Our Supreme Court Case Oral Arguments

0:00Welcome to the Real Power Family Radio Show, brought to you by Family Success Triangle. Where we talk about how we achieved financial freedom in two years, by the time we were 30. If we can do it, so can you. We will bring you the people who can help you achieve financial freedom, time freedom, and location freedom. Learn how we integrated our business, investing and homeschooling into everyday life. Now, here is the Real Power Family, Eric, Lila, Devon, and Ethan. Welcome to the Real Power Family Radio Show, I'm your host, Eric Bowen. We have my wife, Lila, and son, Devon, today, and, man, what a great week. It's been, wow, exactly a week ago, we were at the Supreme Court, and we're actually recording this the day after I'm still pumped up on a high or coming down from a high for making it. It took, we literally started trying to dispute an ordinance in January of 2017, and the

1:06city of Canton was doing interior inspections. We said, no, you're not allowed in, you have to show just cause. Well, they wouldn't find me, and they wouldn't put anything, they threatened me, like, over and over to the point, I called up the law director, I said, look, this is getting to be harassment, put something in writing, or never contact me again. Then we never heard anything about it, and that showed me they didn't really care about the inspections or the safety or anything. What they cared about was collecting the fees, and then they went and they harassed Paul, who was on our show a while back, because they thought they could push him around. He's just a young kid that only owns three properties as far as they know, and he gave in and did what he thought was legal. While our Supreme Court case, we said no again to the city of North Canton, and this happened all the way back in January of 2023. It has taken us through, commonly as appeals court, and finally, a week ago today, we made

2:07it to the Ohio Supreme Court, and I think it went really well. What about you guys? Absolutely. I think Maurice did a great job of presenting the facts as far as, like, what the Ohio Constitution says, and why what North Canton wants to do is not constitutional. I think you did a great job with all of that. I really love the fact that the bottom line is they said, well, basically, obviously, you have fourth amendment protections if you're a criminal, but that doesn't apply to this. This is civil. And some Marie said, so you're telling me that if I'm dealing math, a murderer or a rapist, then I have more protection than my law abliding clients do. And that's really the summation of everything. You can't just pass a law, and you threw out that, you know, we're talking about what was the belief? He goes, nobody could have ever imagined any of this back in the early 1800s when the American

3:08Constitution was written, heard the Ohio Constitution was written. But our Constitution took effect in 1851. We became a state, what, 1803? Yes. So, you know, from 18, right around the early 1800s to the mid 1800s, that's what we're basing this on. What does it really mean in that context today? And he said, you couldn't possibly think administrative warrants, they're bringing new. And I really don't believe, I couldn't believe it when somebody said they got in the administrative war. Well, how can you do that? How can you just make up something, and their excuse was, North can's excuse was, you didn't let us in, therefore there must be a problem. No, I didn't let you in, because I don't have to open up the rights. And one of their arguments at the Supreme Court, their lawyer got up and said, well, yeah, is a house? Is does this even count? Because it clearly says in your house, but this isn't a house, that's an apartment building. That's not.

4:09It's still a home, the right of the people to be safe in their premises. They even call it a housing unit. Yes. And I think it's amazing that they are totally, they just don't care about the tenants. The legislator, I don't know what changed, but they were so potent in anti-Landlord. And now they're just squashing the tenants. They raise property taxes on all of the properties that tenants live in, so they're going to have to pay by 10%. They're passing all these bills about property taxes, like, oh, look, we have over 90 bills out there. I don't care. You only pass six of them, and the six don't help us at all. In fact, they make it more expensive to run a home. And then they said, well, we have to protect the homeowners. So you're telling me that if you don't own your home, you're a second-class citizen. That is exactly what the argument is. You're not as good as people that own their home. And if you're looking at the structure of the building, is there a difference if I

5:09own a condo and live in a condo, can they come into an inspection there? Because a condo is nothing more than an apartment building that a whole bunch of different people own. So is it the type of, I mean, when they were arguing about, well, an apartment building clearly is in a house. These are the ridiculous things that the government is saying. So what I understood, which I'm sure is very little because I'm not a lawyer, so take this as you will. If you want, I'll put a link in the show notes. If you actually want to watch, the first 15 minutes is awesome listening to our lawyer, Maurice, argue his case. And then they went on for like, they got 15 minutes and what, 12 minutes over. So they're up there for almost a half an hour. And then we got like four more minutes at the end to rebuttal. But it really, if you want to tune in and look, well, have the link in the show notes. It is so worth watching at least the first 15 minutes of this. It was pretty awesome to be in the Supreme Court and to listen to say that, well, no,

6:12tenants don't have these rights. But the tenants have more rights, listen, you know, Maurice said, yeah, the tenants, of course, they have rights. This is in fact, they have more rights. They have the right of occupancy. And just because they don't choose to pay a large chunk of money up front to be an owner or they don't choose here, they send a contract just like we did. We go out to buy a house or an apartment building, we send a contract. And then maybe we get a bank loan. Well, maybe their credit's not good enough to get a bank loan. Maybe they don't have a big enough down payment. So does that mean that they're not citizens? Does that mean that they don't have the right to be left alone in their homes that, you know, you're going to have these city code officers, many of which have no training. I think we had three or four of them in the city of Canton and a couple of them failed the test. They couldn't even pass the basic test to be an inspector. And so if you listen to some of the one of the justices specifically, I was so impressed with the Supreme Court that we have in Ohio, like, really good questions.

