Habanero Peppers from Mash to Sauce

Making Apache Scorcher Habanero Hot Sauce 

Ripe and Unripe Red Savina Habaneros

A few years ago I created an article at Wikihow about How to Make Habanero Pepper Mash.  Maria says Wikihow reported 30,320 views so far. Scroll down in your browser to read it the steps.  Please ignore the commercial ads interspersed in the article.  You can see it here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Habanero-Pepper-Mash

Also, you can see my steps in making a one-pound batch of the mash, with photos, here:

https://bobhurt.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/jugitos-hot-damn-habanero-pepper-mash/

Earlier this month, I bottled the mash I made 10 years ago, adding a little cider vinegar to each bottle. I ordered some labels from Vistaprint.com  Yesterday, the labels arrived and I stuck them on the bottles.

About an ounce of Cider Vinegar + 4 ounces aged pepper mash per bottle.

Red Savina Habanero Hot Sauce - A 10-Year Labor of Love

I put this info on Facebook to commemorate the hot sauce.

Bob Hurt added 2 new photos.

November 14 at 3:31pm · Edited · 

Decade long habanero hot sauce project... Reserve your bottle now!

In 2003 I grew several bushes of Red Savina habanero peppers. In 2004 I harvested the peppers, removed seeds by hand, pureed them with 6% salt, put them glass jars, fermented then for a month at room temperature, then stored them in my refrigerator.

Now in 2014 I have removed one half-gallon jar from the refrigerator and sealed the mash uncooked into one dozen 5-ounce bottles. Each bottle contains one ounce of apple cider vinegar and 4 ounces of aged, fermented, Red Savina pepper mash.

This is the world's premier gourmet hot pepper sauce, aged for ten full years. I calculate its value at about $250 per bottle. Each bottle provides flavor indescribably mysterious, exotic, and mellow, plus searing heat that rushes into your soul, warming you from stem to stern.

I have started working on a web site to merchandize this magnificent collaboration of mam and nature. I'm working on label and packaging. I can accept advance orders.

This product is not available in stores. Supply is extremely limited - only one dozen bottles is available worldwide. Act now to reserve yours.

Yes I do hold another jar in private reserve.

The label I didn't print.  See?  I strive for political correctness... sometimes.

I call this sauce "Apache Scorcher."  I originally planned to put this label on it, but I thought Apache Torture might torturously offend some Apache.  I also removed the appropriately valued price.

Finished "Apache Scorcher" Red Savina Habanero Pepper Sauce, Aged Ten Years

I have only 10 bottles of this extremely rare, tasty but tortuously scorching-hot sauce available.  Write to me via http://bobhurt.com/contact.php if you want to order one.  I accept Paypal donations.

Click here to Donate

Remember, I have only a LIMITED SUPPLY of this delicious sauce.

• NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES, and 
• NOT FOR SALE ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE INTERNET or at pepper festivals anywhere.  
• Required TEN FULL YEARS and lots of loving care and attention to detail to make
• Donate NOW to reserve your bottle while supply lasts.

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t 2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

The Purpose of Life - Identical for Everyone

The Purpose of Life

The salty sage sat solemn, serene.
We’d thought he’d tell what life could mean,
Revealing its value for all to know,
What we’d reap from the seeds we sow.
Then he whispered in a voice soft but intent
“I’ll tell you life’s purpose, that’s why I was sent –
Take care to develop a personality
Of balance sublime, and of majesty.”
He gazed at us all and asked with a nod
“What else can you do to become like God?”
Then he hummed to himself, adjusted his cap
And sauntered away with a bounce in his step.

I wrote the above verse at Christmas time 2010 in this article
http://bobhurt.com/articles/recipe%20-%20Habanero%20Heaven.pdf


This text at page 2086, The Urantia Book, inspired my writing of the poem:

The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers.

          Even secular education could help in this great spiritual renaissance if it would pay more attention to the work of teaching youth how to engage in life planning and character progression. The purpose of all education should be to foster and further the supreme purpose of life, the development of a majestic and well-balanced personality. There is great need for the teaching of moral discipline in the place of so much self-gratification. Upon such a foundation religion may contribute its spiritual incentive to the enlargement and enrichment of mortal life, even to the security and enhancement of life eternal.

