HOAs are lawsuit machines, not a doubt in my mind. And keeping neighborhoods all stewed up is all about full-time employment for lawyers. With that in mind, you’ll be stunned reading a column in last week’s USA Today.
(link to column on the lawyer cartel)
Well, I’m no longer a fan of the so-called ‘Ahmed, the Clock Kid.’ He’s the Texas 14-year-old who assembled a clock and thought it was cool enough to show his science teacher. In our no-tolerance world a kid can’t even point his finger and say “bang, bang” without the police being called. When the cops started interrogating Ahmed about whether the clock was a bomb, it became a viral sensation. He was solicited by colleges, got an invitation to the White House.
Now, it seems that Ahmed and his family want to sue the school and the police department for $15,000,000. Apparently Ahmed was so ‘traumatized’ by the incident he deserves that princely sum to help him get his life back together. He once had a great future ahead of him. But I wouldn’t hire him now. I wouldn’t want to contribute to his tuition.
This country’s tort lawsuit machine gives a lot of people around the world some good reasons to despise us.
Ah, the HOA movement has some pretty sneaky moves in some parts of the country. The Times-Picayune column linked below talks about how homeowners get together to form a neighborhood crime district in Baton Rouge. Theoretically, they hire an unneeded security guard or two, then BAM! They’re suddenly in a Homeowners Association.
Pay special attention to this guy’s third paragraph.
(link to Times-Picayune article on crime districts)
Since 2007 newspapers and TV stations around the country have been collapsing. Newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News and many others have simply gone out of business. But I’m learning that the Las Vegas Review-Journal is thinking about growing and creating a new investigative team. As far as I’m concerned that’s incredibly good news.
Without the investigative reporting of staff member Jeff German this country would know nothing about the massive Las Vegas HOA scandal that sent more than three dozen people, including lawyers, cops and public officials to prison.
More investigative reporting? Praise the Lord!
(link to Review-Journal’s plan to increase investigative reporting staff)
Sara Benson is reaching out to members of Congress and asking all of us to do the same. Pass the Amateur Radio Parity Act (S. 1685). National organizations that lobby to keep HOAs in business are on the opposite side. They’re telling Senators that HAM Radio enthusiasts destroy nice neighborhoods, something as ridiculous as saying that satellite dishes destroy neighborhoods.
HAM radio operators save lives when disaster hits. To forbid them from operating in a Homeowners Association is beyond the pale. When police radios and all cell phone service went down in New York during 9/11, who was getting out messages about where ambulances and rescue boats should be sent? I’d bet dollars to doughnuts it was HAM operators. Same thing during Hurricane Katrina and any number of other natural disasters. It happened in Colorado during the Boulder flood two years ago. It happened in my state in July of 1976 when a huge flood in the Big Thompson Canyon killed 143 people and trapped thousands for days. I was there. I saw it.
The Big Thompson Flood, Loveland, ColoradoSara thinks it’s urgent that we overcome the cacophony of false information pouring into the U.S. House and Senate. Ask your legislators, no demand of your legislators that they pay serious attention to the Amateur Radio Parity Act. I agree.
(link to information on the Amateur Radio Parity Act)
