Meet a "sovereign citizen"

A Tennessee TV station sent a news crew over to the home of 69-year-old Hollis Fay Summers, who "became a sovereign four years ago after attending a seminar in Alabama." Among other futile efforts, he has filed several billion-dollar lawsuits against officials of the bank which holds his mortgage, because they won't believe that his mortgage has been paid in full with funds from his "secret account."

WTF, you say. Well, in brief -- and the mention of the "seminar" he attended is the giveaway -- there are charlatans going around the country preaching a form of magic. The magic is contained in a mystical and completely bogus interpretation of legal language, and among other things, asserts that every American has a "secret account" of money being held for him by the federal government -- a government in which the profess not to believe, but that logical contradiction is only one among many -- and that you can access these funds if you know the magic. (For an explanation, see "Bill of Exchange" on the Southern Poverty Law Center's page on the so-called sovereigns, or see this page on the ADL's website for a full picture.)

The TV station's page with the story also includes links to a couple of Summers' mumbo-jumbo court filings, including the one where he asserts his sovereign status.

There are not that many of these people -- tens of thousands, at the most -- but they are responsible for gumming up local courts with these bogus filings, each of which must be addressed and declared frivolous. From the ADL's page:

The filing of frivolous lawsuits and liens against public officials, law enforcement officers and private citizens, on the other hand, has remained a favorite harassing strategy. These paper "attacks" intimidate their targets and have the beneficial side effect of clogging up a court system that sovereign citizens believe is illegitimate. Frivolous liens became such a problem in the 1990s that a majority of states were forced to pass new laws to make filing them illegal, their removal easier, or both. Today, eager sovereign citizens can use the Internet to download a variety of boilerplate forms and documents to wield against the government. More adventurous types can matriculate at "schools" such as the Erwin Rommel School of Law; additionally, a number of activists, ranging from David Wynn Miller to The Aware Group, hold seminars around the country to teach people -- for a price -- about the latest tactics and weapons.

(Undeterred, Summers has filed another document in which he attempts to redefine the word frivolous to mean "true and correct," the story says.)

And the thing to know is that these people are not crazy. They're just a bunch of losers who have various grievances and have been tricked into believing that this particular form of magic will somehow lead to the redressing of these grievances.

Some nice details in the story, including the arrival of a dumpster during the interview -- a dumpster being delivered by the bank which is about to evict Summers from his long-foreclosed house. And where will this old grampa go then? Some poor relative, no doubt. But what you should focus on is the people who led him to this pass, who profited from his ignorance and credulousness. Here's the SPLC's page on the leaders of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, many of whom are now serving sentences in federal prison.

Previously:

'Sovereign' files $38 quadrillion lawsuit

The King of Hawaii (the verb)

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! Bring Down JP Morgan edition

According to this blog entry -- on the "Vatic Project" blog which, you should be warned, is usually not only insane but anti-Semitic in the process -- someone has the bright idea that if everyone will just buy one ounce of silver today, it will fuck with JP Morgan bank's plan to make money shorting the precious metal. I have no idea whether this is based in anything like fact, but it's sort of a cool idea, and one example of the maxim that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

"End is near' warning just as 'timely' as it was a year ago!

The funny thing about prophets who warn of the coming apocalypse is that it's always coming. The end is near, it's constantly near. If it hasn't come by the time predicted, that doesn't make the prophecy wrong. In fact, the prophecy is even righter than ever, because as time passes we truly are nearer and nearer the end!

That sort of logic can be seen in the introduction to this post on from our favorite collapsitarian blog: We Have Some Hard Decisions Ahead. The post talks about how, since the end is near, we may as well all stop participating in the economy, since faithful readers of the blog (the collapsitarian blog, that is) are all busy "prepping" for the Big Collapse. For example, stop paying your car loan and your mortgage; plan to downsize, because soon we will all be forced to downsize.

Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. But this is what I found really amusing:

This article was originally published at Survival Blog and has been reprinted with permission from the author. The article's original publish date was December of 2009, but it is as timely today as it was a year ago.