--

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t   2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

 

Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin aftermath portends more racism-motivated destruction

Yesterday a grand jury reached the same conclusion in the Mike Brown death that the petite jury reached in the Trayvon Martin death:

According to the juries, those two Negro youths needed killing.

Sure, jurors expressed their judgment in terms of the NON-guilt of the NON-Negro killers who acted in either self defense or within the scope of lawful authority.  But the investigations brought two salient truths to light.  The politically correct have assiduously avoided one of them but no one can avoid the other.  American society needs to look carefully at these realities:

1. The Negro youths themselves bore serious guilt for brutally attacking non-Negroes in performance of their duties of vigilance; the behavior of the youths transcended mere racial hatred into the realm of unfettered stupidity;

2. The parents of the Negro youths did a terrible job of rearing their children, THOSE PARENTS bear the real guilt, and American society generally bears associated guilt for allowing the conditions of Negro families to become destructive toward civilization.

Let us face the most serious of all the problems, one which no amount of education can cure:  at least one half of all Negroes in the USA lack the cognitive ability to graduate from high school.  .  Educated people of good sense would call that half "stupid."  Stupid people cannot evaluate relative importances accurately, and they make notoriously bad decisions.  They gravitate toward crime and welfare abuse to get by.   And, unfortunately, our politically correct educators force such children through a phony graduation anyway, in spite of their bad grades and worse behavior

Stupidity smites all races, not just Negroes.  But, like it or not, USA Negroes suffer more than do other racial groups from that stupidity.  For a good understanding of the factors and numbers, see this article: http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf

Too many Negro children in the USA have no decent father at home for all or most of their childhoods. Many parents don't marry, and of those who do, 70% get divorced.  Negro children procreate 20% of Negro babies, and have no ability to care for them. Many if not most Negro mothers tend to denigrate men generally, and sadly, women simply cannot replace men as father figures.  Many Negroes have become blindly racist and discuss Caucasians in hateful and spiteful terms. Many Negro boys grow up with a wrong idea of the ideals of manhood, and develop prejudicial and distrustful attitudes against Caucasian men.  At the same time, many of them yearn for intimate relations with Caucasian women.  About 8% of Negro men choose non-Negro women as mates.  Add that to the fact that 10% sit in jail or prison at any given time and many get killed in their youth as a result of gang violence or stupid decisions like those on which Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin acted, and there just aren't enough Negro men to go around among the available Negro women.  That makes it necessary for Negro women to share men.  That certainly makes Negro women angry or resentful, and it surely has a deleterious effect on their children.

Clearly, Negro society has some serious problems in the USA, and those problems have an internal cultural cause not imposed by Caucasian exploitation or prejudice.  Furthermore, as the riotous behavior in the aftermath of the Brown and Martin jury announcements demonstrates, Negroes generally seem to blame Caucasians for their woes, and they express it by setting fires to cars and businesses, looting, and rampaging.

I have yet to hear any leaders of any racial stripe propose cogent solutions to these problems.  I have suggested that regardless of race, irresponsible people (those who don't graduate from high school or who subsist on welfare) should neither vote nor procreate.  I have explained that giving birth to stupid children constitutes a crime against the child and society should demand laws that prevent such crimes through sterilization. 

You might not like those suggestions, but the present trends seem headed for disaster as the less intelligent, more irresponsible people of America procreate without restraint, while the smarter families diminish in size because smart parents know better than to produce more kids than they can care for on their incomes.  Eventually, in the not too distant future, the more stupid minorities will become the majority.  You don't need a PhD to figure out what impact that will have on the North American civilization.

I see the Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin incidents as bellwethers for the future of interracial conflicts in American society.  Cops will have scant ability to restrain the rampaging minority hotheads once they become part of the majority.  Far more of those stupid hotheads, with the fires of their intolerance and racial hatred stoked by their mothers and itinerant fathers at home, will seek to batter and murder innocent peacekeepers, community patrols, and whomever they consider targets of opportunity.

