"How To Beat Government
Without Hiring A
Lawyer!"
from "In Defense of Rural
America"
By Ron Ewart,
President
National Association of Rural
Landowners
and nationally recognized author and
speaker on freedom and property rights issues.
©
Copyright Sunday, April 20, 2014 - All Rights
Reserved
As published on
Newswithviews, April 15, 2013
This article is also
available on our website at:
"There has to be
some limit to what lawyers can take from their clients. Otherwise, cagey
attorneys end up with the lion's share of the settlement and the victims end up
with little more than scraps." Dennis Hastert, Speaker of the U. S. House of
Representatives.
There are two kinds of people in
America, those that have never had to hire an attorney and those that have been
bilked by one. We have had our own experiences with attorneys, one who
tried to blackmail us over the telephone and another one who sucked us dry to
the tune of $35,000 on a 100% frivolous lawsuit where we had to mortgage our
home to pay him.
We have heard many other horror
stories from individuals that find themselves in a corrupt court system,
being taken to the cleaners by their attorney, defending against some government
notice of violation. At from $250 to over $600 per hour, the average
individual's savings won't begin to pay for what an attorney can charge in
even a small case. It could take a month for the average American to
earn what an attorney earns in 10 hours. Nevertheless, millions of
Americans are suddenly brought up short and robbed blind
when government comes to call and they are forced to enter a system of
attorneys, judges and court clerks that rule the roost with a thousand rules
that no one else knows except attorneys, judges and court
clerks.
Attorneys have absolutely no
incentive whatsoever to bring a case to a quick close when they are paid a large
sum per hour and the judges and court clerks don't care. We witnessed one
situation where an attorney sucked a significant estate dry with
attorney's fees, did not pay the property taxes that he was required to do and
the property was auctioned off for taxes. The heirs received nothing but
the attorney lined his pockets with exorbitant hourly fees and got away with
it. He should have been disbarred and sent to jail for grand
theft.
The American judicial system is a
closed club, run by members only. Members are attorneys, judges and court
clerks and the odd law professor. None other need apply, or have the
audacity to enter the court pro se, without a large dose of courage, a thick
skin and months of research. If you are an attorney, you live in
a surreal bubble where only the anointed are granted entry, a purposely
opaque bubble that the average American will never see or understand in
their entire lifetime. Being an attorney is not a profession it is
legalized theft at the expense of the un-initiated and the unwary. At
best, the American judicial system is a crapshoot (or
a stacked deck if you prefer) where the only people that win are the
members of the club.
In this article we will present ways
on how to fight government on civil violations without having to hire one of
those over-educated leeches that will bleed you dry, if you let
them. Unfortunately, in a very complicated case, defending yourself
without an attorney is legal suicide. The corrupt court system will chew
you up and spit you out without an ounce of compunction, or a "smidgeon"
(Obama's word of the day) of empathy.
Nevertheless, in many cases brought by the government against a citizen or
landowner for some infraction of the law (there are so many
laws) defending your self without an attorney can be a
reasonable route to take. However, if you don't like hard work, pouring
over laws and statutes and understanding how the corrupt judicial system works,
we don't recommend it. For those of you who do not fear the government, or
the judicial system, read on. The trick is to stop government before you
or they get to the attorney/court stage.
Most of you aren't in trouble with
government but one day you will be. Will you be prepared? Let's just
say you have received a letter or notice from a government agent or agency,
stating that you are in violation of some law and if you don't correct the
violation, the government is going to fine you, or even throw you in jail.
What do you do? Do you call the lawyer? You do only if you want to
spend what's in your savings account and maybe even mortgage your home
and you still won't know whether you can win or not because your
lawyer won't tell you. He doesn't know. But what he will do is
a lot of research on your behalf, at the expense of your rapidly depleting
savings account, if you are fortunate enough to have one.
If you are smart, you will read
the letter or notice from government very carefully and pick out the salient
points of what it is saying. Don't delay in responding to the notice, as
there are time limits involved with filing an appeal. ABOVE ALL, DON'T
IGNORE THE NOTICE! A written response should be made within three (3)
business days of receipt of the letter or notice and should be sent to the
government agent or agency, by "Certified-Return Receipt
Requested", U. S. Mail. Always demand a response in writing
from government and never trust what a government agent or employee tells you
verbally. In a pinch, they will lie to cover their tails and they will
deny ever having said anything to you.
This is what you need to
determine from the letter or notice from government in order to respond.
What agency is sending you the letter or notice ..... names, address and
phone number? Of what "legal" violation are you being accused? Does
the letter cite a specific law or statute that you have violated? What are
the penalties for non-compliance or correction of the violation? How much
time do you have to "fix" the violation? If it is a very minor
violation, you fix it because fixing it is less expensive than fighting
it. However, if it is a major
violation you have everything to gain by challenging
it.