7:14And it sounded like they were not lopsided. They were attacking both of the attorneys. And Maurice walks out, he goes, they weren't attacked, I didn't feel like they were attacking me. He understands that they've got to get these answers to their questions. And so are they challenging questions? Yeah, they absolutely are. But you've got to get down to the nitty gritty because their whole goal is to fair it out all the best information so they can make it a good, well informed decision. So I think what they were doing was fantastic. I truly, I absolutely agree with you, Lila. And they people saying I'm abrasive when I do stuff like that, but that, hey, fought on shoot. Exactly. No, answer the question. Yep. You know, why are you still rambling on? Yes, you know, skip the preamble and they were quite a bit nicer than that. But I just, I was very impressed with their drilling down and getting good answers from both sides. So that's so worth the experience of going to the Supreme Court and then sitting there talking to our legislative director for the Ohio Real Estate Master Association. Hey, guys, you know, there's like 50,000 landlords in Ohio.

8:17How many of them have ever or will ever make it to the Supreme Court over a housing issue? So that was really spectacular. And not only that, but our lawyer, Maurice, from 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, which if you're looking to make a, if you believe in what we're doing, stopping government overreach. I have never found a better organization to donate to than 1851 and Pacific Legal Foundation in PLF actually sent one of their lawyers. She was sitting up there with Maurice. She didn't talk, but she was sitting at the table and they wrote an Amicus brief, thanks to the, is it Institute for Justice, Lila? Yeah, Institute for Justice was another one that wrote a Amicus brief. I think I've been pronouncing that for a very long time. Thank you so much to both of these law in the Ohio realtors. I can't thank you enough for writing a brief on this. And the bottom line is they're going and they're raising property taxes deliberately and saying, well, we can't, they're not trying to get rid of any property taxes.

9:20They're raising them on the tenant and saying we have to try and help out the owners. It's too hard to buy home. Well, yeah, you should help out the owners, but that doesn't make you a second class citizen. Every single one of my customers is a tenant by definition. I provide rental housing. And if we can't treat them like they're the same as us, we can't stay in business. I think it's awful. And yeah, we do. They say that the landlord has to pay these things, but I can't provide a house in North Canton. Look at what happened when they passed this ordinance that we are challenging right now. Oh, yes, the cost of rentals. I think the exact number was $90 per unit per month. So even though the fee is only like a hundred bucks every six months or 12 months, depending on a lot of things, we'd with all of the extra money and hassle to just comply with the government regulations. It's not even what all they cost. It's complying with them and dealing with all their BS.

10:23It raised rents by $90 and just one year. So you might think that the landlord's right in the check, but we cannot provide a house for less than our input cost. So they are really going after the tenant and we have another one of these cases that Marisa's representing in the Supreme Court next month. What does that February 10th? These back again, yes, so we were his 11th or we were his 9th case at the Supreme Court. He's going back for a 10th one, just a month later, representing the city of Kent. And right after this break, Lyle, I can tell you about that. Every parent wants their kids to be successful. And today's world, getting them the right knowledge to do this can be a challenge. My husband and I decided to homeschool our kids and give them a financial and real world education, rather than making them memorize things they would probably never use. Our results are kids who became financially free before they could drive with no money or credit from us. Now at 16 and 13, they co-host our real power family radio show and Devon is in his 30 year of college.

11:27How can you give your kids a head start like this? Check out our book, Family Success Triangle, which outlines the lessons we taught our kids. We want you to achieve amazing results at any age. Get your copy of Family Success Triangle on Amazon today. And be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at Real Power Family. And listen to the Real Power Family radio show Monday through Friday at 7 a.m. on the Brushwood Media Network. Welcome back to the Real Power Family Radio Show. Today we're talking about our experience with the Ohio Supreme Court. And Eric, you just talked about how Maurice is going to the Supreme Court again, February 10th. He's doing that for the city of Kent who was not allowing more than two unrelated people in any given rental unit. And that is obviously not something that should be going on. And so he is fighting that currently to get that change. And I think that's wonderful. I plan to go, I want to go watch that again because I learned so much sitting in that audience and watching the Supreme Court work. Absolutely. Devon, what did you learn? I learned quite a few things, including even they realized that this is a scheme

12:34because one of the other things that happened there, and I'm not sure if we've talked about, I don't think we've talked about this on a show, but we were talking about with a lot of people afterwards is how I think it was one of the Supreme Court justices first had said, so you can just use any scheme to get into one of these properties. And then even the other side's lawyer, the city's lawyer called this or other things they may do a scheme, which I think was just incredible. Yeah, a scheme to get into our privately held properties. So let us crucify Nick Shirley for finding fraud in the public sector that we all pay for. And literally, I mean, with CNN attacking him and all these people saying, that's awful. And then government officials saying, we're going to arrest you if you try and find fraud where we're here. Well, if the government's not being there on watchdog, they're not looking out for us. It's up to us citizen journalists. It's up to us citizens to find the fraud.

