gives them the legal right to not only fine you, but to put a lien on your house for any unpaid fines. Ever want to sell your house? Can’t do that with a lien. You’ll pay the fines. You can picture the HOA board of retirees and former college professors gleefully rubbing their hands at your anger. Got you! There goes your unapproved screen door, fence, third pet or tree.
Sounds pretty Un-American, doesn’t it? The American dream is to own your home. Where you can be the master of your domain. Paint it whatever color you want. Put as many picture hangers in the wall without worrying about the landlord coming unglued.
This is why everyone who lives in an HOA community comes to hate it. For all the good it does to prevent those old GTO’s from sitting up on blocks for years in the front yard or the bright pastel paint colors that looked so good in the magazine, there are horror stories on everyday normal things you would expect to be allowed to decide for yourself.
The worst part of the HOA, and how it is like the Federal Bureaucracy, is the reality of why they exist. It sounds like a great charter. We want to preserve and enhance the value of your home, by preventing folks from doing things in the neighborhood that would impact it. A great and noble statement. And full of shit.
People who run HOAs do so for one purpose. To FORCE you to live the way they want to live. By their rules. If you don’t like it, they don’t have to convince or debate you. They created rules you agreed to abide by. We got you now! These HOA leaders are usually of the liberal persuasion. Why? Let's face it. If it was popular and common sense, you would not need rules, a legal document, fines, or the power of the state to convince someone to do something.
When you look at our Federal government and the policies of the Democrats, especially of the Squad and the progressives, this is what you see. A giant HOA. Here is the problem. When I discover I don’t enjoy living in an HOA (think the entire state of California government), I can move to a different location or even to a different state (free states of Tennessee, Texas or Florida, for instance).
Where do you go when your HOA is your federal government? Unlike the Hollywood actor hypocrites who all wail how they will move from the country if candidate A is elected (and then of course don’t), I have no desire to leave the best country on the planet. I just want to make sure it stays that way.
If you read the Constitution (come on, read it, it's only 26 pages long!), you’ll find out the founders must have had the same HOA experience with good ole’ mother England. Tired of being told what to do and having them fine, bully and then forcibly enforce these rules, we came up with the Constitution instead (after a shooting revolution. Let’s not repeat that part).
If you read it, it provides as little power as possible to the Federal government for exactly these reasons. It tried to push the decisions on how individuals lived to as local a decision as possible. Being made by locals. People who could tell a seasonal mud puddle in the middle of a farmer’s field was just that, a puddle when it rained hard. It was not a federal wetland requiring the farmer to give up farming his entire field! Thank you Washington HOA rules enforcers.
Even then, during the Constitutional Convention, one delegate, a guy name George Mason, could still see how Madison and Hamilton were trying to craft a document to build the country the way they wanted it to be run. Knowing this would lead to just another incarnation of the English HOA, eventually, Mason insisted a Bill of Rights be included. He knew the government would not cease trying to take more and more power. Make more and more decisions and restrict the freedoms of the citizens to make their own choices.
Mason recognized the need for protection for the individual (that’s you and me) FROM the new government and its ever-encroaching heavy HOA hand. Because of George Mason, we have the Bill of Rights. If you can’t sit still to read 26 pages of Constitution, then just read the Bill of Rights. It is the most important piece. It is the ultimate HOA buster.
There is only one problem. We are willingly giving up more and more of these rights and signing up to live under more Federal HOA rules. Because we elect ignorant or disingenuous politicians who get to DC and help add more rules to the HOA every day. Telling us what we can and can’t do. What they are allowed to watch, collect and decide we should or should not be doing.
And guess what, when we don’t like it, they don’t care. They have so many tools at their disposal to punish us for not following their HOA rules. IRS, FBI, state and local enforcement agencies and the unelected fourth branch of government, the bureaucratic state. Don’t believe me? Ask your favorite local business owner the regulatory hoops they have to jump through just to stay in business. Believe me, the HOA is everywhere, controlling everything.
