Why do printers quit working at the worst possible moments?

I attempted to print out one of my replies to the assessors office. To separate out the request for the law he claims requires him to assess your property at 100% of its Fair market Value. I have been requesting for some 4 to 5 year now that he tell me which law it is, so I can look it up and read it for myself. Up until last week the question was never acknowledged. Now I get a reply stating they have no obligation to enter into any debate or discussion over the law. I don't want a discussion or debate either I just want him to "show me the law" as is my right.
So I get this letter of reply written, after 5 days of editing and redoing it again and again, only to find my printer won't print it.
I was starting to get the feeling maybe I wasn't supposed to send it, but then I figured it was just some hex put on me by the Evil Prince stopping me, it would however print out in color, so I printed it out in dark blue and sent it off.
After two days of trying to figure out the problem, it was an almost new cartridge, well one of the recycled ones at half cost, I came to the conclusion it had arrived with not very much ink inside.
I put in another of the "new" ones and bingo it now prints just fine in black. Go figure.

At least I can now print away until it too runs dry. So I get to send in my other letter, the one for disclosure of his methods. I had to separate the issues of show me the law and show me the method as they are playing word games.

And I still need to get my appeal to the State Tax Board in ASAP.

Oh the Fun of it all.

By the way if anyone who reads this would like to get involved in fighting to have your property tax taken to the proper level just drop me a note, I think my email is posted on the page for replies, I'm still learning about how this Blog thing works, I'll get better as time goes by.

County Board of Equalization [property tax] Decision

I got my property tax appeal decision in the mail yesterday. If this wasn't such a serious matter I would have laughed until I fell down on the ground and rolled all over the place .

If you remember I mentioned that the 5 member board admitted that none of them had read all of what I presented as evidence; I got the impression, I could see it in their eyes, read it in their faces, that none had read more than a page or two if that. And I would lay odds none had bothered to read it all after the hearing. Which makes the decision I got in the mail a joke.

They wrote in their notice, their decision, that due to the lack of any clear and concise evidence they had to find in favor of the assessor, never mind that he didn't really present any evidence, just a note with three addresses on it, those were supposed to be the comps I guess. You see the law here says that the assessor is given the presumption of correctness. Meaning he is trusted to have done his job and he need not offer any actual proof that he did.

I also got a letter yesterday from the assessors office about my request for disclosure. At the bottom of the letter was a short paragraph that said they would not get into any discussion or debate over the law with a Citizen.
To quote" In regards to the issue of the use of verbiage fair market value, The Assessor-Treasurer, or any of his staff, are not required to enter into a debate about interpretation of the laws, court findings, legal options and written directions from the State of Washington that govern the assessment of properties in Pierce County in response to a public record or information request." Now isn't that interesting?
I was not opening a discussion or debate but simply asking that the Assessor provide me with a copy of the law he advertises both orally and in print he claims requires him to assess property at 100% of its Fair Market Value.

He won't answer my question, he won't disclose or provide a copy of that law because there is no such law. So instead of admitting the mistake he is clouding the whole issue, ducking and dodging it with smoke and mirrors. But never fear my fellow Citizens because I will not give up on this quest. I don't give up once I have sunk my teeth into something like this. In fact it now has my dander up that they are playing games and refusing to make disclosure, as required by law, freedom of information and all that.
So in keeping with the Game he is creating I am going to make it a whole separate issue, all on its own, under the Freedom of Information requirements and see how he responds to that form of a request.


So I am off to file a next level appeal to the State Tax Board. And start preparing next years appeal, it has to be filed by the end of June. It is going to be filed every year for the rest of my life, well as long as I own property. I keep hopes that someday the rest of you will rise up, wake up, and join me. After all as the assessor says, and prints in his literature, you should be paying, Not a Penny More, than you are legally required.

Cow farts worth Billions, more even,

I was told something interesting the other day, that it is possible to turn Cow farts into Diamond.

I didn't tell the guy right off I though he had been drinking too much, well we were in a bar. But I had talked to him before and he always knew what he was talking about in the areas we discussed and we got into a few deep ones, Super Strings even.
Anyway I jotted it down on a coaster and looked it up when I got home. And yes people are making diamond with methane. No one as far as I could find out isn't actually collecting Cow farts, but they are almost pure methane.
What I did learn is that there is a process using methane and low heat [well 600 degrees], the other process for making artificial diamonds uses extreme temperatures and pressure.
Diamond is grown in layers. The race now is to grow the layers faster. One report I read had it up to 100 microns and hour.