Scholar and mathematician La Griffe du Lion analyzed government crime statistics in his 1999 article Crime in the Hood (http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/hood.htm).  The math proved that Negros have three times the likelihood of committing a violent crime than Caucasians do, and 64 times the likelihood of committing an act of violence against a Caucasian than vice versa.  That might seem sensible because Negro thugs have so many Caucasians from whom to select their victims.  But to me it seems a little strange because Negroes tend to live in all- or mostly-Negro communities because inner city neighborhoods become all-black once Negroes start moving in and Caucasians start moving out to avoid the Negroes and their associated family problems and violence.

It seems clear to me that the thuggish behaviors of of Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin, which they learned well at home and from their adult associates earlier in life, fully justified their killings.  The only racist influence on the jury deliberations came from the pressure of government to gratify the blood lust of the Negro communities of America so as to prevent an out and out bloody riot nationwide by angry Negroes for not bringing the matter to the juries.  Race did not motivate the jury decisions.

However, racial hatred constituted a large part of the motive of Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin in their widely publicized effort to injure their victims.  And I believe that kind of hatred will grow and cause much more injury as Caucasians become a minority.  America might see a rampage like the Hutu slaughter of nearly a million Tutsis in Burundi and Rwanda as tribal hatred over prejudicial treatment during British rule boiled over after the British left. 

I do not expect our current President to lift a finger to stem such a trend before it gets out of hand.  Why?  Because he and the bulk of Negro society has refused to confess the core problems I have identified in this commentary.  No improvement of Caucasian attitude or indifference toward Negroes will fix the Negro racist loathing and disdain for Caucasians, for the cause of the Negro condition lies in bad Negro family structure and low average intelligence of Negroes.  Those causes conspire to make it difficult or impossible for many, if not most Negroes to compete effectively for the American dream.  That makes them mad as hell.  And make no mistake, ALL free people MUST COMPETE for that dream because we don't live in a total Communist dictatorship yet. 

Unless American society does something to eliminate the causes of the trouble, the situation will continue getting ever worse.  I know the President and his secretaries have no clue what to do about the wretched Negro condition in America. 

But I do.  Maybe they should give me a call.

--

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t   2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

 

What good can come of the Michael Brown incident?

I just watched the televised response of Michael Brown Jr. rooters, consisting of his father, Al Sharpton, and some Negro attorneys.  All felt prejudiced against the Grand Jury process.  They seem to support at least one new law that imposes a practical requirement on law enforcers.   They want a law requiring law enforcers to wear body cameras that record all of their interactions with the public. Americans of every race, color, and creed want the same thing because it makes sense.  It makes sense because law enforcers across the land abuse innocent people with wrongful traffic stops, unlawful searches and siezures, home invasions, efforts to achieve arrest and traffic ticket quotas wrongfully imposed by police leaders, wrongful efforts by prosecutors to get convictions merely for the prestige of having them as trophies.

But the comments of protest by antagonists of the Michael Brown grand jury process reveal their lack of balanced understanding of the cause and effect of Brown's death and their deep-seated attitude of unfairness, injustice, and racism.  They seem to want to ignore the behavior of Brown which led to his death - he robbed a convenience store and battered the officer who shot him.  Officers in fear of their lives do not know whether their assailants possess lethal weapons.  Cops wear guns so they can defend themselves against hardened criminals, run-amok drug users, and power-crazed, overgrown teenagers like Michael Brown.

The behavior of others like Michael Brown in the aftermath of his killing justify  police crackdowns on marauding Negro communities across America.  Immediately after the shooting, Negro rampagers destroyed the convenience store Michael Brown robbed.  Negro rampagers looted stores and set fire to at least one car and store that damaged even more property in Ferguson in the aftermath of the Grand Jury refusal to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown.

In other words, that behavior of Michael Brown and the Negro marauders proves that at least that set of Negroes do not respect people's property rights and that they pose a grave danger to others, regardless of race.

Michael Brown supporters know that he is a robber and a thug who assaulted the policeman who killed him.  In spite of this, they use his death as a pathetically illogical justification to go on a rampage and destroy property.  Their attitude symbolizes a widespread anti-Caucasian racial hatred in, of, and by the Negro communities across America.  They seem to want to complain that law enforcers and prosecutors and grand juries don't respect the civil rights of Negroes generally.  But the neglect to confess that many of those who brutalize or kill or prosecute and convict Negros across the land are themselves Negroes, and that they also brutalize, arrest, kill, and prosecute people of all races in the name of law enforcement.  They seem to think racism motivated the Michael Brown killing when in fact justice and self-defense motivated it.