13:37And they're not attacking the people that are wasting our money. They're attacking the people, finding the fraud. I think Nick should be given an award and put on like this grand stage. So everybody can cheer for him because I think what he's doing is spectacular. They are wasting our money. The money we're working really hard for and they're just out just throwing it away essentially. And meanwhile, we're all struggling. That should not be going on. So he absolutely should be given an award and said, thank you to thank you Nick Shirley for what you're doing. Yes. No, but they keep pushing it worse and worse. And I'm sure we'll talk more tomorrow. But I really want to dig in. I am so upset with Trump and Senator Marino. I mean, we were there and helping him because he's a senator from Ohio. I'm very happy that we finally replace Sherrod Brown. But the people like Sherrod Brown around here and they're like, oh, yeah, he's different. I don't necessarily agree with what all the Democrats are doing, but he's different.

14:39I go, just look at his voting record. He lies to, he keeps telling us what we want to hear when he's home in Ohio. And then he votes 99 or more percent of the time, exactly with what every Democrat priority is. And that's my problem with the Democratic party. They are just blindly doing exactly what their leadership tells them to do. There are very, very few to centers that don't have a Thomas Massey or Rand Paul. And now it looks like Bernie Marino, our senator from Ohio had such high hopes was very glad he got elected. And he's like just rubber stamping things that I find despicable because Trump said we need to do this. And it stand up and use your mind. Look at this. He's like, oh, well, we got to stop. I heard that only two or three percent of the houses are owned by these major corporations like BlackRock. Now there's an article that I sent to both you guys. Did you look over that? I did not.

15:39I should have gotten to that before the show. All right. We'll talk about that on tomorrow's show. Okay. And they're saying like 10% of the properties are owned by big time investors, corporate investors. The bottom line is everybody. You look at how the government talks, look at what the city was saying and it's same thing with the water bill. Oh, well, we can't, we've got over a million customers. We can't collect from all of them. We have to go after the housing providers and make it their responsibility was the last thing we heard and testimony to the Ohio Senate. And then at the, uh, the Supreme Court, different city, different lawyers, but they're coming in and they're making up the same thing. Well, no, these people, you know, they don't have the right, the Fourth Amendment right. And I'm like, why? Because they're just tenants that how is that fair? They're either American citizens or they are not either they're protected by our constitution or they're not. He goes, well, you can't just pick and choose what you want out of the law and our lawyer gets up because yeah,

16:40actually that is exactly why the law is written. Because if the state constitution, it is there to limit your power at the state level. And if the state constitution limits your power, then it's limited. And if you try and overstep that, then it's limited to the federal level. So yeah, actually we can choose whichever level we want to fight this at because both of these are here to limit your power and you can't overstep at any level of this. And they pointed out that justice is pointed out many times. So why did you write in that they have to get a warrant to come in? And that's exactly what it says. I read the laws in North Canton and Canton. If they want to come in, either the owner has to say, yes, you can come in. So as soon as you give them permission, you lost your rights. You gave that up or they have to get a warrant and they went out and they got an administrative warrant that said, well, since you didn't let us in, there must be something wrong.

17:41So now you have to let us in. And even at the lower court, I think that was thrown out, but that was, uh, it wasn't that lila. They, I don't know if they threw it out, but I know what the big argument is that there has never been any evidence of probable cause given at any point in time throughout this entire process. Yeah. And the whole thing was is, well, we've never inspected it, but you did when the building was built, they had to follow all of the local regulations and get all of the permits and all of, you know, uh, all the inspections done. So it was inspected and now you're telling me, well, there might be 40 wire problems. Trust me. I've seen the inspections they do in all these other cities. They don't find 40 wire problems that you'd have to rip out the drywall. It was either built right or it wasn't. So they might find tenants have extension courts stretched all over the place and that could be a fire hazard, but that has nothing to do with my building. That has everything to do with the tenant. And if you're not a tenant, has everything to do with people, whoever's living there. So the point is I have a vested interest to make sure that my building doesn't burn down for a faulty wiring, right?

18:48My interest as a company has an interest. They have a financial interest that if I have bad wiring, then they shouldn't be insuring me. The city has no interest. So if I make a mistake, who pays the bills, Lila? We do. Right. And if my manager, if you guys make a mistake, who pays the bills? Deh owners do. But if the government makes a mistake and they kept saying, well, they gave us a six month license. This was three years ago. How does that help me if it's a six month license? And they never did give us a license in all of the years. We have paid, I don't know, $100,000, $200,000 and fees to the city of Canton. Do we get a piece of paper that says we're good for the next year? I haven't received a piece of paper like that. No, ever. There is no such thing as a license. They might not try and find you if you pay the, but we don't get a license. We don't get any piece of paper that says we're good for another year. And I ask them, like, well, you're making me do all this. How do I know I'm done? Are you going to send me a completion certificate?

19:49Because that's exactly what happened to Canton. They told us to tuck point of building. So we did some work where we thought it needed done. And we didn't get any piece of paper that said it was done. And then the next year they did another inspection and it was fine. So obviously it was written that they took us off the naughty list and it was fine. And then for a year or two, it was fine and tuck pointing last for 100 years. It's not like you got to redo it every three years. This is literally rocks that you're shoving mortar in there. And then they came back and said, Oh, no, you've got a tuck point. Well, what do you need me to tuck point the whole building? Well, it's a 15,000 square foot building that's ridiculous. Look how solid this is. But so we spent, you know, we did like a quarter of a million dollar job on it. And I own the construction company so we didn't pay that much. But that's what it would have cost to hire anybody else. Spent all summer with the crew people working. And they never once gave us a piece of paper that said it was good. And that's why we finally just said, you know, we're done. We'll walk out because who's to say they're not after us now. They said that we got to oral. It was, it was good.

