Chattanooga police chief David Roddy, greeting a protester against police violence on the walking bridge, routinely enforces the state trucking law upon the weak and the poor in a policy continuation of Jim Crow, with full approval of Mayor Andy Berke and Tennessee courts. (Photo David Tulis)
My project to Chattanooga city government under administrative notice to push it to comply with black-letter law appears to have failed.
A thousand days ago I handed copies of my 20-page transportation administrative notice to members of city council and to the city attorney.
I gave a brief talk Feb. 20, 2018, about the contents of the notice telling them that their police department, which is the largest consumer of tax dollars on the city budget at F$70 million, routinely violates the Tennessee constitution and routinely violates, with court permission, the clear delineations of the motor vehicle law.
That law is Tenn. Code Ann. § Title 55, motor and other vehicles, administered by the departments of safety and revenue.
I insisted that the city stop misusing the transportation law that regulates shippers, haulers, truckers, carriers of both kinds (common and private).
I alleged that the law Is being used to maintain Jim Crow and the oppression of the weak, orphans and widows, aliens and strangers, African-Americans, the ignorant, the poor — and everybody else.
The document is based on my research of Tennessee law. Title 55 has 54 chapters covering rules of the road, driver licenses, registration of cars and trucks as motor vehicles, “mandatory insurance” and many other provisions imposed by the state upon commerce upon the people’s roads and freeways.
Tennessee Transportation Administrative Notice also reviews Title 65, chapter 15, carriers, and the U.S. code at Title 49, transportation. The document establishes the distinction at law between travel and transportation.
Why failure?
I will say my 1,000-day effort thus far appears a flop. The city has made no policy changes in use of its officers’ time and energy. They continue to enforce Title 55 without regard to their actual authority.
Mayor Andy Berke has ignored administrative notice as irrelevant noise. It’s not part of a case, is not written by a member of his guild (attorney, lawyer). It has nothing to do with his job or his politics, even though it is dressed up as fighting Jim Crow and the oppression of blacks.
The city attorney’s office has not made any rebuttal as a legal matter to the notice, not feeling the need to give response either to its rehearsal of the law, or to the facts that emanate from the document, which is notoriously published to the parties in its view. Mr. Noblett is a good enough man to have met with me regarding its claims. But he says he needs more information from me about court cases before he can respond, or perhaps agree with the presentation in TAN.
Notice also appears to have gained no traction with members of the public. As far as I know, no one has filed suit using the notice as leverage for higher damages, given that false arrest under Title 55 is aggravated, and done knowingly and intentionally.
I have heard from no one who as a private citizen has used my notice to defend themselves in a criminal encounter with police operating under pretended enforcement of any of Title 55’s provisions.
One one among my readers or listeners to my weekday report at NoogaRadio 92.7 FM, appears to have made use of my research and publishing.
The project is a 1,009 days old today, and there are no results.
Many words I have given in writing about this project. Many words I have offered as broadcast journalist about this reform.
No results.
Should I quit?
Should I simply drop it?
I don’t intend to quit even after a 1,000 days and no results because my analysis is correct and the people are being put upon and abused by their betters in the legal establishment, the courts and in uniform.
Altogether these parties run upon the rights of the people and deny them due process, bringing them before judges for acts which they allege are criminal, but which are merely administrative grievances that have to be handled administratively.
I am going to continue pressing the issue because it takes a single person I might have empowered to make a difference. A single person in the right circumstance saying “No” and “Enough is enough.”
I’m right legally, though I am on the dissenting side against the white legal political establishment. My conscience requires that I broadcast defences for common folk like myself. The people are being injured and oppressed, and as a Christian mercy my task is to show them the way out of Egypt.
Private users not subject
It seems only just to speak about the limits of the law used against them. The shipping and trucking law enables certain acts to be done upon members of the people. The law enables the highway patrol to regulate all commerce and to stop any car or truck involved in commerce without probable cause. That authority is established in Tenn. Code Ann. 40-7-103, arrest by officer without warrant.
(c) Unless a law enforcement officer has probable cause to believe that an offense has been committed, no officer, except members of the Tennessee highway patrol acting pursuant to § 4-7-104, shall have the authority to stop a motor vehicle for the sole purpose of examining or checking the license of the driver of the vehicle.
Administrative notice states law and facts. If it makes an argument, it is merely implied. Its argument is that people who are using the roads privately, for private business, private purposes, for the exercise of rights, the pursuit of pleasure — are not subject to the regulatory power of any state actor.
The only way a citizen of the free state of Tennessee can be brought to check and be arrested if that person is seen committing a crime. Traffic infractions are not crimes. They are administrative wrongs, and the state really should hold himself to pursuing these wrongs administratively, through either the department of revenue (the registration of cars as vehicles) or the department of safety (driver license, insurance).
Defendants in traffic cases should, I suggest, demand the state exhaust administrative remedies under the uniform administrative procedures act BEFORE going to court, as license and registration (entry into a taxable activity or privilege) are administrative matters.
What’s in play today is commercial government. It’s Jom Crow with a sophisticated dress, and the racist element is hard to see since it no longer is racially discriminatory. Jim Crow sweeps up everyone, white and black, rich and poor, without discrimination. But the effect of Jim Crow is far harsher on the poor, people such as Charlie Bell, whose ordeal as probationer targeted by false arrest by CPD shows.
We have in play a criminalisation of contract disputes. The contract is between the state and licensees under the department of safety, between the people who apply for a privilege (usually under mistake or duress) and the sovereign, who doles out use of the road. State of Tennessee issues the privilege of using the road for commercial purposes. By application of the privilege, it sells the privilege of using the public right of way for private profit and gain.
The privilege is for driving and operating a motor vehicle. That is distinctly, as Tennessee Transportation Administrative Notice makes clear, commercial. The privilege allows people to use the citizens’ roads, the people’s infrastructure, for their private profit and money.
The Tennessee supreme court and the court of appeals uphold a legal fiction that enforces criminally the misuse of this regulatory system. The legal fiction, boiled down to a few words, holds that there is no difference between travel and transportation. The courts pretend that there is no travel apart from the relocation of your domicile from one state to another. That is the sum of the doctrine. The only travel allowed is change of domicile. Other than that, all use of the road is commercial and subject to THP enforcement.
No one can travel freely, in other words, apart from harassment and sudden arrest for infraction.
How can people benefit?
As I have been working to overturn the CV-19 medical terror state and restore constitutional government in the courts, I have searched my course and asked if I should simply “drop it.” Is the right of free communication and travel worth fighting for? Do people understand it? Does it mean anything to listener and reader? How might I generalize this project, gain support for it? How to give it traction among African-Americans and the poor, whom I want to benefit first?
David Tulis is live on the air weekdays 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on NoogaRadio 96.9 FM and other NoogaRadio Network stations, covering local economy and free markets in Chattanooga and beyond. Nothing here is legal advice; if you want legal advice, find a law firm downtown or on another planet — where the law actually matters.
The poper role of the judicial branch is to interpret the original intent of the law.
So, did the legislature intend for non-commercial use of the roadways to be completely unregulated?
The obvious answer is NO based on decades of history and precedents.
Therefore, your TAN was a waste of time and effort.
To achieve your aim, you should be lobbying for a change to the law which codifies deregulation of private travelers. Good luck with that.
You’ll find that most law-abiding folks won’t support your goal.