Y'all check out the classifieds of the latest Worcerster County Times? If you do, you'll notice a pile of forclosure notices posted by a lawyer named Heidi S. Kenny. She's apparently in the business of buying up ground rents in default, tacking on huge "legal fees" and then foreclosing. The end result is that she presents the homeowners occupying the land with huge bills. And if they are unable to pay, they're evicted and the property reverts to her possession.
Kenny's gotten some kind of fame lately, around the Baltimore area for taking properties after ground rents fall in arrears.
The Baltimore Sun last month published a story that, while having a mutually beneficial resolution, was not happy, because what started out as an unpaid pill for $72 meant that the homeowners had to cough up nearly $18,000 in order to keep from having their home taken from them. Oh, the homeowners still were only seventy-some-odd bucks in the hole for ground rent, but the rest of that bill was for legal fees and such.
The whole concept of ground rent is as foreign to me as eating goats eyes in the Sahara, but the link does an excellant job of explaining the bit Real Estate legal esoterica.... Be that as it may, Ms. Kenny has branched out from her Baltimore stomping grounds and has expanded her reach to Worcester County.
Among the properties up for foreclosure is one on Market Street in Snow Hill and five acres of improved property on Gum Point Road.
It makes me want to check our deed and make sure there's no little surprises in the fine print.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Thursday, January 04, 2007
AVAST... THERE'S A NEW BLOGGER ON THE HORIZON
Looking to the north we spied the topsail of a new blogger just below the horizon. So we altered course to intercept the interloper and give her the once-over. As we came along side her, we were overcome by the scent of Jasmine perfume and voilins.... We were dumbstruck to see a crew of ladies dressed in pink finery and holding a tea party on the poop-deck..... Aye, it's the HMS Politeness.... a refloated, reflagged and renamed ship scuttled in a minor September storm. .... From the the early posts, we surmise her mission if to pimp the goodness and righteousness of the local government.... It shivers me timbers just to think about that..... but.... we welcome her with the warning that the ship was not seaworthy in its last incarnation and that maybe she should stay in the shallow waters for the time being.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
OKAY, JOE BROUGHT UP A PIECE OF PROPAGANDA THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED
Joealbero mentioned a guy by the name of Chris Llinas, an attorney who was disbarred after a conviction of (I think) evidence tampering involving a healthy, or unhealthy (depending upon one's perspective) chunk of cocaine. But in Joe's retelling of the tale, Llinas was guilty of distributing this high-end drug to children..... thing is, I can't find anything in print to substanciate that claim, so I suspect it's a lie.
Listen, I've never seen Llinas. I wouldn't know him if I bumped into him in my linen closet. And I'm not going to defend his actions, but I do believe we need to address the decades-long government propaganda campaign against recreational drug use. But why? Not one of our so-called leaders has ever been able to articulate exactly why someone who uses drugs should go to prison.... I mean so what, if someone wants to get high? Who does it hurt, except the user? ... And before y'all get your irish dander up and strap on an ignorant sense of pretend indignation, tell us what the government has done to resolve the problems associated with drug use.....I'll give you a hint: not a goddamned thing... matter of fact, they've just made the problems much, much worse.
"Oh," our elected officials whine, "drugs destroy minds and families and communities, and get people killed, so we're going to fix it." .... Yeah, right.... this is what they've done to "fix" the problem: When the dimwitted Ronald Reagan was elected, he saw to it that penalties were vastly increased for both simple possession and distribution. And he got public support for that through a propaganda campaign that included a claim that these dark men were coming into neighborhoods to get children addicted to drugs. And that the drugs were coming from communist narco-terrorists in South America, which was all part of a fiendishly clever plot by the Soviets to take over the world. And a lot of mind-bogglingly ignorant voters bought that line of crap because they were too lazy and stupid to check the facts against the claims.