20:50But what if they come back in another year or two and say you got to do it a third time? Yeah. And that's, that's the problem that people have had with the city of Canton is, uh, they can think everything's good. We even had that problem with Akron. We thought we had done everything that they had asked three years ago. Yeah. And all of a sudden they're back going, well, no, the gutters still need cleaned out. Well, yeah, I'm sure they do because we did, you know, it's been three years. Cleaned. If you look at them in July, I bet you they're clean. Yeah. If you look at them in November when the leaves are still falling, I bet they're dirty. Correct. I am not going to clean. What do I do? Clean them out every week for three months until the leaves are done. Uh, no, that's some of the ridiculousness that we're fighting against and just seeing them saying, no, we won't allow you go get a warrant and show just cause. So that is what the entire court case was about. And as it turns out, it looks all the lawyers say, we're looking great.

21:50You can listen to it yourself. I, it sounded like we, you know, clearly won on many of these points. If not all of them and the bottom line is either law binding citizens have a fourth amendment right that you can't just barge in because you feel like it because, you know, they might be a tenant or they might be, what are they going to go after next? Maybe we can only do an inspection. If you're white, apparently racism is wrong. If you're brown, but not if you're white. So we, let's just write it like that. I mean, if we can go after you for whether you rent your home or own it, then what else could the, hey, go after? Yeah, either all citizens or citizens or they're not and if you're a citizen, you have our rights that you don't, they're trying to give you legal aliens are rights. They're not legal. They don't fall under the protections of the Constitution. And if you're trying to give them rights, but I don't get rights because I'm a white male that makes more money than the poverty level and provides housing to

22:53others to live in. Yeah, this, you know, we've all got to stand up and say, no, this is ridiculous. And this is why housing prices are getting out of control. It has nothing to do with the housing providers or the big companies. It has everything to do with the cost of dealing with the governments, not just the taxes we're paying, which is a big part of it, but their regulations. So think about that over this break. And if you haven't already found a place to sign the petition to abolish all property taxes, go to realpowerfamily.com and click on the very top link. And it will show you where you can sign a petition to get rid of all property taxes because that will really help rein in the government bureaucracy. They will fund the schools. They will fund the fire departments and they might not be able to give many millions of dollars to foreigners who have no interest in integrating into our society or working. They just want to live off of our welfare.

23:55And you know what, if you've got to cut somewhere, that's where we should start cutting in the bureaucracy. It will make everything cheaper for everybody. We'll be right back. Ethan, you're known for being the youngest teenager on the real power family radio show on the brushwood media network. You're also known for being quite successful and you're only 15. How'd you do that? Well, you've always taught me to buy more hard assets faster. And one of those hard assets that I've bought is the real power family silver round from American Gold Exchange. Get your real power family silver rounds by going to AMERgold.com or calling eight hundred six one three nine three two three welcome back to the real power family radio show where we need to keep cutting or start cutting. I should say bureaucracy because the more bureaucracy we have, the more taxes fees, regulation and anything else that holds everyone back, the more

24:55expensive things get the harder it is to do business and the harder it is to succeed. I mean, if with all the regulation, dad, how if you really won all of the small businesses to do well, isn't it easier to make it easier for everyone? Because the big ones can afford all of the compliance teams to figure out how to deal with everything. But Bob and Sue, the just the couple that wants to run their own little shop. Say that again. Yeah, the average Joe us normal people. Yeah, us mere mortals that it makes it so much harder that so many people either get put out of business or just decide never to start. Yeah, that's one of those things we've got to be watching for because I would rather be seeing, you know, the small business man out there doing all of this and succeeding. But there's too much regulation and it does. It becomes a cost prohibitive. I believe that's the term correct Eric cost prohibitive.

25:56That definitely applies here. And I'm thinking Trump made this announcement with no details mind you, but you know, a long truth social post. So he tweets out, we got to stop these big institutions from buying single family homes. Is it only single family homes? Cause we kind of need big institutions to buy apartment buildings. But apparently that's different. That doesn't change thing. It's only the single families we're going after. But what if mine was built as a single family? And I turned it into a duplex or what? I mean, how many of these houses we have at least a handful of them? At one point in time, they were at 3000 square foot home. And now we have them converted to four units because we got Bosher and Main Street and 11th Street and Walnut. So I've four of them off the top of my head. They were not built as a department does that apply to that? Are you going to say that we have to sell that or convert it back to a single family?

