"It's just a consumer rip-off, that's all I can tell you," he said. "This is one of the most egregious cases I've ever seen in 17 years of practicing law."

That’s a quote from my lawyer in the case against the scheming crook who ripped me off and sabotaged my plans.  Some of those plans remain, but the scale, and much else, really, has been changed.  The quote is from the article in the local Mountain View Telegraph newspaper linked in this sentence. The quote is from the article in the local Mountain View Telegraph newspaper linked in this sentence.

I have not updated this blog in over 100 days.  Part of the problem is that the justice system is so very slow that I have nothing to report on the lawsuit and the other part is that until we sell our former B&B we are putting all of our plans on hold. 

This week might be a tipping point, however, as a couple who saw the property last week are coming back and may make an offer.

Not holding my breath.

Driving by the office of the evil scum of the earth that defrauded us I noticed that it looked empty.  Checking it out, I discovered that all of the furniture was gone and the place had been emptied out.  I wondered if he’d closed shop or if our discovery that we’d used his occupancy of his former digs as evidence against his new firm in our suit caused him to find different shelter.  His website is not updated, the same address is still there. Could he be out of business?

Since I was in LA yesterday I did not follow up, but the Missus received a call from the evil one’s former wife who had been treated miserably by him and left penniless when he walked out on her a few years back, taking everything and declaring bankruptcy to hide his ill gotten gains.  Synchronicity.  Suffice to say we will not be dropping the suit any time soon.

In any event, I phoned our attorney to inform him of the office closure and to see what, if any, progress had been made.

Turns out that the evil one is filing for personal and company bankruptcy and is apparently waiting out the 4 year cooling off period between the last personal bankruptcy and this one.  However, our understanding is that he cannot file back-to-back Chapter 7s for his company and the best he can hope for is a Chapter 13 in which he will probably have to recognize our claim against him….  We will see how long that takes.

His attorney called ours asking if we could just forget the whole thing to which ours replied that if he dropped every case where someone claimed that they were considering bankruptcy, he’d never win one….  And such a filing won’t be a magic bullet for him in any event. 

Here’s where it gets good: once he files, we will send paperwork to the State Construction and Industry Division so that he will never again be granted a license (and of course I will monitor him to see if he sets up an illegal, unlicensed business so that I can report him the moment he does).  Even better, it appears that we may be the proximate reason for him shutting down his newest firm.  The judge granted our motion to include the new firm in the lawsuit against the old one and the evil one personally.   We had filed the paperwork, his attorney appealed and the judge rejected the appeal and granted our motion. There had been no talk of another bankruptcy until the appeal was rejected and our motion granted. 

So we move forward.

It has been far too long since I have posted and for that I am sorry.  Sorry that I’ve let my frighteningly few readers down, and sorry because there has been little to write about concerning the project.

But now there is news.  Let me put it down first in the format of possible titles for a blog entry and then explain what I’m going on about.  First the possible titles:

“Evil, scheming homebuilder fraud declares bankruptcy”

“Vile fraudster avoids reckoning through misuse of courts”

“Waste of Skin closes one sham corp and opens another: same place, same website”

“Righteous wronged sue devil in green robes”

“Piercing the Veil”

And I could go on.

Here’s what has happened.  As faithful readers know we have been pursuing arbitration against the evil, fraudmaster’s company that bilked us of tens of thousands of dollars and delayed our project by well over a year.  That’s as the contract demands.  We have also started court proceedings against the Evildoer himself since he is not only the sole owner of the company, but is the one who personally defrauded us.  And his company is a shell without assets, so if we want to get anything back, we need to get it from him.

But on January 9^th he went to court seeking a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.  This means that we cannot continue with our arbitration against the firm and simply become one of any number of creditors looking for any crumbs that might have been left behind.  The case against he, himself, we might well have pursued, but as the Missus was tiring of all the expense and effort going after whatever might be in an obviously empty bag and probably having to settle for mere satisfaction and nothing more, giving up became part of the discussion.  Not as much for me since I feel horribly aggrieved and it was obvious to me that the declaration of bankruptcy was merely a means for him to avoid our lawsuit.

The one silver lining from that: With the Evil firm liquidating, we are free to build our house and won’t face liens from the evil bastard as we heard has happened to others and which stopped us cold from doing anything on the property. 

The best news was to come.  Last Sunday the evildoer was profiled in a local newspaper.  He has opened an almost identical firm in the same offices and with an almost identical website.  Given that he is in process of Chapter 7 these actions are illegal – at least that’s what our attorney (and, frankly, common sense) tells us.  So here he is breaking the law, luring people in while in the middle of discharging prior obligations and misusing the courts to avoid being sued.  It’s especially good news because while I think that our evidence is overwhelming, there was always the risk that a judge would see simple incompetence rather than the fraud that it is.  This move by the antagonist has rallied our troops.

What an asshole.

As for Piercing the Veil: that has to do with his fraud.   I love the sound of it.

I know it has been a long time since my last post, but with the new job I have been a bit more out of pocket than I otherwise would have been. Yes, I started a new gig two weeks ago and spent the first half of it in the home office in LA. Of course, it’s not really in LA, since almost no place that one thinks is in LA is in LA. Susan’s brother adamantly notes that he lives in Orange and not LA but everyone who lived most of their lives outside of California sees the megalopolis as LA. It’s in a place called Aliso Viejo which I had never heard of until the new job (admittedly I have driven through it a couple of times and never even knew).

