Tag: private property

New Carbon Capture Legislation, Same Old Grift

A bi-partisan Congressional duo is pushing for a massive federal land grab through new carbon capture and storage (CCS) legislation in the U.S. House.

Utah Republican Blake Moore joins forces with California Democrat Jim Costa to sell out private property owners nationwide with the BECCS Advancement Commission Act of 2025.

BECCS stands for “Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage,” and the legislation builds on Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act, adding additional funding for CCS to the billions included in that massive financial debacle.

H.R. 5597 also proposes adding another layer of bureaucracy to our already bloated federal government. If passed, it will establish a BECCS Advancement Commission in the Department of Agriculture, a nine- or 10-member board comprised of career politicians, lobbyists, and subsidy recipients. (So much for DOGE.)

Assorted Accolades

To date, no other Congressmen have added their names as cosponsors. But the bill has earned plenty of accolades from those who stand to reap billions in federal largess. Some of them include:

  1. Arbor Energy, a carbon capture tech company founded in 2022, cozy with Microsoft, and which has already received $7 million in federal funding.
  2. Elimini, an even more recent startup launched in late 2024 and specializing in BECCS technology, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s renewable energy giant Drax Group. In other words, it’s a conduit for American tax dollars to a foreign-owned company.
  3. The Carbon Business Council (CBC) is a non-profit association whose members hail from CCS circles. It is involved in Elon Musk’s XPRIZE which, at $100 million, is touted as the “largest incentive prize in history,” and aims to fund development of carbon dioxide removal technology. CBC’s executive director, Ben Rubin, is a frequent speaker at United Nations climate conferences and at the World Economic Forum.

“BECCS is a novel technology uniquely positioned to promote wildfire mitigation, bolster economic development in rural America, and deliver much-needed baseload power as energy demand for data centers and artificial intelligence continues to grow,” stumped Moore as he introduced the bill. “This legislation will help us harness new technology to reduce wildfire risks, create good-paying jobs and keep rural economies like ours growing,” Costa predictably parroted.

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You’re On Your Own: Raleigh Police Chief Says She Will Not Put Officers in Harm’s Way to Protect Property

Raleigh Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown held a press conference on Sunday morning after the mass violence and looting by leftist protesters overnight. Deck-Brown called the mass destruction “disgusting and unacceptable.”

Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown then lectured on white supremacy in front of the looting buildings and said she would not put officers in harms way to protect property.

You’re on your own, suckers!

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Greens vote to ABOLISH landlords in bizarre assault on millions of Brits at party’s conference… even though one of their own MPs rents out a home

Green Party members have voted to ‘abolish’ landlords at their autumn conference as they took aim at the nearly three million people in Britain who rent out a home.

A motion passed at the Greens’ gathering in Bournemouth on Sunday committed the left-wing party to ‘seek the effective abolition of private landlordism’.

This would be achieved through punitive regulation and taxes on landlords, including the introduction of rent controls and scrapping of Right to Buy.

Those who let out Airbnbs would have to pay business rates under the Greens’ plans, while there would be double taxation for empty properties.

Party members also backed proposals for a ‘land value tax’ levied on owners not tenants, as well as the imposition of National Insurance on private rents.

In addition, the motion demanded the ending of buy to let mortgages as a means of removing finance for landlords.

It comes as the Greens look to build on their growing strength in major cities, with new leader Zack Polanski claiming they are ‘on track’ to supplant Labour in London.

But the motion could prove awkward for Adrian Ramsay, one of the Greens’ four MPs, who is landlord of a property on Norfolk.

According to his parliamentary register of interests, Mr Ramsay rents out a home he co-owns, which provides rental income of more than £10,000 a year.

The MP for Waveney Valley has previously defended being a landlord, posting on social media in August: ‘I co-own a property with my ex-wife, which we used to live in. 

‘I don’t make a profit from it as I have kept the rent below market rate. I don’t intend to be a landlord long-term.’

The motion passed by Green members on Sunday stated: ‘The private rental sector has failed, it is a vehicle for wealth extraction, funnelling money from renters to the landlord class.

‘This motion makes it clear Green Party policy is to seek the effective abolition of private landlordism and our support for building council housing.’

It added: ‘The Green Party believes the existence of private landlords adds no positive value to the economy or society, that the relationship between landlord and tenant is inherently and intrinsically extractive and exploitative.’

