Paul's Comments

A few years ago I got secured cards from several credit card companies. Now, they already have my money, and have zero risk on the balance. But if you aren't speedy in paying them back, they hit you for fees and fines. And apparently they can't just close the deposit account and use it to pay off the balance, you have to pay it off first, then they give you a refund of the deposit. When I ran out of money a few years ago, Capital One kept piling on the charges then eventually sued me. I screwed up on the paperwork because I was unfamiliar with the process so they basically won a default judgment. They've been chasing their tail ever since trying to collect on it.

So this explains the first time I ever got sued.

Over the last few years I've had the idea for finding a way to build cheaper housing and I've been working on it. I figured out that it's possible to build an apartment building with 106 apartments having 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and enough parking to give everyone 2 spaces (plus additional for handicapped and visitors) for $14 million, and I could sell them for $182,000 each and make a profit. About 5 million or so.

Now, if I could have the building constructed in 9 months, then I could conceivably give away most of the profit by offering to pay people back according to what I understood federal law permitted me to do, which is a "note" - that's financial speak for borrowed money - which is repayable in 9 months and is used for current operations, is not required to be registered as a "security" and thus eliminates several thousand in fees.

My understanding was that this represents what is called "commercial paper," and is thus also exempt under state laws that closely follow the terms of the federal Securities Act of 1933. I even sent copies of my website making the offering to the appropriate securities regulators for Maryland, Virginia, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Well, apparently the Commonwealth of Virginia and the State of Maryland disagree with my opinion. The Commonwealth sent me a letter which basically said "you can't do that" and if I didn't, they wouldn't come after me.

The State of Maryland so disliked my idea they have mailed me a Cease & Desist order and have filed a three-count Administrative Proceeding against me demanding a lifetime ban on ever selling securities in Maryland, and $15,000 in fines. Despite the fact I hadn't ever sold anything and hadn't even opened the project for investment. (I had to move the date forward 3 weeks because I needed more time to write and distribute press releases.)

Amazing. If we compare this to other legal proceedings, they're asking for the Securities equivalent of the death penalty for a first offense where nothing even happened. Somehow I think I know how O.J. felt (if he was innocent). He's been stupid since his trial, however or he wouldn't have gotten life in prison for what happened in Vegas. Now what happened in Vegas means he stays in Vegas. He should have stuck to killing people, he had better luck staying out of prison.

Actually I don't know if that's true. I've thought about it for quite a while, and based on things that I've seen since, I actually do have doubts as to whether he did kill his ex-wife and her friend Ron Goldman. I don't know if he did; I've heard some points that indicate that O.J. fits the pattern of the abusive-type spouse but not the killing kind. I've also heard some things that cast doubt on the evidence presented at his (criminal) trial. So I don't know.

I was never "outraged" because, I guess, I presumed that we are innocent until the evidence shows otherwise. So, if O.J. did do it, justice has now been done; if he didn't do it, a stupid man who should have been walking on eggs to stay on the right side of the law and thanking his lucky stars he had the money and the lawyers to keep his ass out of jail, is now in prison because he was too stupid to do what he should have done if he thought someone was ripping him off or otherwise illegal activities against him were going on: called the police and/or filed a lawsuit to freeze things until it was properly settled.

Thinking back on this, maybe O.J. is the wrong example, and the Ramsey family, who were basically destroyed as a result of their daughter being murdered and they being believed were the prime suspects is closer. The wife died a few years ago, but the husband is still alive and evidence finally surfaced to show what they had been saying all along, that someone else did it. Whoever did this to their daughter destroyed a lot more than the life of cute little Jon Benet Ramsey, and it took many years to vindicate the innocent survivors, some of whom didn't live long enough to find out they eventually would be.

So now I'm having to spend time writing a response to the toilet paper the office of the Maryland Securities Commissioner have dumped on me, which I'm supposed to do within 15 days of being served with the notice. Yeah, right. It would be hard enough for an experienced securities litigator to answer this in 15 days; I realized with my resources and my disability, it would be all but impossible to do anything but a cursory attempt. I've asked for more time to respond because of my disability, I am hoping I'll get it. Otherwise I'll have to go to court to demand more time.

I say it's "toilet paper" because I have to figure the extreme speed by which they threw this missive at me is retaliation over my suing the State to strike down the law making it a misdemeanor to openly carry a handgun in public as violating the 2nd Amendment. The fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia sent me a letter first, gives me reason to believe that to be the case. To put it bluntly, the State of Maryland didn't like the crap I threw at their unconstitutional anti-handgun law, so they decided to throw some crap at me.

Not only that, but this proceeding is so ridiculous that I, as a non-lawyer, discovered (according to my understanding of the law) at least four fatal errors in the proceeding that I have to see the proceeding as a piece of crap, too. Only problem is, when I have to sit in my chair and take a crap, I clean up the mess, wrap it in newspaper, and throw it in the trash (I cannot get to a toilet because of my disability). This piece of crap proceeding has to sit on my desk so I can refer back to it to understand how to reply to it, e.g. for me to throw anti-crap or reply crap at it, I have to keep looking at it while it stinks up my life. Oh man, these puns are getting far too odoriferous for me to continue. Reminds me of Bette Midler complaining once because "I've been reduced to telling fart jokes!"

Or another way to put it is, to this attempt to crucify me, I'm having to try to find adequate crowbars to pull out the nails and magnets to deflect them before they nail me to the cross that for the moment I must bear.

On the other hand, since my reading of the law has been apparently incorrect on a number of occasions, this may indicate my opinions are wrong. Actually, I don't see it that way; this issue represents a disagreement over what the law is and I might even be able to argue that it fits the law as it reads. In one other case, I was correct except the law I thought applied did not apply to my circumstance. I find it interesting that I have otherwise won every time I've handled an administrative proceeding and more than 1/2 of all times I've gone to court. I've lost when I've either been unprepared or where I really had no grounds to defend myself. So I have high confidence I am correct on what I think the law is and in the end I will emerge victorious.

In the mean time I'm having to take more time out to work on this proceeding as best I can. Oh well, I guess this sort of thing is the cost of doing business. But I now understand better why nobody is building less-expensive housing: the government does whatever it can to discourage it.