The good news is that we’ve finished the new roof on the cabin. A beautiful forest green metal roof that looks just great and hopefully will solve the leaking problem we’ve been dealing with. Everyone who sees it compliments us on it.

The bad news is that the last of our chickens have been killed. Last week I found Queenie, Red (formerly Non-Jealous Red) and The No Love Chicken (once known as Fatty-Face, and sibling of The Love Chicken who passed away a few weeks back) killed and largely devoured in their coop. The culprit is obvious: one or more raccoons. He, she or they, climbed the back of the coop and pulled back a section of chicken wire at the top. It was where I had put up a little metal roof over the chickens' favorite sleeping roost to keep rain and snow off of them. Only a little beast with opposable thumbs and great climbing skills could have pulled it off.

No wonder they wear masks, the banditos!

Now we no longer have chickens. While sad, it does mean that I do not have to be in a hurry to build a coop up here should a miracle happen and we sell the house. It also means that they won’t have to move here. It was pretty ideal for them in Corrales. This is a much harsher place for chickens.

The ugly is that I still have to winterize the basement – and soon. It’s pretty nasty down there and I will have to crawl through some nasty stuff to get it done. I am not looking forward to it at all.

Maybe it’s the corner of New Mexico that we live in, but I think that tomorrow the state will go from pale red to deep blue and pull the lever for Obama. I don’t know if you’ve heard this where you live, but a very popular bumper sticker and t-shirt and graffito making the rounds is:

Obamanos.

Hopefully your Spanish is up to the task of “getting it”.

I have been wanting to update the blog with photos of before and after shots of the cabin. We have a few of the former but do not have the latter. And I hate my camera.

You see, we bought our camera in May after our old one died. I had high hopes for the little bugger: better resolution, more memory, a nice little machine. It did have one flaw: the rechargeable battery required its own charger, separate from the camera itself. The old camera would charge over the USB chord while you uploaded images and could be left plugged in for as long as one wanted.

The new one would lose its charge if left plugged into the computer and the battery needed to be plugged into its cradle quite often. This led to an immediate problem: the battery was always dead and we often would have the charger in the wrong home – if the camera was in Madrid, the charger would be in Corrales and vice versa.

Now the charger is missing entirely and cannot be bought from the manufacturer (they are always out of inventory). So I found one on the intertubes, but it has yet to show up.

So I have to wait to blog what I want to blog until I can charge the camera…. Assuming I can find the camera when I need to.

I never intended this blog to become a forum for my opinions, grievances, “Fiskings” and other mental flossing that goes on in most other person’s blogs. This blog was supposed to be, and will mostly be, about my sustainable building project; but we’ve hit a bump in the road with the lawsuit and all that.

Not wanting the blog to die, but not wanting to turn it into some soapbox, I have stuck with updates on the cabin restoration, bits a pieces about the lawsuit, and the occasional post on green building. The previous post, however, about the maltreatment of my wife’s distant family member at the hands of our Lords and Masters gave me a much needed boost.

I have no intention of becoming a full time social critic -- and at my wife’s request I have put my tin foil hat up in the cupboard for the time being – but sometimes I think I might let the muse sing to me.

Today she sings about the previous post and the following question: “How is it that the government can dole out the punishment of the “no fly list” and have no clear means of redress or compensation for those wrongly named?”

Let that sink in for a moment. We have hundreds and hundreds of citizens whose names are the same as, or similar to, possible bad guys. Set aside for a moment that these named “bad guys” have not been convicted of doing anything and are only on the list because of either thought crimes (hating the US) or affiliations (including only possible affiliations) with other bad guys. Even if the other Paul Dickson is a notorious anarchist why should that mean that every time I fly I have to go through a separate screening process, possibly get the third degree, and maybe denied the right to fly. (That example was entirely made up)

The 5^th amendment to the US Constitution guarantees that we are secure in our persons and may not have liberty denied us aside from due process of law. Where is the due process for people who routinely get pulled out of line, grilled, possibly denied the right of travel, etc? What about being unable to check in electronically? There is no way I would have survived in my former career if I could not have done that. From what I have heard there are hundreds who cannot figure out how to get their name off the list. Senator Ted Kennedy was on the list (as was Nobel Prize Winner Nelson Mandela) and even he had trouble clearing his name.

I am sympathetic to the reasoning behind the no-fly list but the current process is ridiculous. I am sure the government claims that they can’t remove individuals from the list without removing the name altogether. That seems a stretch, but I see no other reason for people being stuck on the list for years.

I have a solution: If a person is inconvenienced by the no-fly list, and is able to demonstrate that they are not the “bad guy” in question, the government should be tasked with providing that person a “secure id” (meaning one that has biometric data, or some other high tech proof of validity) that allows them, henceforth, to board aircraft regardless of presence on the “no-fly list”. I would add that they should also be exempt from removing shoes and be able to carry as large a bottle of shampoo as they would like. One can dream, no?

That ID would have to be waiting for them for their return trip.

Of course there would be confusion for a while (such as contact lens solution exemption which even now some TSA employees have trouble with.) but eventually such a thing would become routine.

What I want to know is why something like this was not put in place the first week of the list?

Before I sign off I will leave you with two other things:

Regarding the cabin project, the new front door is in and I repainted the interior wall around it this morning.

The Georgia/Russia situation. Every American should read this opinion piece.
It mirrors closely many of my own thoughts on the subject but is better organized.

Last time I closed with “And may peace be upon you”. Today I’ll change it up.

Live Long and Prosper.