Category Archives: racketeering

Reflections on Flags

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Flag etiquette is a touchy subject in this country. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that burning the American Flag is a protected form of speech under the First Amendment. Still, we hear calls from elected politicians that displaying the Confederate Flag is not protected speech.

The beginning of the Confederate War was never about slavery, it was about the massive tax burden being imposed by the North against southern businessmen. The slavery issue arose two years into the Civil War and at that point the Stars and Bars and slavery were forever linked.

But the original flag, the one that George Washington commissioned, was never about slavery, either. It was about this country’s brash argument that it wanted to be free from foreign rule and oppressive taxes. Yes, George Washington owned slaves. So did many others of the country’s founders. So did the Cherokee Indians, for that matter.

So how is the American Flag any less a symbol of slavery than the Confederate Flag? The two flags are just red, white and blue pieces of cloth stitched together. And now professional rabble rousers are insisting that anything Red, White and Blue be torn down and assigned to the dustbins of history.

The two flags represent culture. There are good and bad things in every culture. But believing that Americans are too stupid to make up their own minds about important cultural issues is Political Correctness run amok.

Flee from political correctness, that apple barrel of hypocrisy and prevarication which is sitting and fermenting and waiting to poison the discussion and the common sense that most Americans have.

Now, we have a very real situation taking place in a Southern Colorado neighborhood. A Hispanic man hung a flag upside down as a show of disrespect because of the racism he feels in his community. He says he feels harassed by the HOA’s management company.

Whew! Don’t we all?

There’s a craziness afoot in American neighborhoods. There’s an intolerance that’s as insidious as a cluster of cancer cells. Let’s get rid of it. Leave the flags alone. Leave our First Amendment alone. If someone has the bad taste to display a flag improperly, just walk away and let him be. What a nice place this would be if we just gave each other some space. Forgive, forget, and get on with life.

(link to El Paso County flag story)

 

Wild Corruption In Nevada!!!

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OK folks! I’ve been an investigative reporter for forty years. And during that time thousands upon thousands of documents have been released to me. Oh, there’ve been two or three that were held back, but always because of some extraneous circumstance usually relating to a name a prosecutor or a judge wanted held back for personal or political reasons. And we usually found a higher judge who ordered the documents released.

But Damn it! Political reasons don’t apply here! Personal reasons don’t apply.  Nevada homeowners lost hundreds of millions of dollars when this organized crime ring crashed Homeowners Associations all over Nevada. Property values there still haven’t recovered. It wasn’t just a few dozen homeowners who were hurt in this monstrous scam. Millions were hurt. Taxpayers paid for this years-long investigation. Families went broke. Many lost their homes. Lives were lost. People killed themselves.

Who are you trying to protect by illegally keeping these files secret? A scummy judge who was able to escape indictment? Perhaps a scummy bigtime politician who, with his son, have become multi-millionaires investing in phony land deals based on illegal insider knowledge about housing trends in Nevada?

You found 100 “people of interest” in this case, but didn’t prosecute them because you thought it would be too expensive? Isn’t that a sneaky way of letting your friends and political boosters off the hook? Wouldn’t a thorough vetting of this whole slimy affair be a way for you to crawl out this greasy morass?

Federal Judge Mahan, there’s a lot you ought to be ashamed of including the awesome lack of meaningful prison time you handed out to these mobsters.

Now, you should be ashamed of letting your political cronies talk you into not releasing documents that you feel might shame your pathetic state and your miserable bench even further. I’ve learned over the years that when something doesn’t smell right, you start looking for the source. Something real close to where you’re standing, Judge Mahan, doesn’t smell just right.

(crooked lawyer gets ten years for swindling homeowners)

 

 

Disparate Impact Now The Law

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As predicted here many months ago, the U.S. Supreme Court was in a position to issue a ruling that could have a massive impact on Homeowners Associations. It has now ruled that ‘disparate impact’ in discrimination IS discrimination. In other words, even if a neighborhood didn’t know it was actually discriminating against protected classes, if the impact’s outcome meant the protected person felt he was a victim of discrimination he probably was. It’s a hammer blow to the brains of lenders, insurers and Homeowner Associations that felt they could discriminate at random just by trying to prove they weren’t really trying to discriminate.

What that means for you, the homeowner? Well, since the mistakes of managers always mean you have to pay the bucks, guess whose pockets the money comes from to pay the lawyers and the discrimination judgments? Why, on you of course. Remember, you’re not a homeowner. You’re a shareholder in the corporation that pretends it’s your HOA. But as a shareholder you have to pay increased assessments while one of your spokespeople (board officer, office manager, property manager), was doing all the stupid stuff that got you sued.

Yes, it’s dangerous to live in a Homeowners Association.

(link to article on widened Supreme Court decision)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/25/us-usa-court-discrimination-idUSKBN0P51UO20150625

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Intriguing Massachusetts Court Decision

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I’m not smart enough to figure out all the implications of this decision. It has to do with collections of HOA and Condo fees by law firms and how they may violate the letter of federal law governing Fair Debt Collection.

If you’re as attention deficit disordered as I am, you can quickly skip down to the section entitled “Implications of the McDermott decision to get a general sense of what this decision could mean nationally.

If this decision spreads to other states, it might be a ticklish time for HOA lawyers to get into the collection business. They just might find themselves hit with massive damage suits.

Two for the Price of One? The First Circuit Holds that a Violation of the FDCPA is a Per Se Violation of the Massachusetts Consumer Protection Statute | JD Supra

 

 

Just Another HOA Thief

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

No surprises here. HOAs and condo associations are nothing more than a thieves’ paradise. A simple internet search or glancing through neighborsatwar.dot com will reveal the massive numbers of thefts by HOA board members and HOA managers. The penalty…maybe a few days of community service and a little “talking to” by the judge and they are punishment free.

Here’s one in Still Meadows Condominium Association in Severn where Wanda Brooks could hardly shuffle into the courtroom with her walker but she was able to dine out, get her hair done, pay utilities, and buy gas on the HOA credit card.

Makes me wonder how many Mercedes have been purchased? How many kids have gone to college? (on a fully-paid HOA “scholarships”) How many luxury vacations have been taken? How much real estate has been purchased? How many bottles of booze have been consumed? How much jewelry has been bought? How many kids have had orthodontics? And how many boxes of diapers, dog food, and cigarettes have HOA dues paid for? Far more than we know about, I’m sure of that. Hundreds of millions of dollars per year are being stolen from homeowners and they don’t even know it.

The massive corruption in HOAs is beyond words. Yet, we have 1 in 5 Americans living inside of these hellholes under the belief their property values are protected by signing up for the HOA. What a joke!

Isn’t it interesting how people get so upset when somebody robs them of their wallet in a parking lot and it has $20 in it, but think nothing of all the years of being robbed blind by their volunteer HOA board member neighbors and paid property managers?

The more HOAs that are built in America should reduce the number of bank robberies, I would think. One comes with time in the federal penitentiary, the other with best wishes kisses from the judge.

(read it and weep, another embezzlement case)