26:58Well, what exactly are they talking on? How big is it corporate? I think their numbers are off. And I'm going to do some research on this before tomorrow and see if I can find better. But it was my understanding that only two to three percent of these were owned by the BlackRock to the world. Number one, I absolutely do not think BlackRock should own single family homes. Number two, even more so than that, it's none of the government's business. The only reason BlackRock can own single family homes is because the federal government and specifically the cabal of bankers known as the Federal Reserve has messed up interest rates so bad and put us into such a bubble. Lila, how many people do you get that how many managed companies out there absolutely refuse to manage a bunch of single family homes? Most of them in this area at least, I'm not sure about nationwide,

27:59but yeah, most of them around here don't want to take on one or two single family homes. They they want the people that have the big apartment buildings. Cause yeah, it's a miserable money. Yeah, it's a terrible job is awful. So for Berkshire Hathaway for BlackRock, Van Garder, State Street to go out and actually start buying single family homes. One, you got a look that that stopped the absolute collapse of the real estate market and the early teens, right? 2008, 910 through 12 ish. If they wouldn't have started my homes, we weren't freefall. How many homeowners would have been absolutely devastated? They could have never sold their home. Okay, the equity, they would have been upside down. Banks would not have been paid off. How many people were already walking away in 2008, nine? And that's why we had the banking crisis of 2009 because the houses, the banks had loaned way more on houses than they were worth after the

29:00crack. If it weren't for these big companies and people like us that were buying as many as we could backstopping the market, it would have continued in freefall for longer than it did. And banks would have been more banks would have gone bankrupt. And that would have caused we started with the tarp trouble asset relief program, $780 billion, which led to QE two and QE three and QE infinity that we have links of cartoons describing this. If you don't remember what this means, basically, they stole money from every American citizen and literally every bond holder. So China probably was not thrilled that we devalued our currency so much that when they bought all of these tea, the treasury bonds and bills, now they're suddenly worth a lot less. That's the definition of inflation by printing more money and it causes prices to go up. Well, nobody looks at the good. Again, I am not a fan of these big black rocks and stuff owning a

30:06bunch of single family homes and you have to admit they did do some good at the time when it was needed and it's a miserable job for them to be in. So if the regulations didn't prohibit them from buying it, maybe back off where they can do literally anything that's better or easier or more suited for them, they would voluntarily, which is the way capitalism works. They would voluntarily get out of the single family home business. Maybe give them a tax of incentive. If you sell it to a homeowner, we'll wave your capital gains taxes. How many houses do you think these big companies, oh, but only for the next five years. So what do you think start selling these? My gosh, I would sell a bunch of single family homes over the next five years. If they'd wave all the capital gains taxes. So there's just so many ways that they can use taxes to incentivize what they want and not a sledgehammer saying you've got to do this.

31:08Oh, what are you going to do? Steal their problem. It's still private property. Well, and I think they're missing a bigger point, but maybe we can get to that after this next break. Brushwood Media Network. I'm Eric from the Real Power Family Radio show on the Brushwood Media Network. I'm here with my lovely wife, Alilah, who was known as the mom of the power family. And I got to tell you just 25 years ago, we were sleeping on a mattress on a warehouse floor. Then we learned to buy more hard assets faster, like real power family silver rounds from American Gold Exchange. If you want to get your own real power family silver rounds, you can call American Gold Exchange at 1-800-613-9323, or you can visit their website at AMERgold.com. Welcome back to the Real Power Family Radio show. Devon, can you believe even with your mom's cloudy mind and all of the Robin Tusson she's been drinking, she said, I was wrong.

32:12I can't believe that. Let's find out how I was wrong. Go ahead. Not necessarily you, but the government. I mean, they're blaming a lot of the problems going on with single family homes right now on institutional investors. But there are problems in the real estate market. I mean, you can watch some of the cracks, you know, continuing to go in the real real estate market right now. I mean, realtor.com reported home delistings are up 4.45.5% between January and October. Let's not gloss over this like world real estate brokers, because some of us are normal humans that don't deal with this every day. Can we explain what delisting is? Yeah, that means they took them off the market, right? Yeah, but not just not just they were listed and they took them off the market. I'm talking about purchase contracts being canceled. Like deals already in progress inspections done and people realizing that if I close on this, I can't afford the insurance. I can't afford all these extra, you know, and so they were they're walking away and the sellers get frustrated and then they're pulling their stuff back.

33:14So I think we're seeing a lot of problems coming from things like the property taxes going up, the insurance going up, the the general costs of everything, the inflation is just killing people right now. And that is causing more problems than any institutional investor. The only reason we're seeing so much of that, they can afford all these things when the average person can't. I think we need to adjust the root cause of the problem and not just gloss over a symptom of it. So what you're saying, property taxes and insurance are a problem. Yes, without a doubt. And we just are breaking about we have 80 different property tax bills or whatever Dave Thomas and this team who I used to have the ultimate respect for us so happy. They want to do nothing. They do not want to cut your taxes. Well, they simply want to shift the burden from one person to another. So they shifted them to take care of the homeowners. Now, here's how well they're taking care.

34:14First off, you're totally getting squashed. Your property taxes are going up 10% over the next handful of years. And I don't want to play the game. They're playing, but it does take a handful of years. It's like 2% or 2.5% in each adjustment period, which is every couple of years before the tenants have to pay 10% more in property taxes. I mean, you might say I'm a tenant. I don't pay it. Well, the housing provider, the guy that owns your house, they're paying it. And they can't continue to provide you housing if they can't pay the taxes, which means your rents are going up. So first, they're raising property taxes there. Then they promised that, oh, well, there won't be any of these big jump ups. Oh, what? Next year, there's still going to be a big jump up on a third of the counties. And they're talking about 24% and one 28 or 29% and other. We're talking about a quarter to a third increase again. And ours just went up 40% last year.