Carla Denyer, Green MP for Bristol Central, said: ‘While the motion to confidence had an eye-catching name, it does not actually ‘abolish’ landlords.

‘It does however address the housing crisis, empowers tenants and improves their wellbeing.

‘It contains a range of policies which, over time, would reduce the proportion of the housing market that is privately rented, and increase the proportion of socially rented homes.’

Mr Polanski, who was elected Green leader last month, has been dubbed an ‘eco-populist’ and is aiming to replace Labour on the Left of British politics.

He told The Guardian this weekend:  ‘I think it’s already happening. It’s happening at defection level.

‘Just last month in Barking and Dagenham, we welcome three new councillors to the party. It’s also happening right across England and Wales.

‘At local council elections, there was a stunning victory recently in Brighton, where the Labour vote completely collapsed and the Green vote rocketed.

‘Reform are still a worry, yes, and the fact that they’re polling even reasonably in London is a real threat, I think, to anyone who’s a progressive voice.

‘But absolutely, the plan has always been to replace Labour at the electoral level, starting at the local level, and I think we’re on track to do that.’

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Local Tyrants: How Property Rights of Farmers in Battleground States are Victimized by Zoning Boards

A new report spearheaded by the Private Property Rights Institute (PPRI) has profiled different farmers in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, highlighting the stories of how zoning boards have prevented them from properly utilizing their land to stay afloat.

In an age of Biden-driven inflation, domination of the farming industry by ruthless Big Ag and a myriad of other economic challenges, these farmers have also had to deal with the mandates of zoning boards restricting their ability to develop their land as they see fit.

Bob Wackernagel, a third-generation farmer in Michigan, has watched community-based farming slowly die off in Michigan. At the age of 60, he reports being the youngest farmer in his area. To make ends meet and preserve his family’s way of life, Wackernagel leased approximately 100 acres for solar development upon the most arid portion of his farmland. As a result, he has received attacks from township officials.

“I use the ground that returns me the least investment back on my crops … I’ve replanted two or three times a season on that land, because of poor soil quality… They act like it’s their land … They don’t have to pay the property taxes; they don’t have to farm it,” Wackernagel said.

Dwight Ely, a seventh-generation farmer from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, can trace his roots on his family’s land back to the 1800s. He raises livestock and operates a meat-processing business with massive and growing energy costs. Ely invested in solar panels years ago to help bring down his energy bill to manageable levels.

“Sure, it helped this generation for sure … big savings… absolutely, it helped to continue the generational thing for sure,” he said. “We pay that thing off, and it’s been nothing but awesome … It’s just been a gift that keeps giving,” Ely said.

Ely worked with neighbors to add fencing, plant trees and make sure his solar panels did not cause blight within his rural area. However, his hopes to expand his solar fleet as part of a business expansion plan that would have provided value to the community were stymied by the local zoning board.

“Some little guy sitting up at a little office at the township building says… he wants to make it hard. That’s the ridiculous part,” he said.

Two local officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan – Leoni Township Supervisor Howard Linnabary and Bradford County Commissioner Doug McLinko – believe that misinformation and a poor understanding of property rights are causing barriers that result in bureaucratic pushback against solar panels.

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How Weed Surveillance Drones Destroyed the Lives of These Californians

The drone hovered low, whirring like a giant bug above the lush, green northern California fields. Its camera was trained on the curved roof of an aging dome home. Inside, Keni Meyer, a petite, ponytailed 54-year-old, didn’t know her property was under surveillance again. But the Sonoma County authorities were taking another step in a harassment campaign, ostensibly aimed at unpermitted cannabis grows.

Drone photos of the property spurred the county to allege a series of building code violations. Those citations drew Meyer into a doomed six-year fight to save her property, as Sonoma’s covert cannabis surveillance operation warped into an attack on less affluent residents. For dozens if not hundreds of people, a crackdown on unlicensed cannabis crops has led to six-figure fines, foreclosures, and evictions. The result has been tears and devastation—even for folks, such as Meyer, who did not grow cannabis at all.

In June, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of three other Sonoma County residents. The suit says the authorities’ “runaway spying operation” violates constitutional protections against unlawful searches. Officials, the lawsuit charges, deployed a fleet of high-powered drones that could hover at 50 feet and capture high-quality video footage with precision zoom cameras, all while concealing the surveillance from residents, the media, and local oversight bodies.