But it was the practical things that will be done with the new product that caught my eye, intrigues me a great deal. Imagine diamond coatings on your eye glasses, windows, paint your car with it, even flooring, bearings for machinery, the list goes on.
Diamonds as we all know are the hardest substance, material on this planet.
I think this is really exciting, it offers an opportunity to clean up the air on this planet. And in the process we get diamond in about any shape and form we want.

This also clears up a question that's been rolling around in the far back dust bins of my mind.
Years ago I read some Jewish stories, their histories, folk takes whatever one might call them. In one it said that when Adam was ejected from the Garden in Eden that he didn't leave empty handed; he carries a book with him. Adams book contained all the knowledge he needed to go forth into the hostile real world. The book was made of Emerald, ruby, and diamond if I remember correctly, Gem anyway, the pages were made out of gem. I learned not that long ago, a few years back, the spot on the grocers counter where the laser reads the bar code, it looks like glass. It is not glass but instead a synthetic clear ruby. Glass would scratch in a short amount of time, ruby doesn't.

Then there is the other biblical story about the new Jerusalem floating down to earth with extremely long , very tall, and quite thick walls of emerald, ruby, and diamond. So it looks like the science is there to allow such creations, it has just taken us a very long time to reclaim what we once knew.

Anyway; I'm excited about this new process, we can soon have diamond coated everything, forget very soft shiny Gold that quickly wears away, Diamond never wears out.
Think of micro-scopic thin diamond threads, to weave cloth out of; even if you couldn't ear it there are other more commercial applications where thins could make good use of a coating of diamond cloth, electronics, electricity, power generations businesses, general manufacturing businesses. Diamond will make the best bearings for industries huge machines.

BUT; First think cheap, methane is in an over abundant supply and we could stand to get rid of the things used in this process, methane, carbon.


Diamond Films:

This is the first one I read, good info:
http://www.highbeam.com/library/docfree.asp?DOCID=1G1:9280459&ctrlInfo=Round19%3AMode19b%3ADocG%3AResult&ao

Here are a couple more

http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=2207

See section 2 part way down the page, this has formulas written out.
http://idol.union.edu/~malekis/ESC24/KoskywebModules/sa_q.htm



About the old process, how to Grow a Diamond in 3 days: click on the link
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/60II/main616666.shtml

You can Yahoo or Google or Ask dot com for more if you see the excitement in it I did, still do.

Don't ya just love learning new things?

Taxes; which are legal which are not?

In Washington State this is pay your property taxes month, although it's really more like rent now as the State has made it clear it holds ultimate ownership of all lands. They forgot the Emperor holds original title to All the Northern Provinces, and my Brother, The King, holds all of the California's and a few points east and south, you see when we were much younger we split the west coast of North America up into two domains, that was many years ago; I claimed the North and he claimed the South.

Back to Washington, this State is unique in that it is the only State in the US that uses the term "True and Fair Value" when speaking of property taxes. That terminology begins in the State Constitution and follows through in all of the laws written.
However; there is a problem.
Few Citizens understand what that really means and the assessors have changed its original intent into current fair market value which means they now collect taxes based on inflation.
Each year property owners are mailed a small postcard advising of the next years tax value. Few if any read the fine print which tells one how to go about protesting, appealing the increase, and it's always an increase.
It has taken me most of the past four years to sift out the truth and find evidence to prove almost everyone is being overtaxed on the property, their homes. And more importantly it took me a lot of time to find a written court decision to back up what I know to be the real truth. Funny it is that what one says is always taken with a grain of salt if that much, while what you find was said previously, even if it was a hundred or more years ago is given great weight and consideration.