35:17So the people that had a massive raise three years ago, your 2025 taxes that are due in 2026, meaning like over the next month or two, depending on where you live, those are likely to go up 20 or 30 more percent from where they were last, even though you already had a massive raise three years ago. And you're not protected from that. They talked about it, but they cut the one good part of House Bill 186 out. And they added in that awful amendment thanks to Senator blessing really made it harder to be a tenant here. And then they actually believe this because they have their lawyers going to the supreme court and testifying that we'll know the tenants don't deserve the same rights as the others. But it's not the tenants. It's the landlords we don't, but we're going after them. But you're not going through my house. You're not looking at the house that I sleep in at night and have my private pictures in. I don't want you to know that maybe people can probably figure out that we probably own firearms,

36:22but I don't need them to see if I have firearms in my house. I don't need them to see targets hanging up around because I'm proud of my kid shooting or pictures of us. How many of my family members do we have a picture of shooting with Turkey and deer and fish? Maybe I don't want the government to know that. So they're not coming into my house. They're coming in to the tenant occupied properties, aren't they? And the tenants, some of our tenants even wrote letters stating we don't want the city coming in. You guys already do inspections. We feel you're doing a good job. The city doesn't need to be in my place and the lower courts threw it out. Yeah. And they're like, well, this is just a landlord thing. There's no tenants here. And our lawyers said we, yeah, but you know, they did write affidavits. We had two tenants in the out of six right affidavits for in this. And they threw it. They wouldn't let them be involved for whatever reason. So that's the only reason they weren't there. But how many tenants showed up to a alliance to fight exactly the same ordinance?

37:25Yeah, dozens. Yes. We had dozens of tenants show up and say, no, they don't need. I don't want the government going through my stuff, right? Maybe you're a recreational user of marijuana and you don't want the government to know that. And maybe you're doing it legally. Maybe you have a medical, I don't even know what the laws are here. I don't do that stuff. I don't think it's a good thing. And I also know that as long as you're not bothering me or my family, it's your right to do that. So I don't have a problem with that. But maybe you don't want the government knowing that. Do I as a housing provider have the right to say, no, you can't smoke dope? I honestly don't know. But our stance has been that if it's illegal, you can't do it because they can literally steal our house. And the city of alliance threatened to confiscate an 11 unit apartment building because one tenant who wasn't even paying his rent and was already being evicted must have stolen like a bottle of pills from his grandma or something.

38:25And so I think he sold two pills out of a prescription bottle to an undercover cop. And they threatened to take our building because they knew, quote, we were somehow involved in making money out of this. Like, oh, make him money. He is not even paying his rent. Were he vicking him for nonpayment? Look at the court system. It's already been filed. I mean, it's obviously not a good drug dealer. He can't even make enough money to pay a $500 rent. This is, yeah, getting rich off of him selling two pills to an undercover cop. But they have those laws in there where they can confiscate the whole building. And they actually, a cop actually threatened to do that. So I would absolutely, if I would fight hard for that, I would pay an awful lot of money because if they can do that, when we had no control, yep, and there's no possibility they could show that we knew anything about it. And then I realized they were just doing that to scare us because they wanted to do an inspection of that building. And they're like, oh, well, we know you moved him out of there and into another unit.

39:25We just had a set out. We lost months of rent and paid hundreds of dollars to get a court date. And then I had to pay people to set it all out. Now we got to pay him to fix it all up. There is no way I would ever let him in another one of my units knowingly. And I like, well, no, we know you know, my goal I've been saying since the beginning was to not have drug dealers in an 11 unit building where I also have other families with kids living there. That's a terrible way to run a business if you want to keep the good families that aren't breaking the law. And I don't know why the cops couldn't figure that out, especially when we've been over backwards, helping how many police departments in Maslin and in Canton, helping them out when we bought a new building and had suspicion of drugs being so they're we went out of our way to help them. Yes, because I don't want that in my buildings that they're just using this to destroy our privacy to get everything they can and to collect more fees and doing it. And that's why we took on the city of Canton.

40:26That's why we did what we did and spent years fighting them. And now we're finally a couple of months from a verdict. I can't wait to read their opinions. And then we'll have to start over because the city's just going to come up with another in their words, not mine, in their words, another scheme to get into my properties. Just like the $28,900 and fines I have for not putting a fence around my dumpster, you know, it's okay, if 90% of the other people up in that main street don't have a fence, they're only attacking and finding us. But I'm sure that's not retribution for taking them, taking them to... No, no, just because with the only ones that they're attacking and we also just happen to be the ones taking them to court, I'm sure it's pure coincidence. But we can come back right after this break. Have you or a loved one been affected by inflation? Yes, we have the product for you. Hard assets that hold their value like the real power family silt around are available at American Gold Exchange. You can visit American Gold Exchange at AMERgold.com or by calling 1-800-613-9323.

