Lawless, the Antichrist Spirit Has Begun to Move, Man’s Home Seized over $8.41 in Unpaid Property Taxes…

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Brace Yourself, This Is Just the Beginning

The Bible says ‘difficult times will come’ when men will be irreconcilable, treacherous and reckless (2 Tim 3.1-7). It speaks of an on-going ‘spiritual’ war against mankind (Eph 6.10-20).

Supreme Court Sides With 94-Year-Old Woman Whose Home Equity Was Seized By County

Tyler Durden's Photo

by Tyler Durden

Friday, May 26, 2023 – 10:40 PM

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with an 94-year-old Minnesota grandmother who was wronged when her county forced the sale of her condominium over unpaid taxes, and kept the proceeds that far exceeded the taxes she owed – the latest “home equity theft” to make headlines.

The case followed a report late last year by the Pacific Legal Foundation which found that 12 states and DC allow local governments and private investors to seize far more than what is owed from homeowners who fall behind on property tax payments.

Writing this opinion was Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote in Tyler v. Hennepin County that “The taxpayer must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but no more.”

Christina Martin, an attorney for homeowner Geraldine Tyler, told the court during April 26 oral arguments that local governments shouldn’t be able to seize and keep the full value of a home as payment for much smaller property tax debts.

Minnesota law allows counties to retain windfalls at the expense of property owners – which between 2014 and 2020 applied to around 1,200 Minnesota residents who lost their homes and all the equity in them, for debts that averaged just 8% of the home’s value, according to PLF.

Tyler owned a modest one-bedroom condominium in Hennepin County, but after she was harassed and frightened near her home, she moved to a new apartment in a safer neighborhood. The rent on her new apartment stretched her resources and she fell into arrears on her condo’s property tax bills, accumulating about $2,300 in taxes owed, along with $12,700 in penalties, interest, and costs.

The county seized Tyler’s condo, valued at $93,000, and sold it for just $40,000. Instead of keeping the $15,000 it was owed, the county retained the full $40,000, amounting to a windfall of $25,000, according to PLF. -Epoch Times

Tyler sued, arguing that her Fifth Amendment rights were violated when the government breached the ‘Takings Clause.’ Her lawsuit was originally rejected by the courts, including the US Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, which found the seizure legal.

The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that the principle that Tyler’s right not to have her her property seized goes back to English law, and as far back as the Magna Carta of 1215.

The Takings Clause ‘was designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole,’” wrote Roberts.

“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.”

“[I]f a bank forecloses on a home because the homeowner fails to pay the mortgage, the homeowner is entitled to the surplus from the sale.”

In collecting all other taxes, “Minnesota protects the taxpayer’s right to surplus.” So if a taxpayer falls behind on income tax and the state confiscates and sells the property, state law provides that any surplus must be returned to the owner. The same rule is followed regarding arrears of personal property tax—such as for a car—and real property tax.

In Tyler’s case, the “State now makes an exception only for itself, and only for taxes on real property. But ‘property rights cannot be so easily manipulated,’” Roberts wrote, citing Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, a 2021 Supreme Court decision that pitted the property rights of an employer against labor organizing rights. –Epoch Times

“Minnesota may not extinguish a property interest that it recognizes everywhere else to avoid paying just compensation when it is the one doing the taking,” Roberts wrote.

Dan Rogin, Hennepin County assistant administrator and auditor told the Times in an email: “Based on today’s decision which found Minnesota’s law unconstitutional, Minnesota’s property tax forfeiture laws must be revised. Hennepin County will work closely with the Minnesota Legislature to create a process that is consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision.”

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A Michigan Man Underpaid His Property Taxes By $8.41. The County Seized His Property, Sold It—and Kept the Profits.

State law allows counties to effectively steal homes over unpaid taxes and keep the excess revenue for their own budgets.

An 83-year-old retired engineer in Michigan underpaid his property taxes by $8.41. In response, Oakland County seized his property, auctioned it off to settle the debt, and pocketed nearly $24,500 in excess revenue from the sale.

Under Michigan law, it was all legal. And hardly uncommon. 

Uri Rafaeli, who lost his property and all the equity associated with it, is just one of the thousands of people to be victimized by Michigan’s uniquely aggressive property tax statute. The law, passed in 1999 in an attempt to accelerate the rehabilitation of abandoned properties, empowers county treasurers to act as debt collectors. In the process, it creates a perverse incentive by allowing treasurers’ offices to retain excess revenue raised by seizing and selling properties with delinquent taxes—even when the amount owed is minuscule, and even when the homes aren’t abandoned or blighted at all. 

Organizations representing property owners like Rafaeli say the practice is unconstitutional, inequitable, and unreasonably harsh. They call it “home equity theft”—a process that’s a close relative to the civil asset forfeiture laws that have been used by police departments to similarly deprive innocent Americans of their property without due process. They are now asking the state Supreme Court to restrict the practice. 

“Michigan is currently stealing from people across the state,” says Christina Martin, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, a nonprofit law firm now representing Rafaeli and other homeowners in a class-action lawsuit that will go before the Michigan Supreme Court in early November.

“Counties have been authorized to take not just what they are owed, but to take people’s life savings.”

A Win-Win Situation

Rafaeli’s case—which has the potential to stop the predatory behavior of county treasurers across the state—began with a simple mistake.

Uri Rafaeli

In August 2011, Rafaeli purchased a three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot home in the predominantly African American community of Southfield, Michigan, a lower-middle-class suburb just north of Detroit. “The investment was good to the state economy, and [at] the same time, it may produce a good rent for my retirement. A ‘win-win’ situation,” says Rafaeli, who lived in neighboring Macomb County at the time. (He no longer lives in Michigan.)

The $60,000 purchase was recorded by the Oakland County Register of Deeds on January 6, 2012. About six months later, in June 2012, Rafaeli was notified that he had underpaid his 2011 property tax bill by $496. Rafaeli made subsequent property tax payments on time and in full—and, in January 2013, he attempted to settle the unpaid tax debt, according to court documents. 

But he made a mistake in calculating the interest owed, resulting in another underpayment of $8.41. 

A little more than a year later, in February 2014, Rafaeli’s rental property was one of 11,000 properties put up for auction by Oakland County. It was sold for $24,500 in August of the same year—far less than what Rafaeli had paid for the property just three years earlier. 

Today, real estate service Zillow, which rates the Southfield region as a “hot” market in the Detroit region, estimates the property is worth $128,000, But Rafaeli has missed out on reaping a financial reward for being an early investor in the area. 

