-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.29/pageone.html <A HREF="http://www.zolatimes.com/V3.29/pageone.html">Laissez Faire City Times - Volume 3 Issue 29 </A> ----- Laissez Faire City Times July 19, 1999 - Volume 3, Issue 29 Editor & Chief: Emile Zola ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Contracting with Vampires from the King County: Shove It Or Heave It Journals by Lauren Bain Vampires do not occur in nature, but they abound in government. Bureaucrats are a common form of vampire: viewing their own lives as having been stolen, they linger, semi-vital, stealing time and life energy from the living. Fundamental property rights, on the other hand, do occur in nature, or Nature, as the Founders attested. But to retain even a shell of our rights, we are forced to engage in unilateral contracts drafted by vampires. Case in point: the securing of a King County, Washington building permit. Stage Notes: I am not a developer, and the project at hand was not a mall, or a subdivision, or a hotel, or a stadium (which in King County is a shoo-in, being other people's money and all). This is about a tiny (just over 300 square feet) "pop-out" addition on a small home. Let the drama begin. Act I. Scene I. Tuesday. Our house. Two months have gone by. The environmental health engineer and the drainage study people have cleared us for take-off on our modest remodeling project. Today my husband calls the building permit technician, as he has called him twice a week for several weeks. Normally he leaves messages on answering machines, a few of which get answered. Today we receive news. The technician has approved our permit application. There are a few things to record, according to a "site development specialist," and we can pick those up, record them, and return for our long-awaited permit. We cheer, celebrate with chips and iced tea, and give free legal advice to a neighbor being sued by a deadbeat tenant who works for another lawyer. Act II. Scene I. Friday, 9:30 a.m. We travel for an hour and a half to Renton (my Spell-Check asks whether I mean "rundown") to pick up our Notice on Title Requirements from the Department of Development and Environmental Services Land Use Services Division. The only portions of that title containing any clue to what this particular coven of vampires does are "Department" and "Division." The documents are waiting for us at the front desk. The receptionist�call her Angelique�makes an extensive point of the proper pronunciation of the first name of the carefully guarded Site Development Specialist ("specialist" is code for a liberal arts major for whom the government must create a job to avoid embarrassing repercussions to the state university system). Angelique instructs us to have the Notice recorded in Seattle and to return to her crypt for The Issuance of our permit. Act II. Scene II. DDES Parking Lot. We tear open the sacred documents. I scream. The evil bastards drank our blood while our vigil was down. We must record a Sensitive Area Notice on our very deed, and guarantee the rights of pernicious blackberries to prosper undisturbed along a 50-foot buffer of our property. My husband is quick, and immediately points out the loopholes. I stop screaming, but I know the devil has won. We are forced to record a restrictive notice on the deed to our property in consideration for receiving a permit to build a tiny addition. I sulk in silence all the way to the King County Courthouse, wondering whether we can write "recorded under protest" on the hateful documents. Act III. Scene I. King County Courthouse. We have driven through bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way from Renton. The traffic is dense because Al Gore, my five-billionth-favorite person on earth, is in town today. It is noon. My husband has a stainless steel shoulder assembly, the result of an ancient conflict between the rules of football and physics. He also has approximately two pounds of change and a Swiss army knife in his pocket. It takes us a while to clear the courthouse metal detector. But no one asks me to turn on my cell phone to make sure it isn't a bomb, or to sip my Coke to make sure it isn't nitroglycerine. Distracted earlier, we now realize we must have the documents notarized before recording them. The courthouse notary is closed until 1:00. We leave the courthouse and walk to a bank to find a notary, and discover that we must fill in our property's legal description before we can have the documents notarized. We return to the courthouse. The guard at the metal detector welcomes us back. My husband empties his pockets and submits to the scan again. I begin to wonder whether it would be that much more trouble just to get a divorce, change my identity, and buy a condo in Belltown instead of getting this building permit. But we won't let them do that to us. I will not be this County's Winston. I determine that we will survive the Mr. Charringtons of the building permit system. We proceed to the Clerk and Recorder's office to look up our legal description. It comes right upon the screen. But there is no obvious way to print the information on the screen. That is because the particular harpies that run this office all have DNA coding specific to their equipment, and no one else can operate it. The Head Harpy makes this clear to us and says she can print it in half a minute. Fifteen minutes later I ask about our printing. It's "over there." But it isn't. She does the little DNA-controlled thing again and up comes our printing, for which we pay $1.00 a page. In the elevator, I promote the Head Harpy to Silly Bitch in front of several people, one of whom sports a JUROR badge. We make a copy of the Sacred Document, carefully affixing the printed legal description onto it, at the Law Library. It is now 1:00 p.m., and the notary is in. The notary is suspiciously kind, and does not charge us for her service after learning that I am a notary. I ask how she survived working for the County and learned that she works for a private company. We now have complete, signed, notarized documents suitable for recording, and proceed to the Recorder's office. The recorder receives our documents and says we will receive copies in the mail in 10 or 11 days. I deal her a warning-of-impending-death glance and assure her that we will pay for certified copies to take back to Renton Crypt with us NOW. She agrees that is an option. We flee the Courthouse, positive that by now we are locked into a County tractor beam. Act III. Scene II. We arrive at Renton Crypt at 2:15. We sign in and note that the people who signed in at 11:17 have not yet been seen. We sit down, pull out books, and I call a friend on my cell phone to reschedule our chamber music session. My phone goes dead. I know why. We are in the imperial fortress of the Trilateral Commission and this is a dead-cell zone. We crack a few TriCom jokes and people seem to be moving through the line faster. By 3:40 we are still coherent enough to recognize our name when it is called. We wait at a table at which technicians issue permits at computers. This is Issuance. This is That For Which We Have Waited So Long. But the technician cannot find our plans. We wait while people rib each other and laugh and enjoy Casual Friday. The plans are found. Forms fly. We write a check for more than two thousand dollars and receive a form which WE CAN HAVE NOTARIZED RIGHT THERE. Sure enough, there is a pleasant notary. Sure enough, the legal description of our property is on THESE PLANS, and could have been retrieved any time this morning, and put on the Sensitive Area Notice and been notarized right there. But why would Angelique give us such pithy information just to save an hour of our lives and spare us a few dealings with her covenmates downtown? It is far more important that we pronounce RIshelle's name�which is NOT ROshelle--properly. Angelique left her life open, let it be stolen, and now exists only to steal ours. But we're on to her. Have a nice black-helicopter day, Angelique. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Lauren Bain ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) is a Seattle-area attorney, Libertarian, and a columnist/book reviewer for the Association of Objectivist Businessmen News. -30- from The Laissez Faire City Times, Vol 3, No 29, July 19, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by Laissez Faire City Netcasting Group, Inc. Copyright 1998 - Trademark Registered with LFC Public Registrar All Rights Reserved ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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