From my perspective, law enforcers constitute a danger to everyone they encounter, not just Negroes.  Intelligent people give law enforcers a wide berth and don't provoke them because cops carry guns they have been trained to use, and they will use the guns on anyone who poses a serious threat to them.  People of good sense also know that when a cop tells you to stop or tries arrest you, resisting the cop can result in the resister's death. What fool does not know this?  It seems safe to assume that Michael Brown Jr knew well the danger of armed policemen under threat.  And yet he resisted and assaulted Officer Wilson anyway.  That suggests Michael Brown was high on drugs or simply over-estimated his physical power, and decided to engage on a pattern of mayhem that led to his robbing the convenience store and attacking Officer Wilson, regardless of the likely consequences. 

Why?  Perhaps Brown was high on drugs.  Perhaps he and his cronies and family members expressed such hatred for law enforcers, resentment for the Negro Condition in America, and disappointment that a man of his physical stature should be so poor he couldn't afford to buy what he stole at the store.  Most likely, he had poor training as a child.  Maybe his parents did not realize that they were breeding a lethal weapon who would, at age 18, perpetuate a pattern of criminal behavior that would result in much injury to others unfortunate enough to encounter their son, and inevitably lead to his incarceration or death.

Many questions flood the mind when one learns of incidents like the Brown killing.  Did Michael Brown have a prior arrest history?  How many people had Michael Brown intimidated or beat up in violent assaults prior to his death? How many prior robberies did he commit?  Was he a bully who terrorized weaker children at school or in the community? Did he have the intelligence and discipline to graduate from high school?  What kind of family life did he have?  Did his parents and peers express resentment, disgust, or hatred for people of other races?  Did they express resentment or hatred for government authority?  Did his family subsist on food stamps or other forms of welfare?  Did Michel Brown grow up with a father at home?

The answers to the above questions will create a profile.  If that profile matches profiles of other families across America, law enforcers can expect similar problems from those families, and they should prepare.

Perhaps law enforcers do feel inclined to expect violence and bad behavior from Negroes more than from others, and that might cause cops to respond with violence more readily to Negroes than others.  If so, then the problem lies in the Negro family and community, and society can only create a solution there, not by reforming the police.  No amount of reformation of the police will stop the rioting, rampaging, looting, burning, and violence in the Negro community that occurred after the Michael Brown killing and Grand Jury no-true-bill announcement.

Former New York City prosecutor and mayor Rudy Guiliani explained that the Negro violence problem in America has become most terrible inside Negro communities.  Consider this excerpt from http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/giuliani-stokes-controversy-comments-race:

“Here’s what I’m very frustrated about with Ferguson, and all these situations. These things happen and they are exceptions.The danger to a black child in America is not a white police officer. That’s going to happen less than one percent of the time.  The danger to a black child – if it was my child – the danger is another black.  I used to look at our crime reduction, and the reason we reduced homicide by 65 percent is because we reduced it in the black community because there is virtually no homicide in the white community. [T]he fact is, I find it very disappointing that you are not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks.  We’re talking about the exception here [in Ferguson]. The white police officers won’t be there if you weren’t killing each other, 70 to 75 percent of the time.”

Obviously, the Negro violence problem originates in Negro families.  I don't expect social scientists to conjecture about the wisdom of using some method like sterilization to diminish the number of Negro families that produce rogues like Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin.  Maybe they can devise non-miscegenistic ways of improving the quality of Negro families.  I have looked for something like that since 1964.  And, law enforcers have their own set of problems that lead to enforcer abuses against the citizenry.

As I see it, society needs to add a few reforms to the constitutions, in order to reduce these problems.  The reforms follow the principle that liberty comes at the cost of commensurate responsibility:

1. Every state should have county grand juries that the counties must fund.  The grand juries must operate totally independent of government and should investigate all evidence of crimes, evidence of public officer crimes, presented to them by the citizenry or prosecutor.  The grand jury itself should appoint special prosecutor and extra-territorial judge for trying public officers on whom they issue an indictment or presentment.

