Is the Self-Reliant Lifestyle Now a Crime in America?

Apparently living off the grid, off the land and without government assistance is now a crime that can land you in jail and cause you to lose your home. Government officials across the country are forming so called “nuisance abatement teams” to intimidate people into giving up their land or conforming to the governments demands and hooking back into the grid. Counties across the country are actually jailing people for living the way they want to live.

Related link: http://www.laweekly.com/2011-06-23/news/l-a-county-s-private-property-war/

Tough code enforcement has been ramped up in these unincorporated areas of L.A. County, leaving the iconoclasts who chose to live in distant sectors of the Antelope Valley frightened, confused and livid. They point the finger at the Board of Supervisors' Nuisance Abatement Teams, known as NAT, instituted in 2006 by Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich in his sprawling Fifth District. The teams' mission: "to abate the more difficult code violations and public nuisance conditions on private property."

Reporting by Mars Melnicoff and photography by Kevin Scanlon for LA Weekly.

For more, visit: http://www.laweekly.com/2011-06-23/news/l-a-county-s-private-property-war/

That was chilling. How about giving these people pre-approved interest-free loans to reasonably improve their properties?? The strong-arm attitudes trouble me. Somewhat unrelatedly, the various implementations of security-measures seem to display bad-attitude issues. I don't necessarily object to airport-security measures -- but the manner in which these measures are implemented should very carefully guard and protect the dignity and reasonable privacy of those being searched prior to boarding aircraft. This thing could be a slippery-slope, leading downward into a nasty police-state situation, which might be very difficult to reverse.

The agencies that are driving the individuals off their land are using the most basic, and possibly most effective, means for taking away peoples' rights. They do it slowly, and every time they do it they claim it is going to be the last time.

First, they arrive and tell the person living on the land that it would be nice if they could do a simple fix to their property. The person complies because it doesn't seem like something to make a big deal about. After that they ask them to do a slightly bigger fix, then a bigger one, then they are telling them to get off the land, then they will tell them they no longer own the land. This is the method Hitler used to subdue the Jews first in Germany, and then in most of Europe and Russia.

The question is, how does one effectively stand up to this method of abuse? If this was happening to me and I recognized it, I think I would get a lawyer as soon as possible. Any other ideas?