20161004.00 1. Your honor: I represent myself as appellant in this controversy. The issue in this appeal is the interpretation of an order issued by this Court three years ago in 2013-P-1536. 2. The Appeals Court ruled as follows: "The judgment is reversed. We remand this case to the Superior Court for entry of a new judgment that directs the board to conduct a hearing to determine whether the order that the plumbing must be completely removed is justified by the specific violations that are noted in the inspection report and substantiated by photos. Both parties are required to provide competent evidence to the board concerning the effect of the deficiencies and whether they support an order to completely remove the plumbing. The board shall be directed to make specific findings about why the entire system needs to be removed or, if that is not necessary, what needs to be fixed by a plumber." 3. With this order the Appeals Court was responding to an effort, now of 8 years standing, by the Board and by the Town, to secure the destruction of plumbing I installed 10 years ago without a plumbing permit at 3 Red Barn Road on Nantucket. 4. This controversy is now before the Court for the third time. a. The first appeal was from a destruction order in the absence of any inspection at all. b. The second appeal was from a Superior Court judgment that confirmed a destruction order in which the Board stated that it had not reached a decision as to whether destruction was necessary. c. This third appeal concerns the Hearing which the Appeals Court then ordered; at which the Hearing it required the parties to correlate specific deficiencies, if any, listed in the plumbing inspector's Inspection Report and Condemnation Order with specific deficiencies demonstrable on one or more of the 35 photographs. 5. Subsequent to the Hearing, the Board issued a report which identified "poor workmanship, failure to comply with accepted standards of plumbing," as the only deficiency cited in the Inspection Report, claiming that poor workmanship was a specific deficiency. 6. I argue that poor workmanship is not a specific deficiency because poor workmanship is a description insufficient to enable a licensed plumber to identify repairs required to make the system code compliant. Poor workmanship is a non-specific deficiency which can be remedied only by replacing the entire system, the need for which the Appeals Court would not permit to be taken for granted. If I am correct that poor workmanship is the only deficiency cited and that in the context of the Appeals Court order, poor workmanship does not qualify as a specific deficiency, then the defendant's claim to the contrary is a concession, there is no case, and no further argument is required. 7. However, given the Superior Court's imperviousness to that argument, I must continue: I argue that the August 6, 2014 Hearing was invalid, because the Board ignored all testimony at the Hearing the Board did not hear, but made its ruling on reliance of a secret re-interpretation of an exhibit which had been in its possession for two and a half years, a secret re-interpretation which I, as appellant, never had an opportunity to rebut. I assert that the Board's Final Decision and Order is not responsive to testimony at the Hearing. 8. Assuming arguendo, as the Superior Court found, that the Board was indeed responding to testimony given at the Hearing, then that testimony becomes relevant as do the procedural irregularities. Meyer's first witness was Christopher Gordon, a licensed plumber who had paid the Town $560 for a plumbing permit but was prohibited by the Inspector from doing any work on Meyer's installation either in preparation for or subsequent to the Inspection. Gordon testified that he found a few deficiencies which could be easily rectified, none of which required removal of the entire system, and which would not affect the functioning of the system if left unchanged. Gordon's testimony was partially lost, because the audio recording furnished Meyer by the Board lacked the sound trach from the microphone closest to Gordon. Both the Board and the Town failed to cross-examine Gordon or otherwise challenge his testimony. My second witness Anthony Esposito, a Massachusetts registered civil engineer was prohibited from testifying for me because he was not a plumber, circumstance which did not disqualify him from being asked to testify against me. Nantucket's only witness was Mr. Edmund Ramos, who was presented to the Board as an "Assistant Inspector" although the General Laws make no provisions of "assistant plumbing inspectors", his name is not listed on the roster of Nantucket officials and he testfied that he is concurrently engaged in the plumbing trade on Nantucket. Mr. Ramos testified to seeing "faulty pitch" on 33 of the 35 photos. He dismissed the Inspection Report and the Plumbing Code as "paperwork". He quoted no specific deficiencies cited in the Inspection Report. He admitted concerning Photo #1, that he couldn't tell from looking at the photo which pipe was pitching the wrong way, but he knew that faulty pitch was present. Mr. Kilb, the attorney for the Board clarified Mr. Ramos testimony to the effect that Mr. Ramos was testifying not only what he saw on the photos but what he remembered from the inspection four years previously, an hypothesis which Mr. Ramos confirmed. Chairman Kennedy cautioned Mr.Ramos not to report seeing too much on the photos, since one can't really see many deficiencies unless one is in their presence. My rejoinder is that "faulty pitch" cannot be assessed with the unaided eye even in physical presence, much less on a photograph. I argue that Mr. Ramos' report of seeing faulty pitch unaided is spectral evidence, evidence from dreams, fantasy or imagination, which has been banned in Massachusetts since October 1692. 