Brickbat: Reaping What They Sowed

Viorel Dudau / Dreamstime.com

Metric Giles got tired of looking at the trash-strewn vacant lot next door to the offices of the Community Stabilization Project where he worked in St. Paul, Minnesota. The lot was once the site of a church building that was torn down for code violations. So with permission of that church, which claims to still own the lot, he and some others who work in the neighborhood cleaned it up and planted a garden. But the state claims the lot had been forfeited to it years ago for back taxes and Ramsey County is its legal steward. And county officials have now placed "no trespassing" signs on the lot and ordered Giles to remove the garden.

Comments

[thrakkorzog]

In the you can't make this shit up file, who would name the guy opposing government overreach Metric?

[Ted S.]

Yeah; he should have been named Avoirdupois.

[Chipper-Shredder 2016]

The Metric system is rejected once again.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Leave him alone. Until you've walked 1.609 kilometers in his shoes you have no right to comment.

[Radioactive]

English

[Cynical Asshole]

Imperial

[thrakkorzog]

I'm guessing his parents named their daughters Fahrenheit, stone, and Celsius.

[Roger the Shrubber]

Cubit, Furlong, Hectare.

[Swiss Servator]

Rood, Gill and Fathom

[Chipper-Shredder 2016]

The trash-strewn lot was an urban art project. They were pissed that he replaced it with a rural art project.

[WTF]

He should file a complaint against the city for failure to properly maintain their lot.

[loveconstitution1789]

Government is without sin, so it can cast stones all day long.

[Adans smith]

Morning, Do they have to put the trash back in place as well?

[Fist of Etiquette]

Seems like the no trespassing sign prohibits him from doing anything further with the property.

[Mr Lizard]

Yep and he is required to carry insurance to perform work on city property. Would be a shame if he tweaked his back while working under orders from the city.

[Miter Broller]

He'll also lose out on the bid to clean up the lot to the county commissioner's brother-in-law, then be back-charged for their labor and not having the proper bond for working on city property.

[Cyto]

Remember "can't we all just get along?" Rodney King's plaintive plea for people to heed their better instincts?

Yeah, that's not where we are headed. Yesterday we were suspicious of the stories we were hearing from both sides in the Charlotte shooting. And now there's this from the self-described brother:

"I just know that all white people are f-cking devils." Then he adds, "All white cops are f-cking devils, and white people."

Nice.

It also appears that there's a gun lying right next to the victim in photos.

So.... maybe the henke stories are a little more one-sided than I was given to suspect.

[Cyto]

And maybe for the second time the media was a willing accomplish in fomenting racial animus by promulgating rumors that were made up from whole cloth in the immediate aftermath of a shooting. The fact that these stories were reported so credulously doesn't serve us well.

No stain remover on earth can erase "Hands up, don't shoot." And I wonder if they'll be able to take back "he was just reading a book." Now it appears that there are might be witnesses who back up the police version of events.

I get the pressure to get the story out live on TV. But this style of reporting just demonstrably led to the deaths of two people. Will teeth even gnash over this? Or will the media move on with their narrative. Inquiring minds want to know....

[Suthenboy]

Yeah, I just saw that on TV.

Welcome to post racial America.

[Suthenboy]

Wow. Check out the comments in that article. A lot of old timey, naked racism of the worst sort. I haven't heard that kind of shit since I was a kid. If we don't get a handle on this it could get really ugly. All of the pinkos that have been pushing the narrative that all whites are racist might just get to find out what it looks like when they actually are.

I saw an interview yesterday with a black man that tried to get all of his friends, some white some black, not to vote for Obama. They ostracized him. Half way through Obumbles second term he said they were all calling him up and apologizing, conceding that he was right.

Paraphrasing - "He's a damned community organizer. Don't you know what that means? It means he stirs the shit, gets people mad at each other. A rabble rouser. As soon as he got elected there was an atmosphere of lawlessness. He encourages people who don't understand anything but violence."

Actually he said it better than that, but that was the gist of it.

[Cyto]

To be fair, Obama is really, really good at it. He doesn't pull a Sharpton and run in front of cameras yelling about the white man after every natural disaster or racial incident.

He's more of a racism ninja. Just gently prodding things along when he feels the opportunity. At every step, when he has a chance to say something that pulls people together, he subtly prods them apart. Just a little. No Jesse Jackson style race-war rants. Just a little poke.

But it has proven very effective.

[loveconstitution1789]

"President Obama reportedly told police behind closed doors that he was the key to healing racial divisions between law enforcement and black communities."

"I'm your best hope," the president informed the groups, Mr. Pasco told The Washington Post.

[Princess Trigger]

"And our overpaid political analysts are now predicting that South Carolina will be going to Trump. That's another 9 electoral votes for the Nazi Frog."

[Cynical Asshole]

If only we had elected that black guy (what was his name? Brakka LaBamba? Omabda Barraka?) with the lofty rhetoric president, we would have ushered in a new "post racial" era of peace and harmony...

Oh well, could-a, would-a, should-a.

[some guy]

Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together, for some definition of the words "we" and "choose".

[Shirley Knott]

Government is simply the name that we give to things that we choose to do to you, where "we" is the government and "you" is everybody else.

[Jerryskids]

This sonovabitch just screwed them out of one of the items on their list of "things that need doing but we need more manpower and a bigger budget to get them done" they were getting ready to show the city council.

[Cyto]

To the article...

Is the state bound by some legal responsibility to do this? There is definitely something in common law about if you let something go long enough, you lose your rights to the property.

Like if your neighbor builds a fence 3 feet onto your property. If you don't do anything about it, the fence eventually becomes the new property line. 7 years seems to stick in my head.

Still, it would have been easier to simply draft an agreement that allows him temporary use of the property for a garden.

[Radioactive]

depends on your lawyer

[Gadfly]

What your referring to is called adverse possession, and the length of time varies from state to state but is usually in excess of ten years. It can be used both to gain property (through fencing) or easements (through use). It doesn't apply automatically, but must be proven in court and new documentation developed to come into legal force. The government, of course, exempts itself from being subject to adverse possession (if it didn't, it would probably lose like 80% of its land to clever/industrious citizens).

[Rich]

"We do not have a policy for long-term uses of unsold properties once they come into our possession."

Do "we" know how many unsold properties "we" possess? Perhaps "we" should develop such a policy.

[UnCivilServant]

Simple fix. Government is not allowed to own property. It must lease from the citizens.

As an extension of this, there can be no requirement to pay property tax.

[Rich]

The transitional period may prove slightly problematic.

[UnCivilServant]

I'll take it over the status quo.

[loveconstitution1789]

Plus, low flat tax that everyone pays without exemptions and no property tax.

[Doctor Whom]

"Without government, who would clean up vacant lots?"

"I will."

"No trespassing."

[Citizen X]

MUH TRASH-STREWN VACANT LOTS

[UnCivilServant]

Detroiter?

[Citizen X]

Thankfully, no.