Socialism, Bureaucracy, and Farmers Branch, TX’s own Gabriel Rojas

Today was one of the most humiliating and infuriating days in my life.  I’ll give you more on that in a minute.

The news of the day today, at least in the political-sphere, is a bit of what I’d consider to be biting political satire. All over Los Angeles, these posters depicting Barack Obama as the Joker from the Chris Nolan Batman movies are popping up (poster pictured to right).

The defensive line from the left has been saying that this is just a scare tactic to identify a two payer or single payer system with socialism (which is identified with communism, which is identified with extreme economic destitution and mass murder of it’s own citizens).

Inquisitr’s Kim LaCapria, a self-professed libertarian, analyzed the poster as such:

Meh. I appreciate good political commentary of any affiliation but this is just lazy. Protest fail. Are we supposed to be scared of socialism? Because last I checked, all my European friends and lovers have all their teeth left and don’t have to reset their own bones.

Personally, I don’t think socialized medicine needs much of a slamming.  If you’re in the know and understand the interdependencies of the various nations on the US military, it’s clear why it works in European countries – all the money they save not spending on a military (since ours supports and defends their nation), they can spend on healthcare. If they had to pay for both, they’d be as bankrupt as the United States will be.

But first, let me tell you about my no good, horrible, very bad day.

  Beyond that, though, what I’m more fearful of isn’t socialism – it’s bureaucracy and increased governmental oversight. Ronald Reagan once said that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I'm here to help.’” Never were truer words spoken, as I found out today.

This afternoon, I had the local cops called on me – for child abandonment. Given that my son, as most days (since I work from home) hasn’t left my line of sight for more than five minutes at a time all day, you may wonder how that’s possible.

My apartment is situated as such so that I can see what's going on in the living room from my back porch. Whenever I have a business-related call to take during the day, I usually plug my laptop up in the kitchen, which adjoins the back porch so I can get drinks and food for my two year old son Jacob Li when necessary, and to and step out on the back porch when I need quiet conversation.

Apparently today was the day that the city code inspectors picked to inspect my apartment. I’ve lived in Texas off an on for almost my entire life, and never once have any of my domiciles been subject to a surprise city-mandated code inspection before, but there is, I suppose, a first time for everything.

During today’s surprise inspection, I was on the phone on my back porch speaking with my partner at SiliconANGLE, John Furrier when I hear men's voices yelling loudly, as if they’re trying to get someone’s attention. I had been on the back porch for no more than a two or three minutes, and Jacob was thoroughly engrossed in an episode of Spongebob Squarepants, waffle in one hand and juice cup in the other. The way the sound bounces around in the courtyard behind my house, I thought it was coming from outside or from a neighbor. I looked around over the fences and such, and didn’t see anything, so I come back inside.

As I open the back door, I see two men I don't recognize standing in my living room, my front door open, and my son Jacob running out to the street.

I come in and they're yelling at me "Where have you been?"

I live in what I consider to be a safe neighborhood, but I also generally keep the door dead-bolted. Naturally, I’m a little alarmed that anyone would be in my house, let alone two disheveled looking workman types. Their very presence in my home (let alone their confrontation attitude and the fact that they’d just let my son run out towards the street) activated my daddy-instincts, and I began to size up the situation in my mind how I’d save my son and take out these two intruders.

I holler back as my 6’5” frame lumbers menacingly closes the distance across the household to their position: "Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?"

As it turned out, one of them was the local property maintenance fellow, and the other happened to be my ‘friendly’ neighborhood code inspector. The maintenance guy had supplied the city employee with my apartment key, and since I had failed to chain the door, they had gained entry into my home.

His answer to my inquiry was unimpressive.

“We've been in your house for a half hour trying to figure out why this kid has no parents around,” said the city man I later learned was named Gabriel Rojas.*

“That's bullshit, sir, I've been in the kitchen the whole time,” I replied.

“Watch your language with me," he said

During this interchange I'm carefully but steadily backing him out of the house - he's stepping backwards out and I'm advancing on him.

“What the fuck did you just say to me?" I ask, incredulously. At this point he’s backed himself all the way out of the house, and Jacob has long since run back in the house.

“I said watch your language with me,” said Gabriel. “I have a right to be here, announced or unannounced, and gain entry to your home for inspection under Texas state renter laws.  Check your leasing agreement.”

I was flabbergasted at the audacity of this man, who not only came into my house unannounced and started a verbal altercation with me, but told me that I essentially had signed my rights away by renting an apartment in the state of Texas. About half a dozen legal statutes raced through my mind that I could quote to refute him, but given that I was clearly dealing with a moron with a Napoleon complex, I didn’t imagine quoting them would do me much good.

He must have taken my brief pause as some sort of acquiescence, or perhaps the look of , because he pressed home his point: “You clearly don’t want to speak to me about your home inspection or why you were gone for a half hour, so you can talk to the cops.  I’ve already called the cops a half hour ago about your abandoned son, and they should be here soon.”

 

I knew that the timeframe was made-up, since the police station is right across the street. If a cop were to walk to my house, it may take them four minutes. None-the-less, I locked the door, and Gabriel Rojas the City Code Inspector sat down on my front door stoop, and I awaited the arrival of the police.