9. The testimony was subject to serious procedural irregularities, specifically, a. that Meyer's witness Gordon was not permitted to rebut the testimony of Nantucket's witness, Mr. Ramos, b. that Meyer's witness Mr. Esposito was found unqualified to testify for Meyer, but was qualified to testify against Meyer. 10. The Superior Court's finding that these irregularities did not prejudice Meyer because they properly excluded cumulative evidence reflects the assumption that the Board had the authority to make a ruling independent of all evidence presented at the Hearing, i.e., arbitrarily. 11. Turning now to the Board's secret re-interpretation of what it claimed to see in the photos, I note that there were before the Board three contradictory interpretations, those of Gordon, Ramos, and its own prior interpretation, to which, in order to support its order that the plumbing be destroyed, it added then a fourth. To support my assertion that what the Board purported to see in the 35 photos is untruthful, irresponsible and malicious fantasy, I motioned the Superior Court for permission to file an appendix consisting: a) of a synopsis of four contradictory interpretations of the 35 photos, given in sworn testimony or on file at the Hearing, to which I added my own comments on the Board's second and final photo-interpretation which had been concealed from me, b) a set of publically available documents concerning i) visual perspective, ii) projective visual tests such as the familiar Rorschach ink blot test, iii) the definition of "full S-trap" iv) Appeals Court opinions in the two previous appeals, and v) the U.S. Supreme Court Decision in FTC v. North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners. The circumstance that the Superior Court denied my motion to file this appendix and gave to the Attorney for Nantucket verbal assurances, documented in the transcript of the Superior Court Hearing, that it would take no notice of items in the Appendix raises the question to what extent, if any, the trial court is obligated to take notice of relevant publically available information, where such notice would be determinative of the outcome of a proceeding. 12. The Board's assertion that the installation must be destroyed because the large number of alleged deficiencies makes the repair impossible is incongruous. Assuming, as Mr. Ramos claimed, 90 percent of the installation required removal, then the remaining 10 percent which would not require removal would, by definition be code compliant and would differ in no way from the initial 10 percent of a new code compliant installation. If Meyer's 10 percent code compliant installation could not be completed for what ever reason, then neither could a new installation hypothetically code compliant but only 10 percent complete. In fact, if my hypothetically 10 percent code compliant installation could not be completed, then no other plumbing installation at the same 10 percent stage could ever be completed. 13. I argue that FTC v. NC Board of Dental Examiners is on all fours with my assertion that where a majority of the plumbing board and its chairman are competing in the trade that they regulate, and where the Commonwealth flagrantly fails to enforce the Boards prohibition of do-it-yourself plumbing, and where there is no precedent of interposition to Federal law by Massachusetts, the Appeals Court should declare that do-it-yourself plumbing is not illegal. 14. Unless it dismisses my appeal, then when it fashions relief, the following facts, documented in the record before it, become relevant: a) that in the Nantucket plumbing inspectors office there is posted a list of addresses for which the routine issuance of plumbing permits is prohibited, b) that the Nantucket plumbing inspector refused for 50 days to issue a permit to Christopher Gordon to perform the plumbing at 3 Red Barn Road, even when the issuance of such a permit was mandated by the Appeals Court. c) the Plumbing Board regularly revokes the license of a plumber who does plumbing without a permit. d) Plumbing permits are issued by the Inspector at his pleasure and the Inspector's refusal to issue a plumbing permit may destroy a plumber's business. e) Therefore a plumber who is not a fool, - to use the Chairman's word for Mr. Gordon, will curry the Inspector's favor. f) The Nantucket plumbing inspector's order to plumbers under his jurisdiction to boycott my installation was breached only by Mr. Gordon, who