Each year I win a bit more as I find more evidence to support my position. But it is an uphill, up mountain battle.
This year at the first round, the county board of equalization, I was astounded at the lack of consideration on the other side of the table. You see this year I presented a 92 page brief, my basic argument, a collection of facts, evidence, and explanations.
The first thing I was told by the 5 person panel [appointed Citizens] was that no one had bothered to read all of the evidence. I was then offered exactly 20 minutes to explain it to them; an impossible task. Ten minutes into it they told me that the County said they couldn't get into the area I was discussing, which by the way as the actual law of the State.
But I knew it was more of a formality even going to that level of the appeal process and that they would find against me; they always do. But I wanted a face to face, for the record, it is recorded on tape.
The next level is the State board of tax appeal and at that level things are much different, better in many ways for the Citizen. And I have always won something at that level; now that I have the court cases, the precedents they have been asking for, I am in a much better position for winning.

I am still battling with the county assessors office, trying to get full disclosure from them of their methods, how they really arrive at their determinations.
Even more important is that the assessor tells everyone, even prints it on his pamphlets, that he is "required by law" to assess all property at "100% of its Fair Market Value", I have been petitioning him for four years now to divulge exactly which law it is that is he is quoting. To date he has refused any response to that question, or to even acknowledge it was asked.
Not a big surprise considering that there is no such law. You see he is one of those in government that has created authority and powers off the grid, to suit himself, he has his own opinions of what is legal and what is not, of which portions of what the law requires him to do that he will comply with, or not. Since no one has ever challenged him he has been running free for years.
He knows I know he is lying to the People and that I can prove it.

My only problem is I can't afford the price of a good lawyer to haul him in front of a Judge. That will change at some point in the future. In the meantime he ducks and dodges me.

The latest ploy on his part is the sudden claim that he has found some 620 pages of documents under my request and wants me to pay for 25 cents a page for copies of them under the claim that what I requested disclosure of is outside the boundaries of my appeal.

Since all I have ever requested was full documentation of how he arrived at his determination, the methods used, I listed each thing the law requires him to use and noted that my request included but was not limited to those things I had written down, just in case I missed some specific type of document.
I sent him a reply stating I found it hard to believe he found that many pages for this one parcel, but that if I were to believe him and were to fork over the money he is demanding, I requested a signed affidavit that each of the 620 pages was specifically read, studied, and actually used in the assessment of the specific parcel in question. I'm not paying for pages that have nothing to do with it, pages that were not used as a part of the process for the parcel under appeal. More importantly is the still unaddressed, unanswered question of which law is he quoting to justify his overvaluation for the purpose of collecting tax revenue, that request was at the top of my letter.
So right now we are at a standstill I guess, because it's been well over two weeks and he has sent no response. Not unusual, he did the same thing last year. But someday he will stand before a Judge and I can't wait to be there to hear his excuses for failure to disclose.

In some ways this has come to be like a Keystone Cops comedy. But it is a most serious issue, one that has tremendous potential to upset the governments apple cart, and that also makes it a dangerous situation. Governments do not take lightly to anyone either limiting or reducing their taxing ability, their revenue stream. But like the Assessor also prints in his literature, we the people should pay "Not a Penny More" than what we are legally obligated to pay.


I still have a lot of research left to do, a lot of evidence to uncover, I need to get into the archives to root out the original records dealing with why True and Fair value was used instead of Fair Market Value. Some people tell me I am being too nit-picky over a few words, that I should just let it go and pay whatever is demanded.
What they fail to understand is that the law is word specific and that being nit-picky over words and phrases is normal, is most common, in fact it is expected by the courts. After all, what is the law but words, and since we the people are held to the letter of the law it is our solemn duty and obligation as Citizens to see to it that the Government is also held to the same exacting standards as we the people; after all fair is fair, isn't it?

As time allows I will post explanations of the specifics of this case, explain to you what I have discovered, and why it is so important. It has taken me many years to gather the facts, to learn what I know of this area of the law, so please be patient with me as it will take a while to write it out so you can understand it, to teach it to you. It's like an onion, there are many layers involved.

I thank you for reading this far and I encourage you to join in, post your comments and ask a question when you need to. I will do my best to answer all that write.

For now I'll post this and add more as soon as I can.

I'll also be posting on other areas I have vested interests in, I hope you will enjoy reading and discussing those as well.

Original Post

Greetings from The Great Emperor Ho, Ruler of all the Northern Provinces.

From time to time I will share my thoughts, ideas, and other intersting things with you. I do hope you enjoy them, if nothing else I hope they stimulate your own neurons
and raise interesting questions you will feel the need to find answers for.