Yes -- for all those who didn't follow its advice, that is! Because if they really stopped paying their mortgage and car payments and everything else last year, they sure as hell don't have them now, because they no longer have the house and the car.

And they say fascism depends on people having short memories. I guess so!

One more from the high desert

Speaking of weird crime in the high desert, this is pretty unbeatable:

Victorville Daily Press, 16 November 2010

Buckets of mercury found in Hesperia home

HESPERIA -- A man and a teen were forced to evacuate their home early Tuesday morning after authorities found buckets of mercury, according to San Bernardino County Fire officials.

Working from a tip, officials were called to a home in the 11900 block of Sixth Avenue at about 1:15 a.m. about liquid mercury being kept in the home.

"They found one pound of the liquid metal in buckets," Jay Hausman, spokesman for the fire department, said.

The man was extracting the metal from computer components, but it's unclear why he was collecting the mercury.

Neighbors said the man actually lived in a trailer in the rear of the home.

"It's a main respiratory hazard if exposed to it," Hausman said. "It's easily absorbed into the lungs through inhalation but it can also be spread very easily by walking through it if there's a spill... Even when a thermometer breaks, it's considered a mercury spill. It's a highly hazardous neurotoxicant."

The man -- whose identity was not immediately available -- was cited for possessing the highly toxic substance. He and the teen in the were forced to evacuate, Hausman said. The residents will not be allowed to return to the location where the mercury was found until a private hazardous material contractor is brought to the location to clean the area, authorities said.

The man was identified today as a 39-year-old resident of Hesperia, a desert town near Victorville, which is between San Bernardino and Las Vegas.

A pound of mercury. I can't begin to know how many people that could kill if it were, for example, thrown into an aqueduct (which run exposed all over rural California). But just think about this guy living in a trailer, patiently collecting the shiny metal for reasons of his own. Think about his teenaged son living there with him. That's the desert.

Petty crime

In the research for my current book, I'm on the lookout for crime stories from the desert area I visited in September and October. This story from today's San Bernardino Sun captures the zeitgeist. Here's the whole story. See if you can find the really jaw-dropping detail.

San Bernardino Sun, 17 Nov 2010:
Twentynine Palms burglary suspects caught selling stolen goods online

By Melissa Pinion-Whitt

Posted: 11/17/2010 01:00:31 PM PST

Two people, including a deserter from the U.S. Marine Corps, were arrested Tuesday in Twentynine Palms on suspicion of burglarizing a home and selling the property on the Internet.

Michael Quimby, 25, and Kimberly Angus, 23, were detained at their apartment in the 73700 block of Raymond Drive when undercover deputies found them in possession of the stolen goods.

San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies received a report of a burglary in the 71000 block of Mesa Drive on Saturday. The victim said several items had been stolen the prior week. He saw some of his items listed on the website Craigslist.com and 29palmsyardsales.com.

Deputies went undercover to buy items from the suspects. They met them at their apartment complex and saw two of the stolen items outside the front door of their apartment when they approached, sheriff's officials said.

Deputies found most of the property stolen in the burglary inside the residence. Sheriff's officials said Angus sold a stolen blue bassinet to a woman at a Jack in the Box in Twentynine Palms. Detectives are looking for the person who bought it so the item can be returned to its owner.

Deputies booked Quimby into jail on suspicion of burglary and for his military warrant. They plan to submit a report to the District Attorney's Office for consideration of charges against Angus.

Yes, these desperate tweakers stole a bassinet from someone, and managed to get rid of it by putting it on Craigslist and then meeting the buyer at the Jack in the Box. You can see why I want to set my story there.

Oh Mama, could this really be the end?

An essay on the blog Download Squad with the alarming title Facebook -- with or without Google -- will destroy the world as we know it explains the two companies' diverging strategies. It's interesting (though I can't get very worked up about yet another apocalyptic scenario, in which something from the movie Terminator is used to get across how frightening it is), but what I was struck by was this line (emphasis theirs):

In other words, Facebook knows who we want to be, while Google knows who we actually are.