“I believed in the power of the U.S. to withstand the difficulties,” says Rafaeli, “and I believed in its fairness and dignity in doing business there.” Now, he says, he thinks differently. 

“Punitive for Property Owners, and Profitable for the County”

Uri Rafaeli’s house and surrounding property in Southfield, Michigan.

In court documents, Rafaeli’s attorneys estimate there have been more than 100,000 properties—along with the “entire equity in them”—that have been taken by Michigan counties since 2002. “In thousands of instances each year, the proceeds for a given property sold at auction far exceed the delinquent tax amount and are far less than a delinquent taxpayer’s equity in the property,” they argue. “This results in millions of dollars in surplus proceeds and equity for the counties and tax sale purchasers.”

At the root of those seizures is a 1999 update to Michigan’s general property tax statute. That legislation, Act 123 of 1999, gave Michigan’s 83 county treasurers the authority to act as the primary agents for handing the foreclosure and auction of properties with unpaid taxes. It also expedited the process for seizing and auctioning homes that owed taxes, allowing county treasuries to sweep aside liens and other speed bumps in the tax foreclosure process.

The legislation’s goals were “to encourage the rapid reuse of property, prevent the onset of blight, and improve the overall use of property” in the state, according to a 2011 University of Michigan report about the effects of Act 123 in Wayne County—where Detroit is located, and where the 1999 law has had the most devastating effects on homeowners.  

Over the past decade, more than 150,000 properties in Detroit have gone through the tax forfeiture process, according to data collected by Jerry Paffendorf, the founder of Loveland Technologies, a Detroit-based mapping firm. The process, says Paffendorf, is “punitive for property owners and profitable for the county.”

Paffendorf became increasingly interested in Michigan’s unique tax foreclosure rules shortly after Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy when his company worked with an anti-blight task force to identify and photograph abandoned properties across the city. At the time, the media was fascinated with Detroit’s economic collapse—one of the most memorable signs of which were the homes being auctioned for $1,000 or less. 

As he began tracking the supposedly vacant homes being auctioned off by the city, Paffendorf noticed an odd trend: Lots of them weren’t actually vacant.

“There was sort of an assumption that tax foreclosures were happening to abandoned buildings. You know, properties that people had left,” he tells Reason. But that wasn’t always the case. “We saw thousands of properties that had people living in them being auctioned.”

That was happening because of the accelerated foreclosure process created by Act 123, which harshly punished any Michigander for falling behind on property tax payments. Prior to 1999, the average time between a property falling into tax delinquency and foreclosure was five to seven years, but Act 123 reduced that timeline to a little over two years. The accelerated foreclosure process caught many homeowners who fell behind on their taxes during the Great Recession. 

In Michigan, property taxes are due twice per year. Bills are sent in July and December, with payments due in April and November. If there are outstanding debts from the previous year, delinquent properties are turned over to the county in March the following year. The county buys the debt from municipalities—the funding comes from the county’s “delinquent tax revolving fund” (DTRF)—and the county effectively becomes the debt collector for the unpaid taxes. Under state law, counties are allowed to impose a one-time 4 percent administrative fee to each delinquent property and may charge 1 percent interest for every month the tax remains unpaid. 

If the property owner still owes back taxes by March 31 of the third year of delinquency—that is, two years and 31 days after the county took over the collection process—the county can foreclose and take the property to auction. 

Source: Oakland County Treasurer’s Office 

Source: Oakland County Treasurer’s Office 

After a property is auctioned, the county keeps the proceeds and recycles the revenue through the same DTRF used to buy the debt from municipalities in the first place. 

If the county ends up with a positive balance in its DTRF, the excess funds can be channeled into the county budget. 

That’s how Wayne County has funneled more than $382 million in delinquent tax surpluses into its general fund budget since 2012, according to an analysis by Bridge magazine, a Michigan-based nonprofit publication.

In Oakland County, where Rafaeli’s Southfield property was seized and sold in 2014, the process has been lucrative too. According to the county’s most recent comprehensive annual financial report, its DTRF had $196.8 million in net assets. 

The same document details plan to use the DTRF for a number of pet projects, including the construction of a new animal shelter and adoption center. The county also “anticipates the continuation of annual transfers from the DTRF to support General Fund / General Purpose operations in the amount of $3.0 million annually for FY 2019 through FY 2023″—totals that are in line with historical norms, according to the annual report. 

That’s hundreds of millions of dollars in private equity that have been transferred to the two counties’ control—completely legally, under the terms of Act 123. 

“It is simply government-sanctioned theft,” says private attorney Philip Ellison. Ellison has been involved in a series of class-action lawsuits targeting nine Michigan counties’ use of home equity forfeiture over the past six years, during which time, he calculates, counties in Michigan have pocketed more than $36 million in surplus equity seized from tax-delinquent properties. 

Ellison represents people like Donald Freed, a resident of Alma, Michigan, who had his home and 35 acres of land seized by Gratiot County, Michigan, over a $750 tax debt. The property was auctioned for more than $100,000—and, of course, the county kept the change.

Romualdo and Erica Perez

The same thing happened to Romualdo and Erica Perez, a father/daughter duo who bought a four-unit apartment building and an adjacent, abandoned single-family home in Detroit in 2012. Even though they were living in New Jersey at the time, Romualdo would drive 11 hours to Detroit on weekends to fix up the properties in the hopes of eventually relocating there to be closer to other relatives. Romualdo and Erica planned to live in the house and earn a living by renting the small apartment building.

“Every bit of money we saved and every spare minute we had gone to fixing the house,” Erica says. “The plumbing, the electricity—everything.” 

But the first year they owned the property, they underpaid their property taxes by $144. County tax records show that they made full payments, on time, every subsequent year. But Wayne County never informed them of the unpaid debt, they say, because the notices were sent to the wrong address. But the county should have known the correct address for the notices because more recent property tax payments indicated the proper address, says Martin.

In 2017, the county foreclosed on their property sold it for $108,000 and kept the excess equity beyond the $359 owed in back taxes, fees, and interest. They, too, are suing the state with the assistance of the Pacific Legal Foundation, in a case that’s separate from Rafaeli’s.

Making Detroit a Worse Place to Live

In addition to destroying the livelihoods of individual property owners, Act 123 has made Detroit a less attractive place to live. 

(Graphic courtesy Loveland Technologies / Jerry Paffendorf)

“Detroit’s collapsing structures and vacant lots didn’t just happen,” the Obama administration’s special Detroit Blight Removal Task Force concluded in its 2013 report. “They are the physical result of dire economic and social forces that pulled the city apart.”