41:38Welcome back to the real power family radio show. Today we're talking about government overreach and all of our experiences at the Supreme Court here in Ohio, which was spectacular. I want to give a shout out to Maurice Thompson from 1851 Center for Constitutional Law. If you're looking for a great place to donate, check them out. You can't find them online fairly easily. We can even put a link in the show notes, right, Eric? We absolutely can. And I'm sure he's linked already somewhere on our website. But anybody, this is such a good place to donate. I mean, some of the things that we're doing, getting the petition signed, it doesn't cost you a penny. Maybe a couple minutes of your life to drive to a signing center and sign the petition to abolish property taxes. If you can make a tax deductible donation, both 1851 is specifically centered here in Ohio and they take on the Ohio estate and local governments continuously. And like I said, Maurice, the main lawyer there, the guy, the lawyer running everything,

42:41this is his ninth trip to the Ohio Supreme Court. And he's got his tenth one coming up in February. He is really doing things to help us more so than any lobbying group ever could. And I mean, I'm, are one of the groups where it pays a lot, well over $100,000 to a lobbying group. But the same lobbying group represents our biggest enemy, the municipal league. And I'm just, I'm done. It's taken a decade and they're not getting anywhere. And oh, well, we, we kind of don't participate. Well, this is my biggest problem, the municipal league going after me. This isn't my number one complaint. So why am I paying the same logging group as they have? So I just quit donating money more than a year ago. I don't, don't ever ask me for money again. So now I'm going directly to a place where it benefits us. And I have never gotten more benefit than I have out of Maurice Thompson's 1851 for Center for Constitutional Law. And if you're nationwide, then the Pacific Legal Foundation,

43:44never, I mean, they represented us. This is still incredible. We've been in really two really high profile cases. Yes. But in federal court, Maurice, 1851 was our local representation and Pacific Legal Foundation. They really did all the heavy lifting and beat the CDC during COVID when they were going after, once again, our fourth amendment rights. And saying we didn't own our property and couldn't do what we wanted with our property because some health organization decided that they made up some legal bureaucracy. And they just made a rule that said, yeah, the law says that we can make you use cleaners and stuff to get rid of a virus. So that means we can prevent you from evicting and force you to shut down your whole business. Which is insanity. Yeah, that was insanity. But then they threaten you and they find a way to find you and retaliate against you. And then when you finally beat them, they appeal and you have to go through three levels and it takes years and costs so much money, most people go broke along the way.

44:48And we've managed to make it through without going broke along the way because hey, we don't get wrapped up and worried about that. We continue to run our business and grow our business. And more people need to do this. If you want any help, if you are being trampled on and you don't like the laws, it's way easier to fight them before they get past. Yes. But even if they are past, if you want to know who to contact or what to do, just shoot us an email. Where do they email Devon if they need our help? And we would be thrilled to help you for free. I will spend as many hours as it takes. And I'm not a lawyer. I can't represent you. Obviously, I just want to have more people astounding how few people will stand up and fight for our rights like we will. So if you have the guts to stand up and fight and do the right thing like most of us were taught as a kid, and you understand that the ethical thing and the moral thing contradict the legal thing. So sometimes you got to fight the law to make the world a better place.

45:52I'm here for you. How do they get a hold on me, Devon? They can email info at realpowerfamily.com or they can call in at 833-B-Do-Half. That's 833-233-642-8. Hey, Dave. Oh, yeah. Other one, third one, Lila. We've only been married 25 years. One of these days, I remember your name. It's five. Oh, why? Normally, it's my name, you're messing up. Or Ethan's. Normally, it's the kids. My wife's a lot easier. Usually. Yeah, I forgot what I was going to say. Just take it in the cell, honey. Yeah, essentially, hopefully, today's episode is a lot of inspiration for you to know that if you are going through a problem of government overreach, if you're frustrated because the situation is unconstitutional, this is where you can actually get help and stand up and be able to fight back in a way that can make real change for not only you, but the people around you.

46:56And that's one of the things I laughed because all these other investors in our area that weren't so interested, you know, a year or two ago when we started talking about how we're fighting the city. They didn't give a crap two weeks ago. And now there are all these meetings. I tried to tell them like, why didn't you tell someone's gone like, I tried and none of you, I was laughed out of that. One city council was like, oh, well, that's just Eric. And I'm like, okay, just Eric was picked up last June. They said that the Supreme Court decided they would hear our case. And so by then they should have known, but no. Now we're getting our 15 minutes of fame for this year and the two days before. So continue lily. Yeah, nobody cared about this for three years. And then all of a sudden, everybody wants to hear about it and learn more. And some of them wanted to go watch the oral arguments. And I have gotten more emails and texts and phone calls saying, thank you for doing this. We're so, you know, proud of the fact that you guys are fighting this. It's like all of a sudden, everybody realized how much benefit they can really get out of this.

48:00And how much better the world could be if we can actually, you know, get something down and writing about how this is not constitutional. So for all of you out there, including Tracy and Dennis, including Sean who drove five, three hours to get there. And Tyler and Kelsey who drove, you know, two and a half to three hours to get there at nine a.m. in the morning for the hundred people give or take that showed up to support us who were scattered out all over the state of Ohio and came anyways. Thank you for being there and you are welcome. And now you've shown your support. You've shown that you believe in this and you know it needs to be done. Go to the guy that is just starting. The one that they're attacking and retaliating against who doesn't know. Oh man, this is awful. They're like, if I just sign this piece of paper giving in, they'll waive $30,000 worth of fees and I can't pay.