How Dylanesque!

The article closes with this warning, which I find pretty believable. Referring to Facebook's announcement yesterday that it was going to offer the equivalent of Facebook email, the article cautions:

You will be given the choice of opting out, of course. But think about it: can you see yourself leaving Facebook today? Now fast forward a few months, a year. Imagine what it will be like once all of your communication goes through Facebook; quitting won't be an option.

Now, the thing is, I use Google mail, I collaborate with others using Google documents, I have Google voice pointing to my cell phone, I use the calendar, and so on. It seems as if I'm pretty wrapped up in Google. And yet I think if Google disappeared tomorrow, all I'd lose is my saved email and this month's household budget. My life would go on, for the simple reason that Google's mail system communicates with the rest of the world, while Facebook's is designed not to. A "walled garden" is the term commonly used for such an exclusive online universe. I can think of another word.

I'm glad I'm not a Facebook denizen; I never registered. It's like having gone through the 00s without having gotten a tattoo: once you participate a little, you're marked for life.

Quelle barbare!

This article in The Australian is about how the French love the "For Dummies" books (in French known as "Pour les nuls"), despite initial fears that subjects such as French poetry and history would not withstand the format. The funniest thing? Their publisher is a man named Vincent Barbare, which means "barbarian"!

Aide read 'Brave New World'' aloud to Bush during stem cell debate

The L.A. times book blog has an entry today with a list of the books George Bush mentions in his memoir. Among the items in the list is this dumbfounding entry:

"Brave New World" (1932) by Aldous Huxley. Read aloud to Bush in the Oval Office by an aide as he was thinking about stem cell research.

Imagine what that must have been like! Some young fellow sitting on a couch in the Oval Office reading the "orgy porgy" scene while Bush stares into space. I wonder if it gave Bush a hard-on. It did to me, but I read it when I was 14.

I wonder what Bush was reading when he was 14. I suspect the answer is nothing, which would explain a lot.

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- Chain of bad decisions edition

It's been a long time since I had a great story for Bad Behavior Friday™. Maybe I'm just jaded. But this story (via Gawker) is just too perfect:

A Nevada woman -- "an alcoholic who relapsed" -- went on a drunken binge and, realizing she was too drunk to drive, sat her twelve-year-old kid on her lap behind the wheel and told him to drive them home. Plus, her seven-year-old child was also in the car.

Let's count the chain of bad decisions in that incident:
1. She fell off the wagon...
2. Big time (blood alcohol level: .299)
3. She had her kids with her at the time
4. She was in the car
5. And finally, she asked her kid to drive.

I'm not sure you can really blame her for having the 7-year-old in the car as well -- though the judge certainly did -- she is being charged, among other things, with felony child abuse. That seems rather harsh. What was she supposed to do, leave the 7-year-old by the side of the road?

In fact, the more you read the story, the more sorry you feel for her. Frankly it seems like the judge just wants to be a hard-ass.

The four most objectionable winners of 2010

Of all the bad behavior that went on in the last couple of years, how did it affect the perpetrators?

Rep. Joe Miller (R. - S.C. 2), who shouted "You lie!" during Obama's health care address to Congress in September 2009, was re-elected 53.5% to 43.7%.

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R. - Tx. 19), who shouted "Baby killer!" at Rep. Bart Stupak during the final House debate on the health care bill, was re-elected 77.7% to 19.1%. Stupak, by the way, decided to retire after the kerfuffle, and his House seat, which he had held for eight terms and won re-election to by a 65-32 margin in 2008, was lost yesterday to a Republican.

Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R. - Mn. 6), who is famous for saying stupid shit, was re-elected 52.5% to 39.8%.

Rep. Ron Paul (R. - Tx. 14), who has made a career out of ostensibly opposing almost every aspect of the federal government he is a part of -- for example, even though he represents a wide swath of Texas Gulf Coast, he opposes the federal flood insurance program -- was re-elected 76% to 24%.

Man.