The county’s aggressive home equity forfeiture scheme seems to be part of the problem. Over a two year period between 2017 and 2018, volunteers working with the Quicken Loan Community Fund, a Detroit-based nonprofit connected to the mortgage company, interviewed more than 60,000 property owners who owed taxes to the city. Most were aware that they owed taxes but did not have accurate information about the process or the potential consequences. 

Worse, the survey found that aggressive use of home equity forfeiture was leaving the city with more vacant properties, not fewer. “In theory, the annual tax foreclosure auctions are intended to take properties that are neglected and not generating tax revenue, and sell them to owners who will pay taxes and put the properties to productive use,” the Quicken Loans Community Fund report concluded. “In practice, most Detroit homes that have been tax foreclosed do not return to productive use. Instead, speculators who purchase cheap property at auction allow it to deteriorate without paying property taxes, leading to further depressing home values and blight.”

Paffendorf, whose company was involved in the Quicken survey, says that about 80 percent of tax-foreclosed properties end up abandoned. Some are vacant because they are going through forfeiture, and some are going through forfeiture because they are vacant, he says. But regardless of which way the causation runs, it’s fairly obvious that a law that was meant to return tax-delinquent abandoned properties to productive, tax-producing ones is failing to achieve that goal.

“If you sell houses with people living in them,” Paffendorf tells Reason, then “you’re only creating more vacant properties.”

An Incentive for County Officials to Steal 

The aggressive use of home equity forfeiture under Act 123 has not only failed at its stated goal of returning abandoned homes to productive use, it has created a perverse incentive for county officials to effectively steal from their constituents. 

On the morning of April 1, 2014, Linda Irwin, Cass County’s treasurer, emailed a county contractor to say she was “tickled pink” to have the opportunity to seize a $3.5 million lakefront property. The deadline for the property owner to settle an unpaid property tax debt had passed the day before and the county was ready to foreclose. In subsequent emails, the contractor joked with Irwin about using the property to host cookouts for county employees, according to court documents attached to a lawsuit against Cass County. 

It wasn’t until three weeks later that Douglas Anderson, the registered agent who was handling the property and overseeing the construction of a still-unfinished home, became aware anything was wrong. In court documents, lawyers representing Anderson and property owner Sergei Antipov allege the county failed to provide adequate notice about the unpaid property taxes. Cass County argues that it took the appropriate steps required under law, sending two certified letters to the address. Both were returned as undeliverable, likely because there was no one actually living at the address yet.

It was not until April 18, 2014, weeks after the foreclosure deadline had passed, that county officials called Anderson to tell him the property was being seized. When Anderson and Antipov offered to pay the back taxes, the county refused to accept it.

“It’s a done deal,” Irwin told a local newspaper in June 2014. “They’ve tried to send us a check for $100,000, and I’ve returned it. I’ve had my council look at it, and we’ve done everything right. We didn’t make any mistakes. They did.”

Maybe so. But the county—and the contractor, Title Check, which works with county treasurers across the state and gets to keep a portion of the proceeds from auctioned properties—does not appear to have done much to alert Antipov that he owed taxes. 

Antipov’s situation bears many similarities to the forfeitures that targeted the Rafaeli and Perez properties, among others. In each case, the property owners alleged that they were not given sufficient warning about their delinquent taxes. In some cases, that’s because county officials were mailing notices to unfinished homes or properties without permanent residents. In others, like Rafaeli’s case, the notices were delivered to tenants who failed to pass along the information to their landlord, mistakenly believing that the county would inform the landlord separately.

The county officials involved in each of those lawsuits contend in court documents that they complied with the notification requirements written into state law. Although Act 123 does require that county treasurers make three attempts to contact tax delinquent property owners, attorneys representing the homeowners say more should be done.

“They don’t have to sue in the normal sense,” says Martin. Because the legal action—the forfeiture—is filed against the property itself, the notice required is significantly lower than what is required in other legal matters. And some counties don’t include delinquent taxes on subsequent property tax bills, she says. “There is no notice on the new assessments that says ‘you have not paid a prior year’s bill.'”

In Cass County, officials don’t appear to have done anything beyond the bare minimum. Antipov’s attorneys say it would have taken a quick online search to find that the property was owned by an LLC registered in Anderson’s name and with his Indiana address. Antipov, who owns a metal fabrication company in Indiana, owns another property in Cass County and would have been on the county’s tax rolls (and likely known to the treasurer’s office) But neither the county nor Title Check made anything other than the bare minimum effort to avoid running out the clock established by Act 123.

“This is a major asset,” Irwin said in 2014. “We can sit on it and decide what to do with it, or we can move forward with an auction.” 

Irwin died in 2018, but Cass County is still engaged in a lawsuit over the property. The county has racked up more than $250,000 in legal fees since 2014 defending its right to seize Antipov’s property, documents show. The home is still unfinished. 

And while some county officials use Michigan’s aggressive foreclosure law to benefit their budgets or to provide a setting for backyard barbeques, others use it in ways that are more openly designed to advance municipal self-interest. 

Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree has also been caught on camera admitting that Wayne County and the city of Detroit will sometimes conspire to manipulate the auction process. During a 2015 appearance on “Detroit Wants To Know,” a local web series, Sabree talked about how the treasurer’s office will bundle properties together in order to make them more attractive to potential buyers—or perhaps less attractive, so the city of Detroit can keep certain parcels for itself. 

“It’s a group of properties we put together because we cooperated with the city of Detroit…Nobody will buy this bundle, and then we can just give it to the city, and then the city will use the demolition funds to tear them down,” he said. “And in the bundle, we also had some good properties, which the city then sold to fund the demolition and the management of the properties they took.”

It’s not only the city that benefits. In February, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News published a joint expose showing that Sabree’s relatives purchased several homes in county-run tax foreclosure auctions. When confronted with the allegations, Sabree dismissed the rules that forbid treasurer’s office employees or their family members from bidding in those auctions as “intrusive and unrealistic.” 

Sabree did not return requests for comment. But in July, an ethics board voted 5-1 to clear him of any wrongdoing, concluding that his wife’s purchase of properties in 2011 did not violate the ethics rules because the rules were adopted in 2012. Wayne County Executive Warren Evans told the Detroit Metro Times that he was “not sure that the Board’s action today did much to address” the concerns about Sabree’s behavior. 