To the ACLU, this isn’t ultimately about codes, or even cannabis. It’s about the right to privacy.

“We all have the right to live a private life at home without having to worry about a government drone flying overhead and watching us without a warrant or our knowledge,” says Matt Cagle, an attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “Sonoma County’s drone program demonstrates how technology further disrupts the power balance between governments and people, making it easy for agencies to warrantlessly sift through people’s private affairs at scale and levy charges and fines that upend lives and livelihoods. At the same time, the county has hidden these unlawful searches from the people they have spied on, the community, and the media.”

The lawsuit adds: “Never before has the government been able to deploy, at its convenience, an inexpensive and unobtrusive floating camera, controlled from afar, to surreptitiously monitor and record scenes from above a person’s private property.”

Drive around Sonoma today, and you’ll see plenty of housing that’s ramshackle and almost certainly unpermitted, with many egregious apparent violations. Many residents continue to erect out-buildings without permits, partly because the process is expensive and partly because many of them resent having to deal with Permit Sonoma as a point of principle: It violates their DIY ethos and their sense of rugged frontier freedom.

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91-Year-Old Pennsylvania Woman With Dementia Loses $247,000 Home Over a $14,000 Tax Debt

In yet another example of what is colloquially known as home equity theft, a 91-year-old Pennsylvania woman has lost her home—and all of its worth—over a small tax debt. But the case just outside of Philadelphia is a particularly vivid illustration of a predatory and gruesome practice that the Supreme Court broadly ruled unconstitutional in 2023.

In 2020, Gloria Gaynor (not the disco queen) forewent her yearly trip to the tax office during COVID-19, recounted Jackie Davis, her daughter, to the local ABC affiliate for its excellent report on the story. Gaynor’s faculties noticeably declined around then, according to Davis. Even still, the Upper Darby resident returned in 2021 to pay her property taxes, her attorney said, under the impression that the pause in enforcement meant the government would apply her money toward the previous year. Instead, it went to 2021, and her debt from 2020 remained intact.

As these things go, it continued to grow. Her $3,500 bill ultimately reached $14,419 with penalties, interest, and fees. The government sold that debt to a real estate firm, the CJD Group, which then acquired the deed to the home.

The rub is that the home is worth over 17 times that. Yet Gaynor—who had nearly paid off the mortgage—will not see a dime in equity, despite that she owed the government $232,000 less than what the home is ultimately worth.

Regular Reason readers may be familiar with Tyler v. Hennepin County, the 2023 Supreme Court case that ruled home equity theft illegal. The plaintiff, 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler, fell behind on her property taxes after some unsettling neighborhood incidents prompted her move from her Minneapolis condominium to a retirement home. She subsequently struggled to pay both her rent and her property taxes. So the local government seized the condo, sold it for $40,000, and kept the $25,000 in excess of her tax debt, which included steep penalties, interest, and fees.

“A taxpayer who loses her $40,000 house to the State to fulfill a $15,000 tax debt has made a far greater contribution to the public fisc than she owed,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.”

It was a good decision. But Gaynor’s plight highlights one way governments are getting around it: by selling properties for the value of the debt—instead of putting it on the market or selling it at auction—so that there is no excess equity to speak of.

That doesn’t mean, of course, the equity doesn’t exist. It does. It is just now in the hands of a private company, as opposed to the elderly woman who spent the last 25 or so years paying off the mortgage, and nearly finishing.

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“Above the Law” Landlord: Letitia James Caught Violating New York’s Rent Stabilization Laws

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, long claiming to be a public champion of tenants’ rights, has herself been in violation of New York City’s rent stabilization laws for more than two decades.

Since purchasing a four-story apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn in 2001, James has failed to register the property with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) as required for rent-stabilized buildings.

By failing to register, she denied her tenants the protections of rent stabilization, while collecting rents above the legally regulated amounts for 24 years.

New York City’s housing code is based on its “Rent Stabilization Law of 1969,” which was designed to shield tenants from large rent raises, unlawful deregulation, and eviction abuses.

It sets yearly allowable rent increases, typically at around 3% per year. The law applies to qualifying buildings and requires landlords to register with DHCR and file annual reports on tenants, rents, and lease terms.

