John Carona: The Texas Chainsaw State Senator

--Edward Hopper


Republican Texas State Senator John Carona is, his website tells us, the proud father of five.  He was born and raised and educated in Texas and his photograph smiles benignly out at you with all the menace of a well fed hog.  But if there ever was anything to that vapid phrase, "The American Dream," then he must be the personification of the anti-dream, the nightmare.

What makes him so utterly chilling is the benignity of his face and the oh so reasonable phrases which emanate from that porcine maw, as he defends some of the most hideous practices this side of capital offense.


What he does is to shepherd through the legislature laws which wrest  the single greatest investment any family ever makes--their home--from families and he hands these ill gotten gains to his own business, which quickly takes possession, sells these homes on the court house steps and makes a breathtaking profit for Senator Carona, or for his front company. 

And the best part about it is, because he's in a position to write the law, it's all perfectly legal.

His official biography mentions his children, his education, his years of "public service," but it never mentions anything about military service. That's interesting because one of the most notable victims of his scheme turns out to be an Army captain, who got a telephone call in Iraq from his semi hysterical wife back in Texas telling him they had lost their home to "foreclosure," which confused  the good captain mightily, because  they had already paid off the home and had no mortgage. How could a house without a mortgage go to foreclosure? Clearly, there was some mistake.


Ah, that's the beauty of Senator Carona's scheme:  It catches you just when you thought you were safe. Apparently, in all the hubbub of the deployment to Iraq, the payment to the Home Owners' Association (HOA) got missed and it turns out, in Texas Senator Carona has a special law for you which puts your home, which you thought you owned, in the possession of your home owners' association,   should you ever fall behind with that $230 check, well then the HOA can, without the participation of even a judge, seize your home, sell it for a profit all before you can say, "The check is in the mail."

So for the grievous offense of being late with a check to a HOA, for $230, you lose your $300,000 home, all while fighting in Iraq so Senator Carona can, back home, commit a perfectly legal form of real estate rape upon your family and future. Right here in the home of the free and the land of the brave. As my grandfather loved to say, "We've got the best government money can buy."

I love the Senator's explanation for his actions, as quoted by National Public Radio:

"Associations are a collection of neighbors," says Republican state Sen. John Carona, who represents Dallas. "The goal has to be to work well together -- have a harmonious community -- and to create a lifestyle that people enjoy and want to be a part of." 

Well, we can all agree with the Senator how important it is to be a harmonious community.

As National Public Radio disclosed, however: "In addition to representing Dallas, Carona owns the largest HOA management company in the country -- Associa, which has more than 100 offices, 6,000 employees and 7,000 HOA clients in 30 states and Mexico.Carona defends the rights of HOAs to foreclose for delinquent dues, even for small amounts."

But the Senator is not being unreasonable, after all, seizing the good captain's house while the captain is dodging explosive devices in the defense of the homeland, 

"If an association did not have a means, a forceful means, to collect that money from any homeowner who, for whatever reason, couldn't pay, it places an unfair burden on every other owner in that association," Carona says. "And a burden, quite candidly, that those other members didn't bargain for." 

And what a burden that would be, missing out on that $230, suffering through a delay. 


Now, some may wonder about proportionate response. Okay, you're late with your library book, so we take your car. You're late with your home owners' association check, burdening us with that unpaid $230, so we take your $300,000 home.


And real quick, too.

And, oh yes, NPR mentions, "There have been complaints that some members of HOA boards have bought HOA-foreclosed properties for a pittance, and then sold them for a hefty profit."

Complaints?  You think?

What I want to know is this:  Why is this Senator not in jail?

Another question:  Would you ever want to live in Texas? Would you even want to visit? Would you even talk on a phone to someone calling from that state?

This is, after all,  the state which leads the nation  in legal executions. At least with the executions, you figure someone might have done something pretty bad. But what did the good captain do to lose his home and find his family homeless when he returns? Well, he placed a burden on the HOA, to say nothing of the burden he placed on the Senator's bottom line.

And the captain and his family should be well acquainted with burdens. I mean, for whom and for what does the captain think he is fighting for, anyway, if not for the Senator and for  the Senator's right to the captain's private property?

Isn't Texas where they have all the marching bands and the flags and phony patriotism at football games? I guess the great affection those Texans feel doesn't go much beyond the waving flags;  certainly that affection does not extend to the man fighting for that flag.

I don't know, but I think Texas may have just leaped ahead of South Carolina and Arizona as my nominee for the first state to ex communicate.

And it's the conservative Republicans who are always screaming bloody murder about the sanctity of private property and the violation of private ownership by unlawful taking, and the heinous role of government thwarting the ownership society.

  And here you have Senator Carona making his fat way with a form of legalized burglary which steals not just the TV and the jewels but the entire house.

Kind of makes you proud to be an American.

Or as it says on the Senator's license plates:  Don't mess with Texas.

Who would want to?