In Oakland County, the suburban county north of Detroit where Rafaeli’s property was seized and sold in 2014, there were 86 properties included in the county’s 2019 land auction, held in October. In 2018, the county auctioned off 79 properties that had been seized due to unpaid taxes, according to a list obtained by Reason via Michigan’s freedom of information law. That’s down from nearly 300 properties that went to the auction block as recently as 2015 in the same county. 

County Treasurer Andrew Meisner, who is a defendant in the Rafaeli lawsuit going to the Michigan Supreme Court, did not return repeated requests for comment on this story.

His office says it tries to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. In a press release issued in March 2019, Meisner said his office has “contacted hundreds of property tax owners to discuss their options to avoid foreclosure” before the April 1 property tax payment deadline. “Preventing foreclosure is in everyone’s best interest,” said Meisner, in the same statement. Yet the evidence clearly shows that county officials and budgets have benefited from aggressive seizures and sales. 

An Unconstitutional Fine

If Rafaeli is victorious before the Michigan Supreme Court, the next step would be to enter into negotiations with Oakland County to determine a fair market value for his lost property and he would be entitled to “just compensation.” And so would a lot of other Michiganders. “If the Michigan Supreme Court in the Rafaeli case…rules in favor of the property owners, counties will be required to make an appropriate refund,” says Ellison.

Legally, the matter is fraught. Counties seizing excess revenue above and beyond the amount necessary to settle the unpaid debts could be considered a taking—in which case it would be subjected to the Fifth Amendment, which promises that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The Michigan Constitution offers similar protections against the government taking private property without compensation.

Oakland County has prevailed in lower courts by arguing that the seizure of Rafaeli’s property was a forfeiture. But that argument runs into other legal problems: For one, even under the wide leeway that is afforded in asset forfeiture laws, there must be an allegation of underlying criminal activity. Not paying property taxes is a civil violation, but not a criminal one.  

“Traditionally, civil forfeiture would only apply to the product of the crime or the proceeds of the crime,” says Martin. Although many states and localities have stretched their use of civil asset forfeiture to include cases where no one is actually convicted of a crime—often as part of drug enforcement—the legal doctrine requires that the property seized must be “tainted with criminal activity,” she says. 

But if that’s the way courts want to look at it, then the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines would apply. It doesn’t matter that state law, like Act 123, might authorize such a forfeiture if it is unconstitutional. 

In a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case last year, Timbs v. Indiana, the high court ruled that the excessive fines clause applies to both state and federal proceedings. In Timbs, the state of Indiana attempted to seize a $42,000 vehicle that had been used to transport illegal drugs, but the Supreme Court determined that taking the value of the vehicle—which was many times in excess of the allowable monetary fine for the crime Tyson Timbs had committed—violated the Eighth Amendment.

That might matter for the Rafaeli case. “Tax foreclosure is not the same thing as a forfeiture,” Wesley Hottot, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit libertarian law firm, tells Reason. Hottot was the lead attorney in the Timbs case. 

“But even if they were right,” Hottot adds, the forfeiture, in this case, violated the excessive fines clause of the U.S. Constitution, he says, “because it was grossly disproportionate to the minor offenses involved.”

Michigan Supreme Court

In a brief submitted to the state Supreme Court defending Oakland County’s use of home equity forfeiture against Rafaeli, the Michigan Association of County Treasurers makes several arguments in favor of the existing arrangement. Does the current system allow for counties to more easily? address blight, the group argues, despite the evidence, like Paffendorf and Quicken found, that it has made blight worse in some places. 

Elsewhere, the group’s arguments seem to contradict one another. Ruling that tax foreclosure is a taking “could eliminate any incentive for property owners to pay delinquent real property taxes,” the MACT argues because the threat of punishment must exist for property owners to comply. But, later, the group argues that the seizure of an entire property to pay a smaller debt is “not intended to be punitive” and therefore does not run afoul of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines.

At the very least, the group’s attorneys argue, the legislature—not the courts—should be responsible for fixing Act 123, because it would be able to do so “without destroying the tax collection process.”

At other times, county officials have pleaded poverty. “They were on the verge of [bankruptcy] for quite a while. It was up to elected officials and administrators of local governments to take the initial steps (to collect taxes) and somehow they just didn’t do it,” Ray Wojtowicz, a retired Wayne County treasurer, told Bridge in 2017. It’s clear that counties in Michigan now count on being able to pad their budgets with revenue from homes seized for having unpaid taxes. 

The burden of aggressive property tax enforcement, meanwhile, falls heaviest on poor communities. Wealthier homeowners have easier access to the legal and accounting assistance necessary to avoid underpayments or to quickly address any problems. Once the property is seized, there’s no guarantee of due process or even a court hearing. Homeowners don’t even have access to public defenders; those are allocated only in criminal cases.

In some counties, Act 123 has “created this incredibly unhealthy incentive where the county isn’t just satisfied when they make enough to cover what they would have made in taxes,” says Paffendorf. “They are relying on these surpluses from people who are in debt.”

University of Massachusetts law professor Ralph Clifford has spent years studying home equity forfeitures in Massachusetts. The state has a less aggressive foreclosure law but similarly allows municipalities to pocket excess revenue when tax delinquent foreclosures occur. His research shows that an estimated $56 million is appropriated from Massachusetts taxpayers every year. After reviewing all such seizures—known as “tax deed” actions, under Massachusetts state law—that took place between August 2013 and July 2014, Clifford found that towns in the state collected $42.87 for every dollar in taxes owed. His analysis includes one instance in which a property assessed for a value of $24,000 was taken to cover a $26 tax bill. 

“As far as I can tell,” he told Reason, “it’s all just blatantly unconstitutional.”

Reforming the System

“We’d had these situations for decades, where people have lost their entire homes over a few hundred dollars of unpaid property taxes,” Montana state Sen. Tom Jacobson (D–Great Falls) tells Reason. “They would lose their entire homes. Forty years. All that equity. Over a few hundred bucks.”

Shortly after his election to the state legislature in 2012, he introduced a bill to require that property owners be compensated for what is taken—minus the debt owed and any interest.

But Jacobson says he was surprised by the level of opposition he witnessed. Lobbyists for counties (which handle property taxes in Montana, like in Michigan) said the bill would hurt their budgets. 

He reintroduced the bill during the 2015 and 2017 sessions—Montana lawmakers meet for a formal session only once every two years, though they have an interim session in off years where much of the groundwork is laid, though no votes are taken. By the third time through the process, lawmakers agreed to add additional notification requirements before a property could be seized. 