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B.C. Supreme Court approves Indigenous ownership of Haida Gwaii

The B.C. Supreme Court has officially recognized the Haida Nation’s aboriginal title to the Haida Gwaii islands, excluding public infrastructure and private land, reported the Epoch Times. This decision affirmed an April 2024 agreement between the Haida Nation, B.C., and Canada.

On April 14, 2024, the Haida Nation and B.C. signed the “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement, supported by a 95% vote from Haida Gwaii residents on April 6.

The agreement was unanimously backed by all present in the B.C. legislature on April 29, received royal assent on May 16, and was supported by the federal government.

“Today Haida ancestors are dancing in celebration that the discrimination they endured in our colonial past is now behind us,” Haida Nation wrote in celebration.

“… the governments of the Haida Nation, Canada and British Columbia are forging a new path where we can foster the jurisdictional space for Haida laws to grow and deepen, without conflict, and based on respect.” 

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Hamilton man ordered to take down security cameras on home due to city by-law

On Monday’s live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Ugolini discussed a Hamilton, Ont. man being ordered by the city to take down the security cameras on his home in order to comply with a by-law.

Dan Myles, who has 10 security cameras on his home, was recently ordered by the city to remove the cameras over a by-law that restricts people from having cameras that view beyond the perimeters of their property.

He claims the cameras have actually been valuable assets for law enforcement over the years. “I’ve actually participated in evidence sharing of three homicides on these cameras, over 40 break and enters, multiple home invasions, car break and enters, assaults, you name it,” he said, as reported by Global News.

Sheila condemned the City of Hamilton for enforcing the by-law order on Myles to remove the security cameras from the outside of his home.

“He put some serious investment in this, and they’re making him pull it down. Why? Because he’s showing everybody the criminality of the neighbourhood,” she said.

“That’s the real problem. He’s the criminal, not the real criminals. Heaven forbid we see the license plate of the people who pull up to rob your house because he recorded a little off his driveway,” Sheila continued.

Myles has reportedly appealed the order and was told he could possibly be given an exemption if he provides a number of items including signed permission from neighbouring homeowners, police reports that support a need for the cameras, and a letter of support from his landlord.

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Miami Beach’s Silent Crisis: How Greed, Corruption, And Indifference Are Destroying Lives Behind Closed Doors

In Miami Beach, we have a problem most residents never see until it is too late. What is happening to Robert Kraft, known to many as Raven, is not just one man’s story. It is a warning to every homeowner and resident in this city.

Raven has run eight miles every single day along Ocean Drive for nearly fifty years. His daily run has become part of the soul of Miami Beach. Now, after decades of calling this city home, he faces foreclosure. Not because he refused to pay. Not because of financial irresponsibility. But because bad actors inside a broken system have found ways to exploit local enforcement gaps, city oversight failures, and association loopholes for personal profit.

It started as a legitimate repair issue. Structural problems led to court intervention. A Special Master, David Swilley, was appointed to oversee the building at 326 Ocean Drive. That is where the real abuse began. Instead of protecting residents, Swilley and his associates took complete control of the building’s finances, levied inflated assessments, misapplied payments, and took out high-interest loans without owner approval. Many of those loans appear to be linked to entities associated directly with Swilley.

There has been no functioning board. Residents have no vote. Notices are delivered late or not at all. Accounting records are opaque. Personal information was improperly exposed. Violations of the Florida Condominium Act and consumer protection laws are piling up. While residents are being financially squeezed and forced out, those in control continue collecting legal fees, management fees, and pocketing the proceeds of a manufactured financial crisis.

This is not mismanagement. This is exploitation.

The most outrageous part is not just the conduct of those running this building. It is the silence and failure of the city that allowed this to happen. Miami Beach’s local officials have known for years how these games work. They know certain properties get selective code enforcement. They know who receives special treatment with permits and inspections. They know when court-appointed agents abuse their authority, hide behind court orders, and strip residents of their homes one lien at a time. They know, and they do nothing. Why? Because too many of them are controlled by the same consultants and insiders who thrive off this system.

The city has building officials, inspectors, and lawyers on staff who could have flagged this behavior years ago. But instead, they looked the other way while residents like Raven were left to fend for themselves.

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