The result was that the risks associated with distribution got a lot higher, the availability decreased only slightly, and it set of a nation-wide turf-war among dealers and the price and potential profit margin went through the roof. Washington, D.C. has several consecutive banner years where the homocide rate was staggering.... the same was true of New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami..... Did that shit-for-brains policy work? Nope.... Matter of fact, it just made the problem much, much worse. Because, it wasn't just the dealers and users getting hurt and killed, it was innocent bystanders- kids, moms and dads, who took bullets meant for others. In made minority and poor communities much more dangerous places to live, so businesses left those communities and conditions and the sense of economic desperation got even worse for those in need of good-paying jobs. And without money, education or transportation, the only jobs they could find were right in their own neighborhoods, which were drug-related. And as more people entered the marketplace, the greater the risk became and so the price of the product had to increase to compensate for that risk. And as the profit margin increased, so did the competition for turf.
And, make no mistake, this is not just a lesson in ancient history.... the policies are still with us. You see it every day in courts and prisons. Crack cocaine will get you a much stiffer prison sentence than powder cocaine.... and ya know what the difference is between the two.... Nothing. Crack is pure cocaine. Powder cocaine is crushed pure cocaine with a inert ingrediant added to increase the weight and profit margin. That's the difference... none.
So are our fearless leaders solving the "drug problem?" No, because they're not addressing the real issue, which is that drug use is not the primary problem: Drug use is a symptom of much larger emotional and societal problems... and unless those issues are resolved first, then drug abuse and antisocial behavior issues will continue to degrade us all... Ya want peace, then demand real social and economic justice.
Listen, I've never seen Llinas. I wouldn't know him if I bumped into him in my linen closet. And I'm not going to defend his actions, but I do believe we need to address the decades-long government propaganda campaign against recreational drug use. But why? Not one of our so-called leaders has ever been able to articulate exactly why someone who uses drugs should go to prison.... I mean so what, if someone wants to get high? Who does it hurt, except the user? ... And before y'all get your irish dander up and strap on an ignorant sense of pretend indignation, tell us what the government has done to resolve the problems associated with drug use.....I'll give you a hint: not a goddamned thing... matter of fact, they've just made the problems much, much worse.
"Oh," our elected officials whine, "drugs destroy minds and families and communities, and get people killed, so we're going to fix it." .... Yeah, right.... this is what they've done to "fix" the problem: When the dimwitted Ronald Reagan was elected, he saw to it that penalties were vastly increased for both simple possession and distribution. And he got public support for that through a propaganda campaign that included a claim that these dark men were coming into neighborhoods to get children addicted to drugs. And that the drugs were coming from communist narco-terrorists in South America, which was all part of a fiendishly clever plot by the Soviets to take over the world. And a lot of mind-bogglingly ignorant voters bought that line of crap because they were too lazy and stupid to check the facts against the claims.
The result was that the risks associated with distribution got a lot higher, the availability decreased only slightly, and it set of a nation-wide turf-war among dealers and the price and potential profit margin went through the roof. Washington, D.C. has several consecutive banner years where the homocide rate was staggering.... the same was true of New York, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles and Miami..... Did that shit-for-brains policy work? Nope.... Matter of fact, it just made the problem much, much worse. Because, it wasn't just the dealers and users getting hurt and killed, it was innocent bystanders- kids, moms and dads, who took bullets meant for others. In made minority and poor communities much more dangerous places to live, so businesses left those communities and conditions and the sense of economic desperation got even worse for those in need of good-paying jobs. And without money, education or transportation, the only jobs they could find were right in their own neighborhoods, which were drug-related. And as more people entered the marketplace, the greater the risk became and so the price of the product had to increase to compensate for that risk. And as the profit margin increased, so did the competition for turf.
And, make no mistake, this is not just a lesson in ancient history.... the policies are still with us. You see it every day in courts and prisons. Crack cocaine will get you a much stiffer prison sentence than powder cocaine.... and ya know what the difference is between the two.... Nothing. Crack is pure cocaine. Powder cocaine is crushed pure cocaine with a inert ingrediant added to increase the weight and profit margin. That's the difference... none.
So are our fearless leaders solving the "drug problem?" No, because they're not addressing the real issue, which is that drug use is not the primary problem: Drug use is a symptom of much larger emotional and societal problems... and unless those issues are resolved first, then drug abuse and antisocial behavior issues will continue to degrade us all... Ya want peace, then demand real social and economic justice.
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