This year, the state legislature passed, and Gov. Steve Bullock signed, a bill giving property owners the right to the remainder of the equity in their homes after the tax debt is settled. The bill also requires that properties cannot be sold for less than 50 percent of their assessed value—an important caveat that should prevent some of what has occurred in Michigan.

The reforms also flip the counties’ incentives. Instead of being able to profit off delinquent taxes, says Jacobson, officials will now have an incentive to make sure the taxes are paid upfront and on time—or they’ll have an incentive to help taxpayers find ways to meet their obligations. 

A Penalty More than 8,000 Times the Underlying Debt

FABIANO/SIPA/Newscom

In Michigan, however, the practice of seizing homes over tiny underpayments of property taxes is likely to remain in place unless the courts step in. A bill introduced in the Michigan state House by Rep. Gary Howell (R–Lapeer) to reform Act 123 collected a handful of co-sponsors this year but did not receive even a committee vote. 

This means there will be more people like Uri Rafaeli, who lost a home over an $8.41 mistake. His property bought as an investment is valued at an estimated $136,000. The penalty imposed by Oakland County was more than 8,000 percent greater than the underlying debt. 

But today, while the legal battle over its fate plays out, the house sits empty. It generates no tax revenue for the city or county. It earns no money for Rafaeli or his wife in their retirement. 

“The Constitution was written to prevent the government from violating a right that preexists the Constitution,” says Martin. “If this can happen to multimillionaires and to the poor, to the elderly….If this can happen to Mr. Rafaeli, it can happen to anyone.” Source: Reason.com

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This is what happens when the God of peace, law, and order is rejected.  In comes lawlessness and chaos.  Our God told us this would happen 2,000 or so years ago.  It is happening but we did not choose this.  We who believe did not reject the Lord Jesus Christ or the Father.  We accept Him and we obey Him.  Those who believe those who accept Jesus Christ and obey His commands will be lumped in with the wicked when all hell breaks loose upon them do not know or understand the scriptures.  Proof?  Yes, the same proof is given over and over again:  Noah and Lot. 

Luke 17: 26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They were eating and drinking and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29 but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all— 30 so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed.

Bible prophecy says that lawlessness will increase at the end of the age. In fact, this increase will itself be a sign of the end of the age.

The Bible says ‘difficult times will come’ when men will be irreconcilable, treacherous and reckless (2 Tim 3.1-7). It speaks of an on-going ‘spiritual’ war against mankind (Eph 6.10-20).

Jesus confirmed that there will be a definite end to the present age when He told us to watch for certain signs. Bible prophecy adds many more signs to give a comprehensive view of the state of the world just before Christ returns. This topic is widely debated with various interpretations of prophecy. Here we take a common interpretation that is not in conflict with historical events, or with observed events (reality) in today’s world.

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Some have rejected God’s laws concerning celebrating His feasts, for example, saying it is meaningless in light of the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the destruction of the Second Temple in A.D. 70. For these and many others, they choose to practice the 10 planks of communism rather than the 10 Commandments. This too is a sign of His soon return!

And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. – Matthew 24:12

Since September 11, 2001, America has entered the dark side and the Babylonian spirit of lawlessness has overtaken the country. Prior to 9/11, America was different. A few days after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press, where he said, “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.”

Before 9/11, America was generally at peace and seen by the world as “a shining city upon a hill”.
We did not have Homeland Security.
We did not have an Iraq war pre-emptively waged against an enemy that had not attacked us.
Before 9/11, we did not have the Guantanamo Bay detention camp operated by the United States government illegally holding detainees indefinitely and using controversial interrogation techniques.
We began to torture people including waterboarding.
Before 9/11, we did not have Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq with human rights violations in the form of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, including torture, reports of rape, sodomy, and homicide of prisoners committed by military police personnel of the United States Army together with additional US governmental agencies.
The Patriot Act was passed, significantly reducing restrictions in law enforcement agencies’ gathering of intelligence within the United States; expanded the Secretary of the Treasury’s authority to regulate financial transactions, and broadened the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities in detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorism-related acts. The act also expanded the definition of terrorism to include domestic terrorism, thus enlarging the number of activities to which the USA PATRIOT Act’s expanded law enforcement powers can be applied.
The National Defense Authorization Act was passed, placing domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which opened the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.
The Constitution was trashed and Posse Comitatus was abandoned.
American citizens are now routinely surveilled by government agencies monitoring their voice and email communications.
Following the events of 9/11, the foreign policy of America changed and the spirit of Babylon erupted.

The emergence of the Antichrist
The high level of apathy among the population and ignorance of Bible prophecy is paving the way for the Antichrist. The day may not be far off where you will be called upon to declare your allegiance to whom you will follow. You will have the choice of remaining loyal and faithful to God and be persecuted for it, or be loyal and faithful and show allegiance to the king of this world and be left alone. It would appear the Antichrist will easily deceive people who only want to hear what tickles their ears and feeds their selfish desires. We are witnessing events today that would appear to be setting up the tyrannical antichrist new world order with hardly a whimper from most people.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. – 2 Timothy 4:3-4 Source

Signs of the Last Days: Increase of Wickedness
There is a growing pattern of wickedness and lawlessness dominating our society today that throughout history was found in civilizations in the process of decline. It is a pattern evident in nations that rejected God’s Word as the ultimate authority in their lives and is a pattern prevailing in many Americans today.

Scripture tells us that…

Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. – Matthew 24:12

wickedness

I believe America’s rejection of Christ’s lordship is the reason behind all the bloodshed, violence, racial hatred, moral decay, drug abuse and the outbreak of deadly sexual diseases in our society. Lawmakers, educators, and the media have made God an unspeakable subject. Even in prisons, there is a ban on religious mottos, including the ten commandments. Even worse, many of our churches no longer exalt Christ as Lord and king.

Rejection of God’s Word
Because man has rejected the truth of God’s Word, he has been given over to a reprobate mind that seeks self-gratification over responsibility to others.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way, the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. – Romans 1:24-32

It’s the false teaching of Antinomianism that teaches since faith alone is necessary for salvation, one is free from the moral obligations of the law.

Typically, Antinomianism considers that law and freedom are opposed, that law is a restrictive mechanism, a product of civilization and therefore opposed to the free exercise of natural instincts. That is why antinomianism and naturalism, as Arnold Toynbee pointed out, are twin manifestations of the same movement. The New Testament declares that this distaste for the law will lead, not to the promised freedom, but to slavery (2 Pet. 2:19).

Even our national leaders now model this behavior, evident recently in the scandalous sexual behavior of the President followed by a widespread acceptance of his adulterous sin by the American public. And we are seeing the results of that reprobate mind with the increase in homosexuality, lesbianism, abortion, euthanasia, drugs, crime, rebelliousness in youth, and every evil imagined by the heart of man.

