Town Council Exempts Commercial Business from Its Own Ordinance

Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution

"Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives; and, Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators and/or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States."

The Town Council is considering a building ordinance that would exclude the commercial businesses of Marlinton while focusing on rental units only.  

Ironically some of the worst offenders of this proposed ordinance are the very commercial businesses which are exempted including the Town of Marlinton.  We are told that Marlinton Elem is falling down (i.e. the levy supporters) so what would happen if another floods wrecks Marlinton?  The question would be:  Could owners afford to fix the town back to could or would there be all kinds of exemptions granted like this one

The Pocahontas Commentator fully supports personal property rights and is concerned with this new ordinance when is a blatant invasion of personal privacy as well as an ordinance that will ultimately lead to disaster for the town itself in that private properties will be devalued,  the building inspector will be able to enter your home and go through your house without an invitation based solely on the complaint of a neighbor.

This effectively turns every inhabitant in the town of Marlinton into a potential snitch against their neighbors.  In fact, this ordinance should be considered a true "hate" crime.  If you don't like the color of his skin you report a violation of the building code to the town and they will invade your neighbor's privacy, and go through his home room by room.

If you get into a fuss with your neighbor, it is easy to make him squirm--just report a violation (which he is very certain to have) to the Town.  They will do your dirty work for you and if they find something wrong they can order you to fix (regardless of how much it costs.)  No fix--they put a lien on your property.  That hinders the sale of your property and you can't even leave town until it is fixed.

I have gone around town taking pictures of both public, commercial, and private property to show that even the Town won't obey is own codes, the commercial bldgs are sometimes the worst violators but are exempt, and some private places that would have to go to expense to fix their property.

Geo Ed Visuals 2016

Street Copy

Further Study of RESA Scores.

Old Fashioned Muckraking

From an informant regarding local corruption:

well, norman, your site has been awfully slow when it comes to good old fashioned muckraking

so, i offer you these facts which i learned about 6 months ago:

it concerns rotten totten; long after he was sentenced and enjoying his solitary prison cell, he contacted diamond dave the chief deputy--what his motives were are not clear since he was in no bargaining position; i believe his motive was something to the effect that since i went down others should go down with me

according to totten, a member of the state police (this goes back 3/4 years) was working with a former deputy doing drug buys with a confidential informant; after a couple recorded buys were made, the trooper and deputy wanted to make the case against the 3 different sellers even stronger; so what they did was give the informant a lot of drugs from the state police evidence locker to plant in the sellers' houses when they went in for buys; and that's what happened, and then they got search warrants and of course found the planted drugs

now, to be clear, these sellers were certainly guilty of selling a pill or two, but they were made out much worse will all the extra drugs that were found

one of the three sellers pleaded guilty

the other two went to trial because the actual recordings of the drug buys were lost or inaudible--in both trials, the key evidence was the planted drugs found at the two sellers' houses, so the jury found them guilty--but for the presence of the planted drugs, the two defendants would have likely walked

totten knew of this when it happened because he was caught up in his own criminal activities at the time the drug planting was going on so he just looked the other way;  i believe his information to be true since he supplied it long after it could have done him any good in plea bargaining and/or sentencing

to diamond dave's credit, he did pass the information on to now former us attorney booth goodwin but they did nothing to verify it

i wish i could supply the names of those defendants, they were told to me at the time but i have since forgotten them; i'm sure a quick check of criminal jury drug trials in the past 3-4 years (since they weren't many in pocahontas) would reveal the names

totten spilled a lot of beans prior to his sentencing and those beans turned out true; these latter beans are also likely true