Divemedic

Lawyer Comes Unglued

I was giving a deposition a few years ago when I sued my mortgage holder, SunTrust bank. I had gone through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy and it had been discharged. There was a court order, so they weren’t allowed to do anything to collect the debt. All they were permitted to do was foreclose on the house.

Here is the problem- it turned out that they were NOT the mortgage holder. They had lied to the bankruptcy court. They tried all sorts of tactics- they forged a note. They lied to the court. None of that worked, and they were unable to foreclose on the house. So they resorted to sending collection agents to my house, and calling me repeatedly on the phone. I wound up suing them 5 times in 4 years and collecting more than $40,000 in damages. They still kept it up, with a collector calling me a deadbeat who doesn’t pay his bills, so I sued them again.

So that’s how we wound up in the deposition. I brought my attorney. One part of the deposition went like this:

Divemedic: I have a tape of your client’s collectors harassing me on the phone and calling me a deadbeat

SunTrust Lawyer: Did you ever think, even once, that if you paid your bills, the calls and visits would stop?

DM: Are you telling me that you and your client are knowingly violating the orders of the Federal Bankruptcy court to collect this debt in violation of Federal Law?

STL (to the court reporter): Stop recording this. This is off the record. (To my attorney): You need to remind your client that I am an officer of the court, and he needs to be civil, or we will ask for contempt charges.

My Lawyer: (to me) You heard her. You have to be civil.

DM: (to my lawyer) This is still off the record, right?

My Lawyer: Yes.

DM (To STL): Kiss my ass.

The SunTrust lawyer came unglued and ended the deposition at that point. On the way out, my lawyer told me that my comment was the funniest thing he ever heard at a deposition. We wound up settling the lawsuit for five figures, but I can’t comment on how much because of an NDA. That was almost ten years ago, and I still laugh about it.

By Divemedic, ago

Creative Accounting

A blog post from WIrecutter over at Knuckledraggin My Life Away brings us a story about how California landlords are charging fees for parking spots, trash pickup, pest control, use of a mailbox and routine maintenance requests everything they can think of. This is the only sensible response that landlords (or any business) has when a government has inflationary policies coupled with price controls.

The entire situation was created with the double whammy of the eviction moratorium and tax increases. In my area, you can add large increases to property insurance. Any business that has increased costs must recoup those costs by increasing prices. The government responded to that by enacting price controls (rent control). In places all over the nation, landlords are being told what they can charge for rent, even as the costs like property taxes, interest rates, and insurance continue to climb.

So landlords are responding in exactly the way that I predicted they would- they are looking for new revenue streams by charging for perks that used to be gratis. Here is what I said on the matter nearly two years ago when communities in Florida were talking about rent control:

If rent control is enacted, there are steps I can take: Each year, I will raise rents by the highest permitted under the new law. On top of that:

– I will no longer provide lawn service as a part of rent. That will shift $900 a year of expense to the tenant.
– I will no longer provide a free washer and dryer. I will recommend a company that will rent the tenant one at an additional cost, if they don’t have one. That company will be owned by me. The going rate for that is $144 a month.
– I currently pressure wash the outside of the property twice a year. I can push that off to the tenant, and make it their responsibility as a part of cleaning.
There are many ways that I can maintain profitability. Just taking the three steps above will have the effect of increasing the cost of renting by 15 percent without increasing the rent itself.

Landlords will have to be creative.

The list is endless. I can have parking stickers made, and I can charge you $15 per month for each sticker. Any car parked on the property had better have a sticker, or there will be a $50 fee charged per day for not having a sticker. If the fee isn’t paid, cars without stickers will be towed. I’m not a jerk, though. Parking in the garage will still be included in the rent.

I offer my tenants a lot of free perks- washer and dryer, lawn and pest control, all included in rent. Many landlords offer similar perks. Some rent furnished homes and include the furniture in the rent. I can see rent for furniture being an extra fee. Perhaps extra fees for things like a refrigerator, a stove, or a dishwasher. Florida law requires rental properties to have functional heating, but not air conditioning. There can be extra fees charged for use of the air conditioner.

This is a situation that was created entirely by government. Businesses respond in a rational way to price controls and increasing costs. Government officials and idiot liberals don’t seem to understand that.