Another disturbing trend is the increasing violence surrounding what should be peaceful protests. Militant protesters on both sides of the debate are arriving at what should be a nonviolent protest armed with sticks and guns, bleach bottles, balloons filled with feces and urine and improvised flamethrowers, and the law enforcement agencies stand by and allow it.

A Judgment from God
When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread: So will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and pestilence and blood shall pass through thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I the LORD have spoken it. – Ezekiel 5:16-17

As my friend Nathan Leal points out, the mass suicide shootings and murder we are witnessing throughout America and the world are part of the fourfold judgment of God upon America. The displays of senseless violence, murder, and mayhem we have witnessed in recent years are part of that fourfold judgment upon America. God is allowing a new phase of demonic activity upon this country, and it is going to continue to escalate in the coming years as God continues to judge our nation.

The national corporate-owned fake news media sanitizes its coverage of the vile acts occurring in our society and only reports on a very few of them. Vast numbers of senseless acts of violence go unreported because their reality would be too graphic for a national audience.

On the other hand, Hollywood is more than happy to dramatize the satanic inspired violence to satiate the desires of a wayward populace. The recent popularity of “zombie” themed programming may actually be more prophetic than many realize of a coming “zombie apocalypse” of evil beasts released on the land.

The liberal mainstream media has shown only tiny fragments of video shot by The Center for Medical Progress exposing human trafficking by Planned Parenthood. Democrat politicians in Washington shamelessly defended Planned Parenthood stating the videos were highly edited and misleading. Anybody watching the hours of video captured would plainly see they were not highly edited and very clear that Planned Parenthood officials were trafficking in baby body parts for profit.

Very little attention was given to the account of U.S. Army captain Dan Quinn and Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland who have been relieved of their duties and later involuntarily separated from the Army. What was their crime? In 2011, they had intervened in the Afghanistan custom of bacha bazi, or “boy play,” in which young Afghans are used as sex slaves by grown men. This time-honored tradition might include child pornography, sexual slavery and child prostitution in which prepubescent and adolescent boys are sold to wealthy or powerful men for entertainment and sexual activities. Quinn and Martland beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave.

Bacha Bazi Documentary

U.S. soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan have been instructed not to intervene in the abuse of Afghan boys by U.S. allies, even in some cases in which it’s taken place on military bases. This barbaric bacha baozi practice had been reported on for years by the alternative media before the issue was forced upon the mainstream media.

Death in the Schoolyard
What would motivate an 11 and 13-year-old to take up a weapon and murder their fellow students?

Was it the availability of guns? Or maybe an overabundance of violence produced in Hollywood? Or was the environment these children were raised in? Or perhaps could it be part of the fourfold judgment of God?

Why is there so much violence?

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God– having a form of godliness but denying its power. – 2 Timothy 3:2-5

The Apostle Paul said that in the last day’s man would be “brutal.” The Greek, ‘anemeros’ literally means “untamed, savage, or brutal.” He also said that the last days’ man would not be lovers of the good – possibly better translated as “haters of the good.”

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. – Romans 1:28-32

Our city streets have become asphalt jungles. Many of them are unsafe even in the daytime. Gang violence has increased, drive-by shootings and other random violence have become standard fare as people have become more brutal.

The Spirit of lawlessness is breaking out across America and has spread to younger age groups. Teenagers have lost all respect for authority – they are becoming hard-hearted, sensual and violent. “The increases in violence we’re observing are among very young people and they are very dramatic,” said Glenn Pierce, the director of Northeastern’s Center for Applied Social Research. This crime wave isn’t confined to inner-city neighborhoods in large urban areas. Cities with populations of 25,000 saw a 40 percent increase in homicides – the same as cities 10 times their size. The Washington Post concluded, “While the severity of actions ranges from simple cheating at school to pushing drugs, to cold-blooded murders … the depth of the problem has reached a point where common decency can no longer be described as common. Somewhere, somehow … the traditional value system got disconnected for a disturbing number of America’s next generation.”

In New York City a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed by his 15-year-old best friend. The 15-year-old killed him and then stole the coat and shoes from the corpse. Worst of all, the teenage killer had no feeling of remorse.
Another 15-year-old boy sprayed bullets around the parking lot of a convenience store, killing a teenage boy. When questioned later, he had not even a tinge of guilt or sorrow. Instead, he displayed hatred and a desire to do it all over again if he had the opportunity. He had no remorse whatsoever.
14-year-old Marcy Conrad of Milpitas, California, had been raped, strangled to death, and left lying off the road in the hills outside of town. According to the local paper, at least 13 students went out to look at her body. One girl picked up the murdered girl’s jeans, cut off a patch, and threw the jeans down along the side of the road. One student tried to cover the body with leaves. Another took his eight-year-old brother along to see the body. One boy went twice. Those who saw the body went back to class or to the pinball arcade. One went home to bed. Another student said he only cared about collecting the marijuana cigarette he had won on a bet that the body was real. As the newspaper reported: “The shock is the shock of the encounter with icy indifference, the indifference of the kids in the first instance, but much more importantly, of the culture that produced them… The depersonalization did not begin yesterday; it is not unique to this moment, yet it seems more complete – and they seem more alienated and isolated – than we have ever known before.”
14-year-old Tanisha Lee was stabbed in a hallway fight at Wichita’s East High School and later died.
In 2016, homicides in Chicago IL jumped to their highest level since 1996, when 796 were recorded, according to historical data from the Chicago Police Department. Chicago saw 3,550 shooting incidents and 762 murders in 2016, an average of more than two murders and nearly 10 shootings every single day. 2016 totals represent a 57 percent increase over 2015, the biggest spike in murders in Chicago in 60 years, according to the Associated Press.

The problem is not isolated only to the United States. Urban violence is exploding in countries around the world. In the rapidly growing cities of Latin America and Asia, in European capitals freeing themselves from years of communist rule, and in societies in the throes of political and social change in Africa and the Middle East, millions of people have been frightened and angered by a seemingly boundless wave of bloodshed. As in the United States, criminals abroad are increasingly armed with sophisticated weapons and police are out-manned; increasingly too there is despair over the inability of political leaders to stop the killing.