Government, being the brute
that it is, will use an official looking letter or notice to
intimidate you into compliance. Given the explosion of land use and
environmental laws and ordinances, rural landowners are especially vulnerable to
receiving a letter or notice from government alleging some code violation.
Homeowners in large cities are also vulnerable, but less so. This
information may also apply to a run-of-the-mill traffic
stop.
If you don't
comply, government can then use their enforcement arm to better
explain it to you by fining your little hinies off, or hauling you off to jail
..... or worse, pulling out the guns as they just did in
Nevada against long-time rancher Cliven Bundy, (snipers
and attack dogs mind you) ala Ruby Ridge and Waco. It's
happening every day, all over America on our way to a police state because of
way too many laws. Federal bureaucracies are the worst
offenders.
But government is inept,
grossly negligent and just plain stupid. It saves everything, even
evidence of its own wrongdoing. It uses inflexible policies and processes
to implement law, even if government is operating under the
"color of law." Government knows that
people are so used to complying, they won't expect you to challenge them by
confronting them with their own law. But first, you have to have a general
idea of what the law is that government is trying to implement, or
enforce and you need to know your rights under the law. If you don't know
the law to some degree, your goose is cooked. You might just as well
comply.
STOP GOVERNMENT IN ITS
TRACKS!
First, do not assume that
government has the authority to conduct the actions it is taking against
you. That isn't always the case. Government, at all levels, has
become so consumed with its own power that it will impute a law where no
law or statute authority exists. If this is the case, they
are operating under the "color of law", which is a
federal crime (42 USC, S 1983) and the government employees or officers
responsible can be held personally liable for your damages. Because
our nation of laws has become so cumbersome and complex, the chances of
government operating under the "color of law" has
risen exponentially. If you don't challenge government as to its statute
authority for the law it is citing, you may be complying with a letter or notice
of a violation, when no such law or legal authority exists.
A couple of precedent setting
U. S. Supreme Court decisions have admonished every American having any business
with the government, to confirm that a government agency or government
agent has the statute authority to conduct the actions it is taking. In
the US v. Mersky case, the Supreme Court ruled that:
"Once promulgated, these
regulations, called for by the statute itself, have force of law, and violations
thereof incur criminal prosecution, just as if all the details had been
incorporated into the congressional language. The result is that neither the
statute nor the regulations are complete without the other, and only together do
they have any force. In effect, therefore, the construction of one necessarily
involves the construction of the other." UNITED STATES V. MERSKY, 361
U.S. 431, 438 (1960)
If you don't challenge government
on its statute authority, its authority, or lack thereof, goes
unchecked. In a two-step process you hit them with a 30-day
letter to buy time, (HERE) then you
follow up with a letter/notice challenging government's legal authority.
(see link in next paragraph)
Much of the information on how to
challenge government without hiring a lawyer, is covered in our highly
informative Landowner Handbook that is available on our website HERE. The
Handbook comes on a USB Flash Drive and includes three videos, a power point
presentation, a concentrated real estate course and a mountain of valuable
resource information. It represents a compilation of over 30 years
experience in a wide range of land use issues by the author. The
Handbook also includes a sample letter/notice that any American can use
when confronted by a written or verbal, letter or notice of violation from
government, even for a traffic stop. The sample letter/notice is also
available HERE.
Instructions for the letter/notice use are provided as well. The
Handbook includes a link to almost every state's general statutes so you can
research the law of your state. Although originally designed for rural
landowners, the information presented in the Handbook is valuable for city
dwellers as well, should they fall afoul of some government law, including the
IRS.
Way too many Americans just roll over
when confronted by government. Don't give in, fight
back! Government isn't the great Goliath it makes itself out
to be, but they don't want you to know that. As we have said many times
before, if you fear government, government owns you ..... just as sure
as a master owns a slave. We've been fighting them for several years and
we have been winning. We know others that are winning as well. The
question is, will you fight or will you roll over when government comes a
calling and looking for your wallet ..... or point a gun at you,
put on the handcuffs and march you off to jail? That's
right, we now live in a police state. Just ask Nevada rancher Cliven
Bundy and his fight with the BLM. Without
challenging government's power and legal authority, the police state will
only get stronger.
DISCLAIMER:
It is not always possible to determine the whole
truth when searching available information. Consequently,
we make no warranties, express or implied, that the information
presented in this article is accurate in all respects. Much of it was
pulled from what we determined to be reliable sources. It is the sole
responsibility of the reader to verify the information for his or
her own particular situation. The material provided is for
information purposes only and there is no attempt by the author to
provide legal or accounting advice to anyone whatsoever. Under no
circumstances are we advocating that any American break the law .....
whatever the law is determined to be. Know your rights ..... or lose
them!
Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and
speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column,
"In Defense of
Rural America",
is the President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, (NARLO)
(http://www.narlo.org) a non-profit corporation headquartered in
Washington State, an advocate and consultant for urban and rural
landowners. He can be reached for
comment at info@narlo.org.
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