was immune to retribution because he was about to move to Florida. g) The Town resorted to fictitious evidence in legal actions against me for the past 12 years. h) The plumbing inspector is an employee of the Town of Nantucket. i) The Town has used and is using legal process as an instrument of attrition. j) The Town has consistently flaunted the Appeals Court directives and misused judicial procedure 1) by failing to provide and Inspection of Integrity and Fairness with a report of detailed findings and reasoning, and 2) by offering the testimony of a witness who dismissed the plumbing code and the inspection report as paperwork. ********************** 20161108.00 Reflecting on the discrepancy of truth, I postulate a correction factor, say of minus one which converts truth into falsehood and falsehood into truth. This is Mr. Puccis special attribute. In response, the Board issued a final decision which purports to list specific deficiencies on 33 of 35 photos. But from the Inspection Report, the Board cites only one deficiency "poor workmanship" defined in the plumbing code as failure to adhere to conventional standards of plumbing. The Board notes that all specific deficiencies are evidence of poor workmanship, that my plumbing demonstrates poor workmanship, and that therefore poor workmanship is a specific deficiency. That conclusion comes from faulty reasoning, specifically the faulty syllogism of the excluded middle: The text book example: All students wear backpacks. My grandfather wears a backback. Therefore my grandfather is a student. All specific deficiencies entail poor workmanship. Meyer's plumbing exhibits poor workmanship. Therefore Meyer's plumbing exhibits specific deficiencies. Not so. The Board ignored the Appeals Courts order directing "the board to conduct a hearing to determine whether the order that the plumbing must be completely removed is justified by the specific violations that are noted in the inspection report and substantiated by photos." Poor workmanship is not a specific deficiency. It gives no indication what repair is required to make the installation code compliant. The only remedy for poor workmanship is the destruction of the installation the need for which the requirement that listed deficiencies be specific was calculated to obviate. It is my contention that with its statement that the claim of poor workmanship is the only specific deficiency cited in the Inspection Report visible on the photos, since poor workmanship is not a specific deficiency, there is no specific deficiency cited in the Inspection Report visible on the photos, and the Board has conceded the case. Arguably nothing more need and should be said, because the redefinition of specific is such a blatant error; but precisely because of its blatency the entire field needs to be surveyed because that redefinition signals so profound a change in our definition and use of language. The Board ignored the Appeals Courts order directing "the board to conduct a hearing to determine whether the order that the plumbing must be completely removed is justified by the specific violations that are noted in the inspection report and substantiated by photos." That order placed the burden of proof on the defendants. Instead the Board placed the burden of proof on the appellant. It held a Hearing under GL 142 of an appeal from an inspector's decision. The Board refused to acknowledge that such an appeal had been previously made, and denied that the Board's order to destroy the plumbing had been reversed by the Appeals Court. The interpretation of the photos in the Final Decision and Order of the Plumbing Board disregards the testimony both of Mr. Gordon and of Mr. Ramos, it is at variance als with the Boards own prior interpretation, a set of bizarre and incongruous phantasies that have been vetted neither by cross examination nor by rebuttal. They are fiction calculated to justify the third re-iteration of the Board's determination not to let me "get away" with the otherwise inescapable consequences of the Appeals Court order. It is a fiction so remote from reality as to precipitate a sense of disorientation and despair, leading one to question both ones own sanity and the integrity of both the judicial and executive branches of our government. The key to this predicament is the provision of GL 30A that explicitly permits the Board to rely on its specialized knowledge and expertise in evaluating the evidence before it. A provision which in effect makes a determination of the Board unappealable, because by definition the "specialized knowledge and expertise" of the Board can never be attributed to the judges who hear the appeal in the higher court. =========================== The destruction/denial of the meaning of specific is but a preface to the denial of the meaning of the terminology of the procedural requirements of GL30A, the opportunity to rebut and to cross examine. The Superior Court acknowledged these procedural deficiencies obliquely, but it held that they did not adversely affect the Board's decision because the evidence they would have provided would have been cumulative. Whatever