Public order has disappeared in “the new South Africa.” Crime is rampant. In Cape Town, a serious crime occurs every 17 seconds. Police have 1,227,047 unsolved cases under review, according to Crime Investigation Services divisional chief Johan le Rous. It is increasingly dangerous in South Africa to own a nice car since roving gangs of unemployed thugs surround nice cars at intersections, drag the driver and passengers out, beat them brutally, then drive off with the car – just for a wild “joy ride” in which the car is vandalized or wrecked.

Because we have rejected objective truth and the foundation of all that is good, we no longer even know the difference between good and evil. Our consciences have been so seared we are no longer offended by evil but tolerate it.

Since virtually all perverted behavior people engage in is now categorized under “natural behavior,” a door is now opened for more wicked sins. Just thirty years ago we would have been appalled, even outraged, by the decadence and debauchery that daily fills our streets, TV shows, movie screens, music and art, video games, businesses, and political bodies. But today we rarely give it a second thought. In fact, we often give it our approval, or a least fail to speak out against it. We have gotten used to it all, even though it is not a good thing to get used to.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in the American Scholar, “The amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels the community can ‘afford to recognize’ and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by any earlier standard.” [Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Defining Deviancy Down,” American Scholar, Winter 1993, pg. 17.]

As a society, we have gotten used to illicit sexual relationships, adolescent promiscuity, abortion, cheating, lying, stealing, prostitution, rape, divorce, and even murder. We have gotten used to financial mismanagement on both civil and personal levels. We have accepted political corruption. We have rejected personal and social responsibility and learned to blame anyone or anything else for our problems and failures. We have traded in our infinitely valued divine image for a nickel-plated pagan shrine erected in honor of self-interest, immorality, and social apathy. The American ideal today is me first to do what I want, when I want, to whom I want, regardless of who or what it may hurt. These are the signs of a society gone wrong. [Keith A. Fournier, “Re-Civilizing America,” Law & Justice, February 1994.]

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. – Isaiah 5:20

Children with guns don’t kill people…
Children with NO MORAL VALUES kill people.

{short description of image}There are many factors in the increase in crimes committed by students beyond what our learned liberal social scientists understand. Listen to the pundits on TV and other media and you’ll quickly discover they haven’t got a clue. Or perhaps, they do but since it doesn’t fit their collectivist agenda, they choose to ignore them. They all simply refuse to address the real problems for fear of offending someone, losing grant money, or losing advertising revenues.

Let me suggest some rather unpopular and politically incorrect reasons for the rise of violence among the youth and who shares in the responsibility.

Family Breakdown
The breakdown of two-parent families is more than obvious. Just 40 years ago families usually lived close to grandparents. Fathers were responsible for the welfare of the family. Moms generally stayed home. It was safe to walk to school or go to the movies unattended.

Today, statistics show divorce is at an all-time high in the United States. It is now so common for young people to grow up in divorced households that the term “broken family” is now a forgotten expression in popular culture. Fathers are living apart from their natural children. Mothers no longer stay at home but work as ahead of the household. As a result, women in our society have lost their feminine identity and the moral authority of fathers is undermined by a society that no longer embraces the structure of the family.

In a recent study released by Metropolitan Life and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Center for Workforce Preparation, students were asked why they do not talk about their problems in school or about disagreements with other students. “Those who have been victims of violence are more likely to believe their parents cannot help (29 percent), that adults do not understand their problems (47 percent), that they will get into trouble (22 percent) and that their parents are not interested or are too busy to help them (17 percent).” (cited in Dr. Billy James Hargis, “Why are U.S. schools wracked with gunfire?,” Christian Crusade, June 1998).

The Environment
The environment in which children are being raised has changed dramatically in recent years, creating new anxieties for mothers and fathers. Unspeakable dangers haunt our schools and streets that were almost unheard of a generation ago. Yesterday’s families didn’t worry much about drive-by shootings, illegal drugs, sexual molesters and kidnappers. When I was a child, my folks were more concerned about a disease called polio than all sources of violence combined. In my adolescent years, I moved about freely and played without worry. If I was a half-hour late coming home for dinner, my family was not seized by panic. Now we worry about our kids playing in the front yard. Indeed, little Polly Klaas was abducted from her bedroom in 1993, where she was surrounded by friends, and then was brutally murdered for the perverse pleasure of her killer.

For years, one of the Liberal’s favorite reasons for violence was the environment children are raised in. They liked to say that it was poverty that drives these kids to violence. They are now having to back away from that a little as the violence spreads into middle-class suburbia. The 15-year-old student in Springfield, Oregon who shot his parents and gunned down his fellow students was from a good family, on the right side of town. The high-school freshman lived in a big, beautiful house. He hung out with the preppies at school and played football. He was just an average, everyday kid. The High School senior involved in the shooting in Fayetteville Tennessee was among the top 25 students in the 307-member senior class.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Liberals are missing the bigger picture – they ignore the personal responsibility of each and every one of us.

It’s a lack of parental supervision at home, a lack of family involvement in school, and homes where children get NO religious training. It’s the isolation, rejection, and loneliness these kids feel in their broken and dysfunctional families. These kids have lost that family “connectedness” of feeling loved, wanted and cared about my parents and being satisfied with the relationship to the mother and/or father. Many kids are doomed to go through life not knowing God and that He loves them and is there for them and that He can help them in times of need.

Yes, the often-violent cultural environment we live in is a contributing factor in the violence. It’s an environment where parents are replaced with guidance counselors, love is replaced with distrust and hate, personal responsibility is replaced with socialist government programs, truth is replaced with relativism, sacrifice is replaced with selfishness, and God is replaced with chaos and evil.

Moral Relativity
We have abandoned the traditional notion of right and wrong and personal responsibility. These children have been raised in the liberal politically correct philosophies of “tolerance” and “there is no one right way” of doing things. So, given their supposition that there is more than one right way to deal with a relationship gone bad, why not shoot her? Hey, we need to tolerate these kid’s differences, right?

For 20 years or more, relative truth – what’s good for you – has been taught, rather than biblically-based absolute truth. We have indulged a generation: ‘You have a right to your feelings,’ instead of the biblical idea that you need to have self-control.

Hypocrisy
We tell these kids that Joe Camel is bad for them but glamorize and condone alcohol. Teachers send children to their alcoholic homes where they are abused by a drunk parent and then respond by calling Juvenile authorities who take them out of the home and place them in foster care. These hypocritical messages are received by the kids who learn they are only pawns meant to be played by some liberal political cause.

Then confront them with their detestable practices, for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They committed adultery with their idols; they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to me as food for them. [Ezekiel 23:36-37]

We tell them that drugs will harm them. Yet, at home, their medicine cabinet is full of all sorts of drugs: drugs for headaches, allergies, asthma, heartburn, nasal congestion, impotence, or hair loss. Worse yet, we give our kids Prozac or other drugs to control their behavior, but tell them that pleasurable drugs like marijuana are bad for them. Hardly a consistent message.