2. All prospective parents, voters, and government employees must take and pass a constitution competency test prior to swearing an oath to support the constitutions, becoming a parent, voting, or taking government employment.  The higher the position, the harder the test.

3. The right to procreate extends only to responsible people who can and will support their children at their own expense and train the children in the obligations of citizenship.

4. Law enforcers must wear activated, tamper-proof body cameras which must record all interactions with the public, and the recordings become inviolate public record.

5. Abuse of the public trust earns the death penalty.

These reforms will go a long way toward solving the problems that lead to the incarceration and deaths of so many Negro youth in the USA.  Those constitute the good that can come of the Michael Brown killing.

--

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t   2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

 

How to Handle Preservation Break-Ins and other Mortgage Emergencies

On 2014-11-22 17:40, RF wrote:

Mr Hurt,  My mortgage company broke into my house 3 different times in August, September and October. They changed the locks, cut the chord to security system, winterized house and threw moldy tiles on my good furniture. They also went over my contractors work.   I told them someone was going to jail for breaking and entering because that is a crime. They even went as far as deleting all of my complaints out of their system. I called in at least 20 times about the break ins. They said no records show that I've called in 2014.     Do you know how this should be handled?   Thanks,     RF

Dear RF:

Noah built the Ark because he knew a flood would come.  The Union Army built forts because they knew Indians would attack (or vice versa).  Most folks buy automobile and health insurance because they know bad things will happen, and if they don't prepare in advance, they will not have the resources to deal with the emergency.  Common sense tells you to prepare for likely emergencies in advance.

Visualize a pioneer setting where you and your family live in a tent on a high spot in an alligator-infested swamp.  Your wife is pregnant. You need better shelter and safer access. You decide to build a house in that swamp.  You have to drain the swamp in order to build the house, and you have to shoot the alligators in order to drain the swamp, and you have limited resources.  Remember your mission is house-building, not swamp-draining or alligator-shooting.  Maybe you should rethink your plan.  But it's too late.  Clearly, you cannot spend all your time building the house OR draining the swamp OR shooting alligators.  You have to manage them so that all three happen.  Our lives might not make the most sense, but we have to manage them on available resources.  The true test of potentially spiritual beings like us lies in our ability to make things go right.

We live in a society where we often need to know in advance about dangers and possibilities for confusion, and so common sense tells us to give our business associates, family, friends, and neighbors adequate NOTICE of things they should know.

Furthermore, Government provides three IMPERFECT mechanisms that substitute for fistfights and gun battles when disagreements and disputes with others arise: 

1. Sheriffs and Cops who maintain order and sometimes do battle for you;
2. State and Federal Government Regulators who punish big corporations for hurting little people; and
3. Courts where you can battle without violence before a judge, and where you might win if you have litigation competence.

Common sense tells us that we cannot rely on those imperfect mechanisms to save us from disaster, so we should prepare to do battle on our own by arming ourselves, learning and becoming disposed to using the law, training ourselves and our families to perfect our offensive and defensive skills, installing safeguards to alert us to danger, and remaining eternally vigilant in order to protect the life, liberty, and property of ourselves and those we love.  And somehow, some way, we must manage to do all of those things in order to find happiness and prosperity.  I have discovered that we can most easily and surely accomplish that by making lists with start and finish target dates, backed by plans and schedules, and a visualization of the intermediate and final results. 

With that in mind, if I stood In your shoes, I would strive for the following ideals:

1. LOG EVERYTHING. Keep a House and Event journal and related filing system, and record in it all purchase, loan, and closing documents, communication regarding the mortgage and the house, including improvements, items needing repair or improvement, money spent on the house, break-ins, accidents, cave-ins, sinkholes, plumbing/electrical/sewage/pool/roof/drainage/lawn problems, lawsuits, EVERYTHING;  AND use phone or camera to record photos, videos of events for clarity;

2. KEEP INVENTORY. Add to the journal and files a current inventory of my possessions, update it monthly, and make a detailed list of all missing items and all damages along with photos, videos, affidavits;

