I will live to fight another day, and what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, and blah, blah, blah.
It was as bad as anyone's first School Yard fight, I take on the bully to help those less able and I got my ass kicked, and while I wipe at a bloody nose, everyone pats me on the back and tells me what a good job I did.
And you know what? I did live, it didn’t kill me, and I will do better next time because I am stronger.
On the bright side, I didn’t throw up before entering the courtroom and was feeling ok about things as I understood them. Where I went sideways was some wording in the Code that states Public Health and Safety, so when the Judge started asking about Safety I went off point.
International Building Code is given authority by a City Ordinance, this is how cities can regulate and pass laws even though the council members are not elected as State Legislators. The State Constitution allows cities to make ordinances for the governance of that city, and the residents, if they follow the State Laws and Statutes.
So what happens when a city fails to follow the rules and runs amuck?
That is where you and I come into play, we must challenge these failures of our Cities, and go to court, show the courts the city’s mistake, and prove our position, so what went wrong in my case?
Well. when the City Prosecutor and the Judge started focusing on the IBC, International Building Code, they weren't looking at the issue of Authority, what actually gives them, the City, the authority to violate my private property rights, so let’s go down the Rabit Hole and take a look.
Here is a screenshot of one of the City Ordinances, the wording is the same in both ordinances that the city Claimed I was in violation of.
That is where you and I come into play, we must challenge these failures of our Cities, and go to court, show the courts the city’s mistake, and prove our position, so what went wrong in my case?
Well. when the City Prosecutor and the Judge started focusing on the IBC, International Building Code, they weren't looking at the issue of Authority, what actually gives them, the City, the authority to violate my private property rights, so let’s go down the Rabit Hole and take a look.
Here is a screenshot of one of the City Ordinances, the wording is the same in both ordinances that the city Claimed I was in violation of.
It goes on with more Legalize but this statute, 9-801 authorizes the City to do certain things, like the “regulation of the construction and maintenance of commercial and residential buildings”, and as simple as that may sound, it is quite abstract and arbitrary.
I might suffer from a Public Education, but doesn’t the “s” at the end of Buildings make it plural, meaning more than one, and in law, the word “Residential” is not the same as the word “Residence”? Take for example the two words “Will”, and “Shall” you might use these words interchangeably in everyday conversations, but in the Courtroom, these two words have extremely different meanings in Law?
Because the Code uses words like Public Health and Safety does not mean that these words automatically apply to anything other than the construction and maintenance of commercial and residential buildings.
To be in violation, a prosecutor would need evidence from the accuser or the Code Enforcement Official in my case, that I was building “commercial and/or residential buildings”, if not, then the prosecutor should not proceed, just like in the Movies!
Abstract and Arbitrary
This is where abstract and arbitrary come into play, the Prosecutor told me that from the city’s point of view, my private residence is one of the city’s many residential buildings, and therefore they have the authority to regulate my private property, yeah really, that is what She said.
In the IBC, words like Commercial and Residentials Housing appear quite a lot, but Residential Buildings are a function of the City Government;
Residential building means any public building which is used for sleeping or lodging purposes and includes any apartment house, rooming house, hotel, children's home, community−based residential facility or dormitory but does not include a hospital or nursing home.
Because of the verbiage used, like housing, and buildings, it gets abstract, Residential Housing is where the people live, and Residential Buildings are the structures that house the people living there.
If our Code Enforcement Officials were not hired to be Revenue Agents, and Prosecutors had IQs slightly higher than room temperature we would not have to fight these fights and waste the Court’s time.
Many of my supporters have told me that I should have retained a lawyer and because I didn’t and subsequently lost, I should now Appeal it. Perhaps, but the cost would have been more than becoming compliant, and my question is why should I have ever needed to fight this at all.
A Not So Civil Society
Our Civil Court system is set up to be just that, civil, or civilized not adversarial like in our Criminal Courts. You could call it common law where most cases boiled down to what is known as Nunsense Violations.
Unfortunately, that is not our way in America these days, we have become so litigious that everyone feels the need to sue anyone that wants to live their own life, or deviates from the control system.
I spent two years trying to explain to my City that I was not being argumentive by pointing out their misuse of the code, their lack of understanding of their authority, and was more than willing to work things out in the proper way, but they felt challenged.
My City Manager spent over a year negotiating with me to meet in the middle, and once we struck what I felt was a fair deal, she reneged, basically becoming tired of working with me and telling me “Go Away Pleb”.
At one point in Court, the Judge literally Rolled his when I explained that the Enforcement Offical had threatened me twice in eight days, and in writing, within the 12-day response time allowed by law, a violation of Section 242 of Title 18 in the Federal Code.
These issues may, or may not be legal arguments in Court, but why was I even there? The two misdemeanors should have been worked out long before a Trial was ever set, yet everyone, except myself, was hell-bent on steamrolling the Trouble Maker, wait, that’s me the alleged Trouble Maker.
This was a case of being right while being proven wrong, this should never happen in a fair system when dealing with those we Elect to govern over us.
James Madison wrote In Federalist 51,
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this, you must first enable the government to control the governed, or the People, and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Those we elect are not tyrants, nor angles, they are just good people trying to be servants, yet they lack constitutional wisdom and therefore go to learn in all the wrong places, we must become Tyranny's Opposition, not its’s Victims.