Public Government Schools
It should be no surprise of the escalation of violence in our public government-run schools. It is within the walls of those schools where our children are taught to reject God, to embrace moral relativity, and to disrespect life.

God has been banned from our schools. Prayer is outlawed. Christian expression is stifled and mocked. The very foundation upon which our laws are based and upon which morality is judged – “The Ten Commandments” has been removed. “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is a principle not deemed important in our schools.

Public education has rather taken up the mantle of the likes of John Dewey and his ilk teaching the religion of Secular Humanism. It should be no surprise our kids act the way they do… they’re only doing what they’ve been taught. We are teaching in our children in schools across the nation that they evolved from reptiles and animals. Why should we be surprised when they act like animals?

Our schools are teaching our youngsters that premarital sex is alright if they only practice “safe sex” and protect themselves from the disease. If a young girl happens to get pregnant from this enlightened view of sex, no problem … the Planned Parenthood trained school counselor just sends them to a local abortionist to kill the baby. Today, popular culture views abortion as a “right.” And, what’s the bottom line lesson? Life is cheap! When we, as a society, can condone the killing of 1.4 million babies a year, what message can we be giving besides, “life is cheap.” When women are given the power to decide if a helpless baby in their womb is going to die, then don’t be so surprised when they think that a baby is subject to their will, and kill it five seconds after it’s born and throw it in a dumpster, or five years after it’s born. The principle of violence is the same.

TV Anchor Hugh Downs introduced a 1991 ABC News segment: “Your child could be in a class that only a few years ago might have been unthinkable- death education. These classes are supposed to prepare young people for coping with death and while most schools make it part of a health class, some actually make it an entire course.” Tom Jarriel went on to report how Tara Becker, a junior at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado believed she was seduced into a suicide attempt by her Death Ed class. Becker told the news magazine: “I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn’t brave enough. The things that we learned in the class taught us how to be brave enough to face death.” [Drudge Report, April 24, 1999]

Steadily, society’s undermining of life is growing to include calls for legalizing euthanasia, assisted suicide, and scientific experimentation. Is it any wonder these kids don’t have respect for life? We are, in fact, teaching them to disrespect life.

Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. [Matthew 24:9-14]

Corrupt Government
A government that lives off of society’s moral decay is another reason for the out of control violence we are beginning to see.

The Roman civilization crumbled under the weight of an immoral and corrupt government. Over the years, our government has devised the creation of whole agencies that exist for no other reason than to manage some of the most immoral aspects of the culture. The National Endowment for the Arts and the Legal Services Corporation are examples of agencies that foster society’s decline.

Within the judicial branch of government, judges accountable to no one have helped undermine the religious freedoms that were once the centerpiece of our society. Laws once protected children and families. Criminals were punished severely for rape. People were arrested for cohabitation and adultery. Sodomy, outlawed in every state, was listed in the newspaper as a “crime against nature.” A couple having a child out of wedlock was ostracized, and homosexuality was as foreign to the world as walking on the moon.

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The Left, a broad term for Liberal Socialist Democrats that can only be explained fully by using the Bible explanation of the human race is as follows. A servant of Satan, because you are either saved or lost. This election has brought out the true nature of who you serve. Simply put, it’s Donald Trump, Conservatives, and Christians against the rest of the world. The Left’s Love applies only to those who believe as they do. They Love evil and commit Anarchy against those who love good. They are governed by lies and never tell the truth. On this Friday, Inaugural Day for the swearing-in of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States the Left wants to commit widespread Anarchy to shut down the swearing-in ceremony. Their goal of transforming America, which was founded in Judea Christian values into a Pagan Nation is almost complete. Their goal has always been the total removal of God from American society and the downfall of America. Donald Trump says he is a Presbyterian, but he left off the USA, an apostate church.

StevieRay Hansen
Editor, HNewsWire.com

The Birth Pains Are Growing Stronger….

“Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of man and devils”…
My name is Steve Meyers and I need to share a vision and warning that the Lord showed me back in April 2007….

Many of you will ask why I waited so long to share the warning. I didn’t. I shared the story with everyone that would listen from pastors to friends to family to colleagues. Immediately following the initial vision, I called a close friend. I told him to sit down that I had something to tell him. I needed it documented as I knew this was supernatural and from God. As I witness events unfolding today, I need to share the vision again.

The risk of loss in trading futures and options on futures can be substantial. The author does not guarantee the accuracy of the above information, although it is believed that the sources are reliable and the information accurate. The author assumes no liability or responsibility for direct or indirect, special, consequential or incidental damages or for any other damages relating or arising out of any action taken as a result of any information or advice contained in this commentary. The author disclaims any express or implied liability or responsibility for any action taken, which is solely at the liability and responsibility of the user. Steve Meyers

The silencing of the American people before 2020?

“The human heart is an idol factory.”

The Un-Godly — Those That Suppress the Truth, the social media giants built multi-billion dollar empires by giving everyone a voice, but now that they have such a dominant position on the Internet they have decided that many prominent conservative voices should be completely silenced.

Our government has been overthrown. As evidenced by Trump’s capitulation on the border, his recent servitude to the GMO industry and his acquiescence to the warmongers, our President has been compromised. Our liberties are being eliminated one by one. Gun confiscation is next. The Constitution is gasping its last breaths. Our borders are destroyed and our culture has been turned upside down by every perversion known to man.

https://hnewswire.com/life-as-you-have-known-it-will-never-be-the-same-again/

The Left, a broad term for Liberal Socialist Democrats that can only be explained fully by using the Bible explanation of the human race is as follows. A servant of Satan, because you are either saved or lost. This election has brought out the true nature of who you serve. Simply put, it’s Donald Trump, Conservatives, and Christians against the rest of the world. The Left’s Love applies only to those who believe as they do. They Love evil and commit Anarchy against those who love good. They are governed by lies and never tell the truth. On this Friday, Inaugural Day for the swearing-in of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States the Left wants to commit widespread Anarchy to shut down the swearing-in ceremony. Their goal of transforming America, which was founded in Judea Christian values into a Pagan Nation is almost complete. Their goal has always been the total removal of God from American society and the downfall of America. Donald Trump says he is a Presbyterian, but he left off the USA, an apostate church.

Everything done in dark will be brought to light, being biblically bankrupt will not exclude the elitist.

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