legitimacy the exclusion of cumulative evidence that might arguably be determinative of the appellant's prevailing might have in other situation, in the present case it means that the decision was not based on evidence presented at the hearing. As was indeed the case. The fact is that the Boards decision cited NO evidence presented at the hearing and was made exclusively on the basis of its interpretation of the photos which the Board had in its possession for more than 2 years. The Superior Court interpreted the Appeals Court as having ordered a show trial the decision in which would be made in secret by the Board, and the evidence before which would be restricted to as to make it favorable to the predetermined outcome. =========================== The provision of GL30A which permits the Board to rely on its own expertise and specialized knowledge in evaluating the evidence before it, precludes the appeal of those decisions, because the Court lacks that expertise and specialized knowledge and cannot but uncritically endorse the Board's decisions. Thus if a Board of state Examiners of Cheesemakers declared by virtue of its special expertise in making cheese the moon to be constituted of extra sharp cheddar cheese, the Superior Court would have no choice but to defer to the cheese boards judgment. This in the face of the constitutional guarantee to a jury trial. =========================== The consequence of the procedural decisions, this setting aside of GL 30A is to provide the Board the opportunity to make legitimate the fictions with which the Town plies the Courts. ========================== The untruthful claims of deficiencies to justify the destruction of the plumbing which the Town has filed with the Court and which the Town's only witness Mr. Ramos continues to reiterate have poisoned the situation. As Mr. Kennedy reiterated so forcefully, Mr. Gordon is to be considered a fool for contradicting the plumbing inspector. I am concerned that any plumber who contradicts the Inspector's condemnation of my plumbing is at a real risk of losing his license. ========================== I harbor no ill feelings toward Mr. Pucci, I respect that he is trying as best he can to fulfill his obligations to his client and to the Court. That having been said, the Inspection Report and Condemnation order is a fiction, and the history of this case is the history of the manner in which a fiction is managed in 2016 by the Plumbing Board by the Attorney General, by the Superior Court, by the Appeals Court and by a large and prominent law firm Kopelman & Paige, KP Law, P.C., The Leader in Public Sector Law. KP Law represents over 125 municipal clients across Massachusetts. The record speaks for itself. =========================== Propaganda Garth Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell have provided a concise, workable definition of the term: "Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist."[6] More comprehensive is the description by Richard Alan Nelson: "Propaganda is neutrally defined as a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels. A propaganda organization employs propagandists who engage in propagandism—the applied creation and distribution of such forms of persuasion."[7] (Wikipedia) ========================== The inspection is a judicial process; the inspector is a judge of plumbing. ========================== The Board's findings are binding both on the plumber and the Inspector. Once the Board has issued its order, the plumber no longer has the freedom to say I can make the necessary repairs without destroying the installation. (2009-P-1613.) ********************* 20161110.00 Or is it I who is lying when I am excessively politically correct and fail to point out that the government lies, that the government always lies, indeed that the government needs to lie in order to govern, when I fail to point out that truth as aletheia is the coincidence of individual subjective experience with individual objective experience, i.e. with experience which the individual adjudges to be objectively true. and that therefore the truth determined by a committee is qualitatively absolutely different from truth determined by an individual; that a committee can never know the truth, in the sense that it is truth which sets one free. The conclusions of a committee can be declared truth, but can never be truth, because truth requires both subjective experience (Erleben) and correlation with an objective experience, accessible to a society. Or is it I who is lying when I fail to point out that the tri-partite division of government cannot sustain a bureaucracy and must be systematically violated if a bureaucracy is to flourish? that Chapter 30A is a futile attempt to reconcile bureaucracy with constitutional government. That the Town uses the law as propaganda. The Hearings were propaganda, the Final Decisions and Orders were propaganda. The Superior Court decision was an endorsement of propaganda. Human beings are naturally honest. Telling the truth makes people feel better. It's embarrassing and oppressive when the government forces you to lie in order to keep your plumbing license.