The rest of the story is pretty unexciting.  Once the cops got here, I explained everything to them in vivid detail, more or less like I did above, adding only: "Look, the guy is probably saying I'm argumentative and confrontational, but from my perspective, there were two unknown disheveled men in my livingroom, my son's running out the front door... I went into protective dad mode.”

The cop said "I completely understand." With that, he and the three other squad cars that came to attend to my heinous crime took my number, wrote down my ID information, and left.

When my wife came home, she caught Gabriel in the parking lot, where he was similarly belligerent with her, informing her that if she didn’t like it, she could take it up with the Mayor of Farmer’s Branch, TX. Subsequent to the conversation with my wife, however, he recanted his previously ‘iron-clad’ timeline when speaking to our landlord.

The landlord, (whom I'm not really on great terms with) defended me to him, he admitted it was more like three minutes, rather than a half hour that he searched the household for my presence.

“Mr. Hopkins doesn’t have a car other than the one his wife drives,” the landlord told Gabriel. “Since he works from home, it would be impossible that he’d have left his child for a half-hour unattended.”

Socialism is really bureaucracy, and bureaucracy is really evil.

To tie this intricate and detailed story of humiliation and frustration back into my original point – it was bureaucracy, regulation and ceding control to the government that gave this twit Gabriel Rojas the license to enter my house as if I were simply a squatter.  It is the position of control that attracted this little-man-syndrome having fellow to a position where he could not only bully his fellow man, but act as a busy-body in other’s affairs.

Bureaucracy and culturally shared cynicism is probably the biggest contributing factor to the overall level of frustration.  While I’m thankful that I won the police officer lottery this time around and didn’t get tased in front of my children, I’m also well aware of the fact that this passionately typed out blog post is about all the social justice that will be meted out.

Even though I knew it was futile, I still spent an hour on the phone with Gabriel’s direct superior at the city’s code enforcement division.  I learned a number of interesting but ultimately useless facts about the man: he’s had police training, he was a military policeman, he’s been in the department for some time… I heard some quieting platitudes and reiteration of the flawed ideology that code enforcement can visit their horrors on unsuspecting citizens at their whim.

We expect nothing of our government these days. Several years ago, when my wife and I were dating, over the course of a weekend, I had two direct encounters with law enforcement that more succinctly encapsulate the frustration I’m trying to convey (albeit packed with much less emotion).

I lived in Tyler, she in Dallas.  Over the two hour drive to see her, I was pulled over for traveling five miles in excess of the posted speed limit (of 65 MPH).  The conversation went cordially, if not bizarrely, enough for most of it.  Despite the fact that I was driving a late-model car in near-mint condition at the time, he thought I looked suspcious as I stood on the side of the road, and demanded to search my car. 

Since I had nothing to hide, I let him, but I made the mistake of putting my hands in my pocket while he searched, which spooked the young fellow. For my mistake, I spent the next hour handcuffed on the side of the highway while he turned my car inside out.

Later that weekend, while spending the night at a friend’s house, my car window was broken out and my radio stolen. As soon as I noticed it, I called the police, and then spent the rest of the day waiting for a patrolman to apparently never show up. The police couldn’t even be bothered to take a statement in person, and I was called and told to give a statement over the phone.  Curious at my situation, I asked the operator if they expected to catch the criminal in question.  She laughed and declined to answer.

Cynicism is great, but we’re systemically cynical to a fault…

At what point do we as a country look around and realize we live in a world that doesn’t work?

No matter who I told the story of the city inspector to, everyone had the same reaction to my sentiment of resignation to no action being taken against Gabriel the Douchebag Code Inspector: “you’re right – nothing ever comes of these things anymore.”

This is the same system of control we wish to entrust our national health care to? Let’s leave aside the historical implications of the word ‘socialism’ for a moment.  Let’s set aside the modern examples of the many alternative forms of health care insurance, private and public, that exist as options for reform. Let’s put away our feelings of partisanship – this has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans.

Let’s just examine our feelings and experiences with the government that we have.  When was the last time that government came through for you – on anything?  Have the police, over the course of your life, been a help or a hindrance to your financial and physical well-being? Are they more concerned with finding ways to curb vehicular petty crimes, or are they interested in keeping the peace?

Do you find that the many tentacled beast of local, state and federal government something that aids you, on the whole, with your goals in life? Are the people who fill those positions typically self-important loons who want to lord their small position of authority over you, or are they typically goodness-filled individuals with your best interests at heart?

You’re likely thinking to yourself of all the ways your government has failed you – not the big ways, but the death from a thousand cuts you suffer on a yearly basis.  The snotty DMV worker.  The inept TSA inspector.  The petty peace officer. The corrupt education administrators. The ineffectual congressional representative. The perversely moronic banking regulators.

At what point do we say “That’s enough?”

More importantly, at some point we need to say: “You get no more responsibility until you get the ones you have done and done right.”

---

Lest there be any confusion, the Gabriel Rojas in question is the Code Enforcement Officer in Farmers Branch Texas. He can be reached at gabriel.rojas@farmersbranch.info or on his phones: 972-919-1435. His direct superior, ‘Jim’, can be reached at 972-919-2549.