By Divemedic, ago

Biden Hates New Yorkers

For the second straight year, Biden won’t be attending the 9/11 memorial service in Manhattan. Keep electing the people who hate you, and they will keep right on hating you.

On this day 23 years ago, nearly 3,000 Americans died in the 9/11 attacks. In that number was 343 firefighters, many of whom gave their lives knowing that the buildings were coming down. I have friends who were present that morning at both the World Trade Center and at the Pentagon. I was on shift on Engine 12 that morning in Florida.

Let’s all take a moment to think about how many people who are alive today that have never lived in a world where there was a World Trade Center. How many people don’t know one of their parents because their parents died that day.

No comments will be approved for this post that claim the US blew up the buildings in controlled demolition. I know people who were there, and I trust them. Every one of them tells me that there was no controlled demolition of those buildings, so I don’t want to hear it.

By Divemedic, ago

Gonna Have to Wear Masks

You need to remember that your average cop is a bully who likes throwing their weight around and roughing up people who can’t fight back: old ladies, children, unarmed people, and soccer moms in traffic stops. Maybe they were bullied themselves, maybe they are drunk with power, or maybe they are just pussies. I don’t know.

That is why they call SWAT for every real criminal, and why they shoot everyone with a full mag dump who even looks at them funny. Why? They are TERRIFIED- scared that the people they are bullying are one day going to have had enough. You see it all of the time-

Don’t get me wrong. They aren’t ALL pussies, just the average cop. Some of them are upstanding guys who run to the sound of the guns, but I would say that most cops are not the brave defenders that they claim to be.

So when the governor of New Mexico issues an executive order that no one in Albuquerque is permitted to have a firearm, and a large group of gun owners show up armed in protest, the cops do- nothing. No, the cops didn’t back off because they believe in 2A, because whether they do or not, they will follow orders in order to keep their jobs and pensions. No, it’s because they are not about to get in a running firefight with a large group of armed, pissed off gun owners.

The kinds of guys who, after what happened on J6, show up to a rally like that are some pissed off guys, and some of them are just waiting for an excuse to get their shootyness on. The cops either know this, or are afraid that it is true. How many shooters would be willing to smoke some cops in a crowd of 200 armed protesters? What would the body count be?

They don’t want to find out, which is why they didn’t fuck around. No, if anything is going to be done, it will be handled just like J6 was. They will wait for a few months, then show up in force to each protester’s house with a short platoon of SWAT to arrest the protesters one at a time.

Then the only way to win will be to adopt the same tactics- visit the cops while they are alone and without reinforcements nearby.

By Divemedic, ago

Reminder

Police are used to victimizing unarmed people. That’s why they call SWAT when there is the least chance of facing armed opponents. I want to remind you of this incident, point out that the cops in New Mexico will chase anyone who runs from them instead of allowing themselves to be searched for firearms, and then ask again:

What could a four man fire support element do if they were in an overwatch position 100 yards or so away and this was a planned ambush? How hard would it be to lure police into a kill box and then overwhelm them with large amounts of fire before disengaging and disappearing before the cops can organize an effective counter ambush?

By Divemedic, ago

Educational Hypocrisy

The President of the Chicago Teachers Union and the union strongly oppose school choice, including both charter and private schools. The President, Davis Gates, said school choice initiatives siphon money from public schools and are partly to blame for the lack of resources available to neighborhood schools.

That’s all well and good, except national and local pro-school choice groups found out that the President of the union sends her freshman son to a Catholic school on the South Side. She is pissed off because people revealed her decision to send her son to a private high school while publishing his picture and name.

“We live in a time with extremist political rhetoric, and it has led to violence,” she said. “My children, my family should not have to endure this. And doxing a child is violent, and it’s unacceptable, and it needs to be rejected and decried by every institutional leader. It’s just not okay.”

CTU President Davis Gates, believing that her own hypocrisy shouldn’t be pointed out in the press

When her oldest child reached 7th grade, she and her husband looked at their neighborhood school. They were upset that the local public school didn’t have a school newspaper, classes on web design, or a student council. According to her, the public school didn’t have the resources or sports opportunities that the private school had.

“You have to wonder: If the teachers union leader who wants to kill school choice has made the private school choice for her own child, how convincing are her arguments against school choice for low-income children with few options for breaking the cycle of generational poverty?”