49:01Go support him or her, whomever that is who's willing to take them on. At least nobody's shooting at me. This is not the worst job I've had in my life. It's not even as bad as the trash can or deal where they threaten to lock Devon in jail because you awful person. You left a trash can at the end of your driveway for two weeks. He didn't even do it. A contractor set it out. They're not realizing that there wasn't a trash service at that particular property. And we just didn't know. Nobody, nobody knew. Yeah, and they never bothered to call and said, Hey, you know, trash can't sit now. Can you drag it back? No. If they'd asked that, it'd have been done in probably the same day. But yeah, these, uh, you got to stand up for yourself. You got to just say no and you can't be intimidated by them. So if you need help not being intimidated, I'll go out drill sergeant on you. I did. I'm qualified for that. And if you think that cities are going to get me to back down, I didn't back down to the federal government. I'm not backing down to some dinky little city.

50:03We have a constitutionary public, even though they're trying to convince you it's a democracy. We are based on laws and the constitution. These laws, the supreme law of the land is there to stop the cities. It's to hold back the federal government from abusing us and trampling our rights. That is specifically what made America the greatest country on earth. The most prosperous country on earth. They created the most patents and the most inventions and the most wealth of any country on earth because we had the rule of law and property rights. And I refuse to let my city turn into what used to be the greatest city, the financial hub of the world, New York City. And now they're talking about, well, it's white. If you own a home, it's white supremacy. I think y'all need to get on board is that white supremacy to own a home or a prudent decision. Do you only have rights if you own a home or having you figured out how this fits together?

51:07If they force you to own nothing and be and then pretend like you're happy, that means you have to be a tenant. And they can pretend and say they're going to go after these big companies. But who are they really going to go after? Big companies will find some way around it. And they're going to force more and more people out of homes. You're going to become tenants because you can't afford your rent. Or you can't afford your property taxes or insurance. And only the big companies have big enough compliance things to deal with it. And once they get you there, then they say, oh, you're just a tenant. You don't have any rights. And that is exactly the way they are going. They're trying to strip the rights even from the landowners in New York. You know, you can't sell your property up there. And I don't know exactly who this applies to. But I know they have this law that you have to give an NGO the right to buy your property before any other homeowner. So they're going exactly the opposite direction of the virtue singling of our Ohio legislator.

52:07It'll be interesting to see because these two are absolutely going to collide in the next handful of years. And I know what I'm side I'm on. I'm on the citizen side. I'm on the freedom side. And I believe that's how we can make housing cheaper. And I think that even though, you know, it would look like I'd be the biggest loser. If that happened, providing, you know, getting most of my income from providing housing, I'm not. That would be great for the world. And we'll make do because I can change faster than any government organization. I can beat you. Make this easier. And I can beat out the black rocks of the world. I'll never compete with them with money. But we can always move faster than large funds like that. I think somebody even wrote a huge book about that. How, of course, a little guy can beat the street. Because they just, it's too big. It's too hard to move that much money too fast. So yeah, we need more people to stand up and fight. If you're willing to do that, we will help you in any way we can. If the way you want to fight is to be anonymous and make a tax-free donation,

53:09then look up Pacific Legal Foundation. They work all over the United States or 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, which is specifically here in Ohio and is doing great things. And by the way, our court case will affect Pennsylvania, Michigan, all of the states around. Because when we were in the Supreme Court, they brought up stuff that was going on in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. I mean, all of these different Supreme courts, if you get there in your state, our win is going to help you because they look at that. Even though it's not precedents for that state, they say this is the way that it was decided in Ohio. And it gives the judges a little bit more backing to do the same thing, right, Lila? Absolutely. And for those of you that have been following this case, thank you for your support. Again, check out 1851 Center for Constitutional Law and Pacific Legal Foundation. Devin, you have any last minute wrap-ups? My last minute wrap-ups are Support 1851 Center for Constitutional Law

54:12or Pacific Legal Foundation help keep fighting for freedom, for the ability to do what you want with the things that you supposedly own. Property rights stand up for personal property rights. Because if you let them crush the tenants and say, I don't care I'm a homeowner, I promise they're coming after you next. If you say, well, I don't fall into that group, well, when that group's gone, they're not going to be there to help defend you. So stand up, write a check to support some of the people that are willing to do this. And if you can, if you are in a position where you have a good case that they will take, then stand up and let them take the case and do whatever it takes to do to get through it. And maybe you can't do either of those, then at least support emotionally, financially, physically, just be there to listen to the people vent as they're going through this and the governments are attacking them. And I promise you, when you get all the way through like we have twice now,

55:14it wasn't nearly as bad as people thought it might be. So just remember, it does. The ends absolutely justifies whatever we have to go through to get there. And if we don't, it's not going to go away. It's only getting worse. That's how our family is doing our best to make the world a better place and how you can do. We'll talk to you tomorrow. We hope you enjoyed the real power family radio show brought to you by Family Success Triangle. We want you and your family to be financially free so you can go where you want, when you want, with whomever you want. Learn how we can help you live the life you've always dreamed of at realpowerfamily.com. To hear more, subscribe to Real Power Family on YouTube. Until next time, go out and make the world a better place.