3. COMPLAIN TO COPS. Call the sheriff or police and file a criminal complaint against the mortgagee, servicer, preservation company, and agents;

4. NOTIFY SERVICER. Send a notice of grievance informing the servicer that I live in the property, and complaining about the damages and and demanding correction of any damage;

5. COMPLAIN TO CFPB.  If the servicer does not respond to my satisfaction (see RESPA for timing), file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,  http://consumerfinance.gov;

6. POST WARNINGS.  Post no trespassing signs notifying the public of occupancy;

7. MORTGAGE EXAMINATION. Hire a competent professional to examine the mortgage documents so as to identify causes of action against (reasons to sue) the lender, servicer, mortgage broker, appraiser, title company, lawyer, realtor, seller, mortgagee, or other entity who injured me in connection with my mortgage.  The documents I logged and filed in Step 1 above will make a competent examination possible;

8. HIRE A CHAMPION.  I know I lack the requisite knowledge and skill, and I have not prepared adequately to fight a legal battle, so I select and hire a competent, aggressive attorney, I agree on expectations in advance, and monitor his performance and communicate timely to help him help me. In selecting an attorney, I remember to ask for pleadings the attorney authored and filed in three similar cases, and I ask whether and to what extent he won on the merits of those cases.  I don't hire attorneys who can't or won't advocate my cause competently and aggressively.

9. SETTLE OR SUE.  Try to reach an amicable settlement, if if I fail in that effort, sue the all of the culpable parties for the damages and seek an injunction to keep them out of my property. Note that my security instrument for the mortgage stipulates that the servicer can enter and preserve the property if I abandon it.  When I stop making payments, the servicer has good reason to think I might have abandoned the property.
   

10. PREPARE and PERSEVERE so such emergencies don't sneak up on me in the future.  This means I devise and implement contingency plans, marshal competent allies, lawfully maximize my income, set aside 20% of my receipts for an emergency cash reserve which I never spend, and strive to live within my means and owe ZERO debt.  Yes, I realize this step goes in the number one slot in this list.  But let's remember how we got here.  Lack of preparation and timely action.
    

I'm not an attorney and I don't give legal advice or practice law.  Consult a competent attorney on questions of law. 

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t   2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

 

Denial of Jury trial for penalties of 6 months and less violates defendant rights

Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 US 25 - Supreme Court 1972
"It is clear that wherever the right-to-counsel line is to be drawn, it must be drawn so that an indigent 46*46 has a right to appointed counsel in all cases in which there is a due process right to a jury trial. An unskilled layman may be able to defend himself in a nonjury trial before a judge experienced in piecing together unassembled facts, but before a jury the guiding hand of counsel is needed to marshal the evidence into a coherent whole consistent with the best case on behalf of the defendant. If there is no accompanying right to counsel, the right to trial by jury becomes meaningless."

My Comment:

This absurd opinion clarifies the purpose for incessant legal activism, till the courts get it right.

The Court's statement makes it clear that the 6 month line deprives defendants' of their right to trial by jury jury.    The judge cannot function as counsel for the defense by piecing together facts.  The mere presentation of those facts, properly objecting or arguing against points of evidence by the prosecution, deciding what facts to bring forth, and digging up exculpatory facts, lies far beyond the scope of the judge's duties, but fit perfectly within the purview of the defense counsel's duties. Practically speaking, the judge cannot possibly do the defense counsel's job.   Furthermore juries sometimes have the duty to override a judge's prejudices and inclinations, seeing more to the heart of fairness than the judge.  The judge must hear the same tired cases day in and day out, often becoming numbed by the excesses of some defendants and prejudiced in favor of certain prosecutors.  A jury can see through this when the judge cannot, and demand a just ruling which the judge could not otherwise provide.

On top of this, a defendant in a misdemeanor could lose his wife and children, his job, and all of his assets because of a one-month term in jail risks it even more highly in longer terms.  Depriving any defendant of any constitutional right on the basis of "well, the jail term won't last THAT long so it isn't THAT serious, and won't have THAT big an impact on the defendant's life," is utterly crooked.   A jail term, however long, as to fundamental purposes:

1.  To separate the criminal from society for a season to prevent further crimes against society during that season.
2.  To have a terrible impact on (punish) the defendant, so terrible as to make him swear off his criminal inclinations and behavior forever.