Even with all the rules, they are at least still written and you can find a way to comply and stay in business. Continue to function. The Federal HOA doesn’t like this. You see, if you can dissent, then there is always the chance you convince others to as well. If enough of you fight their HOA (like millions migrating from Blue states to Red), they lose their money, power and ultimately control. Over you. No, no, no, can’t have that.
Hmm, what can we do? Rules aren’t working because of that pesky Bill of Rights. Damn those first, second and fourth amendments. People are still standing up, in public, to argue against our Federal HOA rules. CRT in schools, transgender athletes in woman’s sports, open borders, defunded police, incompetent federal agencies, poor economic policies, foreign aid while our vets die homeless in the heat. The list gets longer every day. We can’t have this, it is giving people thoughts they can paint their house purple!
If we can’t get rid of the Bill of Rights, what can we do? I know. We’ll get our friends and neighbors in the HOA to shame their fellow HOA dwellers. We will shun them and make them unpersons so they get back in line. Paint their house beige again, like a good little Stepford child. No original thoughts allowed. Or else you pay the price. Social media now makes this so easy.
This is cancel culture. It is the ultimate tool of the Federal HOA. If you don’t live the way I want you to live. Don’t agree with the rules as I lay them out, then you are not allowed to play in my sandbox. Since my sandbox is the entire USA, well, tough shit. You choose poorly when you decided to not live the way I want to live. Come on, plant-based meat and only driving an EV isn’t that bad.
In the old totalitarian regimes, they simply sent dissenters to the gulag or disappeared them as a warning to everyone else of what could happen if you bought a can of purple paint for your house. Now they just try to ruin your ability to exist in a capitalistic society. One where your livelihood depends on your ability to work. Working to pay your bills, feed your family and pay for the phone plan and social media, your kids are addicted too.
They shame you, dox your address and send the protesters. Teachers bully your kids in school for your actions or your child gets cyber-bullied online. Or they threaten your employer who then has to knuckle under and fire you.
Not for something you did as an employee, but for something you did exercising your right under the Constitution. The same Constitution each of these Federal HOA leaders swore to uphold. These are the tools of the Federal HOA and the progressives are increasingly in charge. Welcome to the new HOA boss. Same as the old totalitarian ones, just no blood on their hands (yet). Cancel culture and the American Pravda media do the dirty work now.
The scary part is the progressives know there is no way in HELL they get the majority to agree to live the way they KNOW you should live. They fully intend to weaponize the rules of the HOA and force you to abide by their Federal HOA rules. Remember, they will save you and the planet, no matter how hard you fight them. It is for your own good! Only they know what that is.
Like I said earlier, I ain’t leaving. There is no better country and no better foundation for government than the one we used to have when we had both a functioning government following the Constitution AND an electorate engaged enough to throw out the crooks and charlatans who somehow got elected.
Sadly, this is no longer true in either case. As witnessed by a presidential candidate who is now the nominee despite not receiving a SINGLE vote from anyone in a primary. And somehow that is not a threat to democracy? This is also from a party whose last candidate sat in his basement the entire election while the fawning media did no due diligence and deceived the public hiding information they knew might convince people he was something he was not. Please look up the word hypocrisy! (and here too)
There is a pattern here if anyone dares to open their eyes and use common sense. If we don’t like our candidates, guess who is to blame. Look in the mirror. If we don’t enjoy having every aspect of our lives controlled and managed by the federal HOA, again, look in the mirror. Until we all do and use the power of the ballot box to collectively find our senses and hold all our elected officials accountable, we get what we deserve. We allowed it to happen.
Since we can’t move out of this HOA. It is time to shrink or remove it and get back to forcing our government to abide by the rules that worked so well. It started in 1913, grew with the New Deal and the Great Society and has especially accelerated in the last twenty-five years. When the Federal HOA post 9/11 really replaced the Constitution. And we let them, for our own good, of course.
Wake Up, Stand Up, and Think for Yourself. Look at these presidential candidates. Look at their actual stances and what they say they will do for you. Which one wants you to live the way they want and which wants to return your freedom to choose? This should be a simple decision if you exercise your own free will, understand what it means to be free to choose, and look beyond the rhetoric and the lies peddled by our American Pravda media. Use your gut instinct. It is usually right and knows what is best for you.
WST4Y