Category Archives: Make it Viral!

Hang On To Your Flag For This One!

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I have sworn not to do more HOA flag stories because there are just too many of them. Tonight, I once again break that vow just because the latest flag nonsense is just so far beyond belief.

A tenant, a paying renter, is being told by his property manager to take down his American flag or they won’t renew his apartment lease. That’s no dog-bites-man news story. It’s way more bizarre than that.

Steve Roberts, who lives at The Oaks in Santee California is displaying his American flag INSIDE his home! The only way anyone can see it is if he opens the blinds inside his house.

How far will the lawn Nazis go to screw up the life of an individual resident? Apparently, there really aren’t any limits.  How much money in legal bills will they run up to demonstrate their disgusting lust for power? Again, no limits.

Folks, I usually don’t encourage you to send out stories to everyone you know, but on this one I am! From our top leaders to people trying to storm our country’s borders, the hate for the American flag is palpable.

(Link to KGTV in Santee)

 

Listen, As Never Before!

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guest blog by Robert E. Frank, Colonel, USAF (Ret.)
Founder, HomeOwnersCoalition.org & Veterans Advocate

On American Independence Day 2014, is it time to implement “Equal Justice Under The Laws” For HOA & Condo Owners?” Are legislatures willfully violating our citizen rights? If so, why?

Are the following not true?

– Federal Laws require all states to comply with the US Constitution as the Supreme Law of the Land.

– States are required to support and defend the US Constitution when passing statutes and implementing regulations.

– States, counties and cities are required to support and defend the US Constitution in their statutes, regulations, rules, codes, etc. that bind all citizens.

– Local government rules, regulations, codes, etc. establish the controlling concepts and limitations in CC&Rs for when, how and by whom Homeowner and Condo Associations are established, maintained and how the property owners are governed in addition to standard government restrictions.

– So, why can the state and local government authorities legally allow developers to implement CC&Rs that violate the Constitutional rights and protections of HOA and Condo property owners? Is this not morally deficient, if not exactly illegal?

– Is this not a clear case where the government is violating its own agreements and mandates to “EQUALLY” support and defend the Supreme Law of this Land for all citizens?

– Does claiming that because HOAs and Condos are created as special, quasi-governmental corporations there is no moral or legal obligation to protect all citizens equally under our Supreme Laws stand up to even plain old common sense arguments?

– How can state government authorities, on one hand, rigidly control the creation of property and the associated governance regulations and rules of HOAs and Condos; but, on the other hand, (much like the Pontius Pilate of the Bible) ignore the fact that they are directly aiding and abetting the conscious denial of equal justice under the laws for HOA and Condo owners?

On American Independence Day, please explain why such crass injustice can be tolerated and ignored by so many in this industry?

Why won’t every single one of you Americans reading this topic stand up and demand “equal justice under our laws” for HOA and Condo owners?

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What’s A Developer To Do?

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A massive monkey wrench has been thrown into the field of real estate development with a 55 million dollar verdict against developers of a condo conversion project in South Carolina.

Developers are the people we homeowners all love to hate. They’re the bane of our existence. Their rotten reconstruction work has led to the financial ruin of hundreds of thousands, even millions of American homeowners. So we generally stand and cheer when a jury hands down a huge verdict against a developer.

Well, let’s stand back and give this one a little reflection.

There are about 200 residents of the East Bridge Town Lofts in Charleston, South Carolina. They all bought into the idea of buying an apartment that was converted to a condominium. Sloppy work. Unlicensed building inspector, all the usual jazz. But including all the legal costs, each of these property owners will theoretically get about 300 to 400 thousand dollars. So far, so good.

But…

…when the bankruptcy filings start filling the courts like an overflowing sugar bowl, where will those homeowners all be? When the delays and appeals to higher courts start piling up even higher costs, where will those homeowners be?

The American legal system was originally meant to provide justice for the injured. Sadly, that’s not the way things turned out. Oh, the lawyers on both sides will claim victory, of course. But the homeowners? The ones who’ve had to declare personal bankruptcy? The ones who’ve died or divorced or moved on to try to repair their lives elsewhere, what happens to them? Will they look back with great fondness on how the legal system treated them?