A 1 to 6 month stretch in jail can totally destroy a defendant's financial and family well-being.
For these reasons, there should be NO line

This is my opinion as a non-attorney.

--

Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t   2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary

 

Dilemmas of Appraising and Mortgaging Land Separate from Improvements

Copyright © 15 November 2014 by Bob Hurt.  All rights reserved.  Distribute intact freely.

Traditional Lending

In this modern age where every smart phone out-computes office computers of the early 1980's, why do Americans suffer mortgages with the same terms on the land as on the improvements?  Surely, investors' computers and MBA finance specialists can figure out ways of securing home loans with different terms for the land and the improvement.  That could provide a good return on investment for both the borrower and the lender.

Residential realty consists of

1. The raw land;
2. General amenities (roads, sidewalks, water, sewer, electricity, cable for phone/internet/tv, HOA deed restrictions, zoning restrictions);
3. Specific improvements (the house, landscaping, garage and other outbuildings, sport facilities, pool, patio, etc);
4. Community amenities (location, recreation facility, common area, economic stratum and quality of residents).

The lending process for such realty these days typically results in at least one note and one security instrument.  The lender assigns an interest rate based on numerous factors, principally the conjectured ability and reliability of the borrower to repay, the volatility of the market, term of the loan, the Federal Reserve prime rate, and the likelihood that a foreclosure sale will equitably compensate the lender.  In most loans, the lender lumps together all of the above-enumerated components in the mortgage, and the borrower pays the same interest rate over the same term for the land as for the improvements.

Innovative Bifurcated Loan Products

But, what if the lender charged a different interest rate for the land than for its improvements?  After all, the house and grounds can fall into disrepair, and that will diminish the value in an emergency foreclosure sale.  The raw land stays the same, and its value won't diminish unless a sink hole opens up under the house or the entire community value diminishes because of fracking or a massive demographic change.  In other words, the raw land has much more stable and predictable value than the improvements to the property.

Lenders could break the loan apart into two amounts, one for the land and the other for the house and other improvements.  Lenders could charge a lower interest rate on the land, and finance it for a different amount of time, than the improvements.  This would allow borrowers to retire the debt early, reduce lender risk, and give the lender a fair return on investment.

SCOTUS Throws a Wrench in the Works

Finance specialists might develop such bifurcated loan products, but it seems doubtful that they will introduce any in the near future because of the US Supreme Court ruling in Alice v CLS Bank on 19 June 2014 (see arguments here).  In the opinion, the SCOTUS invalidated hundreds of patents for financial products or business methods, claiming patent laws do not apply to them because they fit within the exception categories of "Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas" within the scope of 35 USC §101, in other words, "building blocks of human ingenuity."  Simply put, the idea itself is not patentable.  Justice Sotomayor summarized the principle nicely:

"I adhere to the view that any “claim that merely describes a method of doing business does not qualify as a ‘process’ under §101.” Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U. S. 593, 614 (2010) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment); see also In re Bilski, 545 F. 3d 943, 972 (CA Fed. 2008) (Dyk, J., concurring) (“There is no suggestion in any of th[e] early [English] consideration of process patents that processes for organizing human activity were or ever had been patentable”). As in Bilski, however, I further believe that the method claims at issue are drawn to an abstract idea. Cf. 561 U. S., at 619 (opinion of Stevens, J.). I therefore join the opinion of the Court. "

How the Lenders Guarantee the Loan Benefits Them

Let us ever bear in mind the cogent reality that lenders do not care about the borrower's return on investment whatsoever.  Lenders and their agents and associates do everything lawfully possible to maximize their own return on investment and minimize their cost.  The note, the mortgage or deed of trust, the appraisal, the HUD1 report, the TILA disclosures and every other document related to the loan has but one purpose, from the lender's perspective - to make money.  Therefore, they design NOTHING to benefit the borrower except as required by government.   The lender wants the seller to sell the house for top dollar, the appraiser to value the collateral property for that same top dollar, the mortgage broker to qualify the borrower for repayment of a loan for that top dollar.  All the legal forms are engineered to benefit the lender first and foremost.