 Illinois Policy Institute

I wonder how the teachers that she is representing feel about the leader of their union stabbing them in the back like that.

By Divemedic, ago

New Mexico

A situation is developing in New Mexico. The governor there has declared by executive order that no one can carry a weapon, concealed or open, despite having permits or whatever else state law has to say on the matter. You can read the executive order here. (pdf alert) As predicted, she is using her new found COVID executive powers from 2020 to declare a “health emergency” by noting that NM has seen an increase in violent crimes that is double the national average, while completely ignoring that this is due to the illegals flooding the state from the border that has been opened by her own political party’s lack of border enforcement.

The order only applies to public property like roads, sidewalks, and parks. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the ban, because of course they are. Under the order, residents still can transport guns to some private locations, such as a gun range or gun store, provided the firearm has a trigger lock or some other container or mechanism making it impossible to discharge, which is in direct opposition of Supreme Court decisions.

When the press inquired as to the order’s constitutionality, she said her duty to uphold the constitution, as well as the constitution itself, is “not absolute.”

Some local police and sheriffs are refusing to enforce the order because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.

By Divemedic, ago

Night Shift

I am on night shift for the next 10 weeks. Getting used to this is a bear. If any of you have noticed my posting quality dropping off, that’s why. They have me on the 4 pm to 4 am shift. The extra $6 an hour in shift differential is nice, but it’s been awhile since I worked nights and is taking some getting used to. I’m just getting to bed while the wife is getting up to go to work. I worked on Labor day, which gets some good bonus money. Time and a half, plus the $6 an hour for shift differential. Still, tired.

Since I have been dragging, I didn’t get a lot of time for researching the news today, so instead I will tell you what’s up in emergency medicine. This week, we saw some interesting stuff. Here are some of my more notable patients:

  • A guy complaining of abdominal pain and constipation. He had a large blood clot in the main vein that runs from the digestive system to the liver (Portal Vein). It was 85 percent blocked. Because he was so big and the clot so large, he got the largest loading dose of Heparin I’ve ever given- 10,000 units.
  • A man who came in with groin pain. We had to let him know that he has testicular cancer.
  • A woman with congestive heart failure. She damned near died when her lungs rapidly filled with fluid. She was joking with me and fine. I left the room and 10 minutes later, she was gasping for air and needed BiPAP, a nitroglycerine drip, and Lasix. At one point, I thought she was going to code.
  • A guy who did code. Wasn’t my patient, but a code is all hands on deck. He used the bedside commode, passed about 1 liter of blood, then went into cardiac arrest.
  • A woman who stabbed herself 10 times because “I was sad.” She remembers feeling sad, and said the next thing she remembers is seeing the knife on the floor and being covered in blood.
  • A woman who took some penicillin and had an anaphylactic reaction to it.
  • A woman that had been trapped in a burning vehicle who had a hoarse voice and a cough.
  • Interestingly enough, I didn’t have any COVID patients this week, but other nurses did.

We have been mostly at 3:1 nurse:patient ratios until 9pm when the mid shifters leave, then we go to 4:1. That means I see anywhere from 10 to 15 patients per day. One thing that gets me is how grown adults who are covered in tattoos can be afraid of needles. I’m talking people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s who cringe, and even cry when you start an IV on them. Three of my patients in one night were actually SCREAMING at the top of their lungs because I started an IV on them. In one case, a woman’s heart rate went from 90 to 150 while I was getting her IV.

Anyhow, since my work week is done, I now have 5 days off in a row. That means I have work to do around the house.

By Divemedic, ago

Buyback

This mental midget is claiming that it is impossible to deport 9 million illegal immigrants because it is too big of a job. I wonder if he believes that we can “confiscate” all 600 million guns in American hands.

How about we have a buyback? Anyone caught employing an illegal gets fined $10,000 per illegal, per day that they are employed. Make it so that anyone who knows of an employer doing so can file a qui tam lawsuit and is entitled to 20 to 50% of any fines collected.

Picture your average construction site- 5 illegals spend 3 months working 5 days a week building a house. A competing construction company sees this and files a lawsuit. The construction company can pay a three million dollar suit, which will net the suit filer an award ranging from $60-150,000.

The jobs will dry up overnight, and the illegals will self deport.

By Divemedic, ago