(South Carolina verdict)

 

It’s Not About A Flag, It’s About Testosterone

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I swear, I’ve gotta quit doing stories about outrageous treatment of the American Flag, there are just too many of them. I could get stuck doing 12 or 15 stories a day. Still, I feel duty-bound to at least occasionally tell you when the latest cretin is pushing around his weight after having been given new power over other homeowners.

The latest victim of a flag outrage is a retired veteran named Larry Murphree of the Tides Condominium at Sweetwater, Jacksonville, Florida. It’s actually just a small flag that he placed in a flower pot on his porch. You can barely see it. It’s sticking in the flowerpot behind the right porch rail in the photo below. He’s been fined $8000 before and he got it settled in court.

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After his court victory, Larry replaced the flag. And once again he’s being sued for $8000 and confiscation of his home. Here’s a very tight shot to show you a real good closeup of this tiny flag.

“It’s worth fighting for,” says Larry. “It’s a small flag but it stands for a big thank you and it shows the love and respect I have for my country.”

Larry, a little advice here from someone who knows. It’s not about the flag. It’s about a brain chemical called Oxytocin. If you don’t know about it look it up. When a chimpanzee of either sex is placed in a cage with a bunch of other chimps at the zoo, there’s an immediate disturbance. The new chimp races around the enclosure showing off his or her ‘equipment’, spraying the cage, making other chimps a little frightful of his or her prowess. Jane Goodall spent a lifetime studying this kind of behavior in all kinds of primates.

Larry, you’re being victimized by a new board member who thinks his or her virility is a little more chemically tinged than yours. Or maybe this board member wants you to think his or her influence among the weaker members of the tribe will carry more weight on the evolutionary scale. Whether you’re an evolutionist or not, you cannot deny that chimpanzees share approximately 96% percent of their DNA with humans. They (and orangutans) are our closest relatives. In so many ways, they’re a lot like us and we can learn from them. Your flag fight is not about patriotism. It’s about simianism. It’s about oxytocin. It’s about sex.

All science aside, there’s perhaps a bit of usable truth here. Spread this blog far and wide around the Tides At Sweetwater condominium complex. Without putting yourself in a slander trap, figure out which tiny dickensonian creature has been causing you all this misery. The good women of the Tides at Sweetwater know that as a veteran you probably came from good genetic stock. They’ll respect you. Then gather the whole community’s support as they publicly and visibly show this ‘little’ simian how ‘little’ they think your challenger’s virility really is. Each hour of each day when those community members greet that simian they should hold up their fingers about one inch apart. It’s just a guess. Just to show how much that person is regarded in the community.

Most journalists won’t tell you all of this. But since I know a little about science I will.

(Fox News story (ignore the ad, they’re getting harder and harder to skip))

Please reach out to Larry and let him know this blogsite address so he can spread it throughout the neighborhood.

And here’s a quick link from him:

(let me fly the flag)

 

 

 

No More Flag Stories?

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I may actually have to quit doing stories on HOAs that fine and foreclose on veterans who try to display the America flag on their homes. There are just too many of them. Despite my earlier promise to report on all these outrageous cases, I’d just end up doing several such stories a day and not much else.

So, I hereby reluctantly admit that the anti-American, anti-homeowner movement, CAI, Associa, American Bar Association, ACLU are too firmly rooted in our society to ever win back our right to display the flag on our homes. We might still be able to put flag decals on car bumpers, but that, too, is under attack.

Greed is a powerful taskmaster. When a lawyer knows he can automatically make a few thousand bucks every time he sues a flag-waving veteran like Larry McMurphree, when a morally corrupt HOA board knows it can put a few hundred extra bucks in the neighborhood kitty by fining any homeowner who even thinks displaying a flag is patriotic, then I guess that portion of our battle is lost.

The really weird thing is that if you displayed a Nazi Flag or the Rainbow Flag, or any of the flags representing the Islamic Revolution, you actually might have a stronger case in court.

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The courts have long recognized that certain people groups have protected status under our Constitution and cannot be allowed to suffer the indignities sometimes shown to people of other belief systems. They’ll get free representation in court. The owner of a Stars and Stripes flag never will.

Stranger still, it’s absolutely OK to desecrate the flag, trample on it, burn it, those are all protected forms of speech according to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It hurts to say all this. It really does.

(Tampa CBS story on veteran being sued by his HOA)

(Elisabeth Hasselback talks about flag story) 

(good news for flag-flying veteran)