How Appraisals Benefit the Lender, not the Borrower

I mentioned at the beginning of this essay the idea of separate loans for the land and for the improvements.  Naturally, that implies separate appraisals.  In speaking with a seasoned real estate professional and former appraiser on this very subject today, I began to see a significance of appraisals that I had not previously considered.  The appraiser works for the lender, not for the borrower.  The lender pays the appraiser and gives the appraiser an assignment.  That assignment tells the appraiser how to focus the valuation.  It normally seeks to justify the selling price, not the actual value of the property.  Of course, the comparable sales constitute biggest indicator of price justification.  The appraiser focuses mostly on whether similar properties have sold for an amount similar to the target property asking price.

This does not at all benefit the borrower.  The borrower wants to know whether the property has the worth of the asking price, not whether other buyers have paid a similar price.  The appraiser never answers that question because the borrower does not pay the appraiser or give the appraiser that assignment.

Yet, borrowers nearly universally believe that the appraised value of the realty constitutes its actual worth.  It does not.  And that means the lending and appraisal industry basically runs a scam of deception to fool the borrower into thinking the realty has a value at least as high as the selling price, or in the case of refinances, that the house has the worth of the appraised value. 

Legislative Intervention Warranted

I believe the legislatures should intervene in this deception by mandating that appraisers must give equal balance to replacement cost, income capitalization, and market value approaches to property valuation, and estimate the actual worth of the property, not to estimate whether the selling price is justified.  Ultimately, the borrower pays the cost of that appraisal, even if the lender orders it.  Therefore, it should serve the borrower's interest at least as much as it serves the lender's.

Today, appraisers ignore income capitalization altogether, give scant weight to replacement cost, and focus mostly on market value - what people seem willing to pay for similar properties.

The main problem with market value lies in the vagaries of markets.  If the FED lowers the interest rate, people will rush to refinance or buy realty on credit so as to get the most property possible for their monthly payments.  This will create an artificial demand, and force up the market value through competition of many buyers for few houses.  Ultimately, that will cause replacement cost to rise as builders seek to benefit from the windfall.

Additionally, as we saw in the financial crisis, widespread job loss causes widespread foreclosure which collapses housing prices, and consequently leaves other home loan borrowers with underwater loan balances - they owe more than the value of the house, and therefore they have lost their equity in the home and must sell it at a loss if they sell it at all.  This means they cannot sell it to avert the foreclosure, and the deficiency leads many to seek bankruptcy protection. It has become a gargantuan disaster over the past decade.  This provides further insight into the scam of market valuation method of appraisal.

Dramatic Importance of Income Capitalization Valuation

In reality, all real estate constitutes a business investment.  The owner might use it as a residence or rent it out or convert it into a business site, zoning and deed restrictions permitting.    As an investment, borrowers have good reason to look for a return. This makes the income capitalization approach to valuation intensely important to borrowers.  Appraisers should always ask "How much money could this property produce if turned to business use?"  Obviously, renting it out constitutes the most common such use.  So the appraiser should evaluate the rental income of similar properties similarly situated. 

Borrowers should consider this valuation carefully before agreeing to borrow the money.  Why?  Well, what if the borrower suffered a stroke and the family needed to rent out the house to pay for a care-giver?  The rent and maintenance should exceed the monthly debt service, shouldn't it?  If it doesn't, that means the property was overpriced or overvalued.  That makes the typical appraised value a lie, from the borrower's viewpoint.   Doesn't it?

Challenge to Financial Innovators

If inventors concoct some slick loan products with different interest rates and terms for land and improvements, then they should also concoct some new USPAP (Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice) guidelines in order to support the borrower's interest as well as the lender's.  Of course, the lenders will never support such appraisal guidelines.  But if they did, they would have far more secure collateral for their investments, and in the end everyone would win.

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Bob Hurt            Blog 1 2   f  t 2460 Persian Drive #70 Clearwater, FL 33763 Email Call: (727) 669-5511 Law Studies: Donate   E-Letter Subscribe Learn to Litigate with Jurisdictionary