Californian Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has told Californians to “get ready” to feel the bite of a sweeping new by-law which sets the stage for widespread government confiscation of private property. The controversial Proposition 711 allows appointed officers representing the State of California to confiscate, sell or demolish any visibly unused property found within California’s porous borders.

Schwarzenegger, an avid outdoorsman, came up with the plan, dubbed “Use It, Or Lose It” by critics, during a walkathon in which he and his wife Maria Shriver strolled through suburban San Francisco streets last April. “Maria noticed at that time that among all the houses that we passed, over half of them were empty. We suddenly turned to one another after she made this comment and we said it almost simultaneously – ‘Hey! We could sell them!’”

Schwarzenegger’s maverick approach to raising money for state coffers has gained him a few enemies as well as friends, along the way. Dan Frick, an entomologist from Simi Valley, was inside a local Starbucks, when he noticed two newly-appointed Property Registrars eyeing his mountain bike chained up outside. “I nearly coughed up my Frappacino,” he said. “I ran outside just in time to hear these guys talking about selling it on eBay.”

Schwarzenegger’s main political opponent in California, child-actor Gary Coleman made the rounds of daily talk shows to denounce Proposition 711. “How is he (Schwarzenegger), supposed to know if somebody’s really abandoned their home, or pet, or bicycle, or just left them for a moment while they’ve gone to work, or pick up their kids?” Then Coleman did an impersonation of Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent.

Proposition 711 takes effect Tuesday, in most parts of California.