Be a customer or go to jail!

For as long as I can remember, the theory was that if you wanted electricity, you became an electrical customer and had to pay for it.

Well, I just learned about a new rule that you want to live on your own property, you have to be “on the grid” (meaning, a customer of the local power company).

And if you are not, the government can throw you in jail and take away your home. Seriously, there is no better way to piss off a libertarian than this kind of shit government crap:

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.

I was alerted to this video by a reader and was troubled and sickened by what the poor people in the California Desert are being forced to deal with. From being threatened with jail time if they don’t hook back into the grid to being thrown in jail because the county didn’t like the look of their homes, the people in the deserts of Los Angeles County are being terrorized by their government.

They have a Reason video documenting the government war against a man who has owned his house for years, who uses solar power, and neither wants nor needs electrical, um, “service” (in quotes because if the government says you have to have it, how is that a service in the traditional sense?) The local authorities say that he has to obtain electrical service or he can no longer “live” on his own property.

What is “living”? Maybe we need a “right to live” movement. Maybe tar and feathers.

In any event, this is an outrage. (Among so many that I have lost count.)

MORE: The guy behind the raids on people who don’t want to be on the grid is Mike Antonivich, who sorry to say, is a Republican. (A former senate candidate and former Chairman of the California GOP.)

While it is true that Republicans are usually better, government tyranny is by no means limited to Democrats.