I have just gotten off the phone with Jessica Hedgcock, the Bradley County homeschool mom who is fighting for her son, Charlton, a million-dollar special-needs tot whom Erlanger Medical Center booted out so that he might find care elsewhere.
Mrs. Hedgcock was at Vanderbilt on Tuesday. She has such a show of determination in defense of her legal rights to be free of medical devices on her face that no doctor or staffer made a single demand or threat against her for having a bare face and insisting on the right to have Charlton in her presence at every moment.
“Are you a lawyer?” a staffer asked her.
Later Tuesday, after a cheerful and satisfied trip home in her minivan with the little goose snoozing in his carseat, she attended a raucous Bradley County commission meeting in which the panel voted unanimously to defy the “vaccine mandate” of the federal resident, Joe Biden. The citizenry, jammed into the meeting room, rose with a roar of applause.
Mrs. Hedgcock says she has a meeting next with Bradley County mayor Gary Davis.
What might she say to further stiffen the resolve of this local official, and halt entirely the CV-19 mass-harm jabs project?
➤ The mayor of the county has a duty to protect the people of Bradley County. It is his interest to make sure that lawless acts by druglords and for-profit rent-seeking capitalist organizations such as Pfizer are limited in the county.
➤ Mayor’s serve municipal corporations which are creatures of the general assembly. Cities and counties do not have authority as creatures of the state to go wild with innovations and to make up policies and laws, especially where forbidden by law. The CV-19 “mitigation” program in Tennessee violates T.C.A. § 68-5-104, and since this health law is breached, the state of emergency declared March 12, 2020, has no lawful and non-fraudulent basis or exigency.
➤ Municipal organizations do not have authority to innovate but must strictly follow the laws that created them. The jabs program in every county is an illicit innovation and a vas irreparable harm to the people.
➤ The mayors of Bradley County and Cleveland have a duty to obey the statute so that the protections in the Tennessee constitution for the people and their property rights are maintained. Since the law does no harm, the violation of a law by a government employee is a presumptive harm. No proper use or administration of a law violates a constitutionally guaranteed right. But a violation of a law definitionally creates harm and violates rights. The CV-19 state of disaster is a perfect picture of this dynamic, crying for resistance by the lower magistracy against the greater.
➤ Whenever an official operates against the law — or in spite of the law or outside the law — he is injuring the rights of the people by his actions. That is why the Constitution controls the statute and limits how a public official interprets his duty and the law.
➤ I suggest Mrs. Hedgcock encourage the mayor to understand the law and demand it be obeyed, and he radically rise to defend the people from its abuse. The entire Pfizer-profiting drug operation in the county is a fraud, a scientific test injecting malware into the residents and taxpayers in the county. His duty lies before him under man’s law.
➤ The duty of the mayor also is biblical, under God’s law. At least three of the 10 commandments have direct bearing on the med-terror disaster Mayor Davis and other officials have allowed in Bradley County. They are concealing the truth from the people and maintaining undue silence in a just cause (Lev. 5:1, not testifying about a false swearing; Deut. 13:8, forbidden to pity or conceal a lawbreaker; Acts 5:3, Ananias lying to the Holy Ghost and keeping back part of the price), speaking untruth and lying (“For our transgressions are with us, and as for our iniquities, we know them: In transgressing and lying against the Lord, and departing from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. Justice is turned back, And righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.” Isaiah 59:12b-15), and raising false rumors and following the mob (“You shall not circulate a false report. Do not put your hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. You shall not follow a crowd to do evil; nor shall you testify in a dispute so as to turn aside after many to pervert justice” Exodus 13:1,2).
Of course, there’s much more. Just ask your gospel minister for additional material, as he has been studying how the church is supposed to be “salt and light” in a dying culture.
Municipal corporations
If there is doubt about the limits on cities in entering innovative frauds such as Covid-19, there’s this from the courts touching on cities. Counties are bound by state law; cities are bound by state law and their charters, which restrain their activities.
Municipal corporations are creatures of the general assembly, which has absolute control over them and may create or abolish them at its pleasure. Elizabethton v. Carter County 204 Tenn. 452, 321 S.W.2d 822 (1958).
A municipal corporation is a political or governmental agency of the state, which has been constituted for the local government of the territorial division described and which exercises, by delegation, a portion of sovereign power for the public good. Thornton v. Carrier, 43 Tenn. App. 615, 311 S.W.2d 208 (1957)
The state has absolute control and complete sovereignty over municipalities. Municipalities have the inherent right of self-government, but this inherent right does not go beyond the General Assembly’s control of such right. City of Knoxville v. Bailey, 222 F.2d 520 (6th Cir. 1955). De Caro v. Collierville, 213 Ten. 254, 373 S.W.2d 466 (1963)
Municipal corporations hold and operate under charters for the public good alone. The charter is the constitution of the local government with powers that must be consistent with the constitution of Tennessee. A charter is the grant of power; from it city government derives its life and vigor; and to its restrictions and limitations the municipality is subject. State v. Sinking Fund Comm’rs, 1 Tenn. Cas. (Shann.) 490 (1875). State ex rel Kercheval v. Mayor of Nashville, 83 Tenn. (15 Lea) 697 (1885)
Charters must be strictly construed (fraud not OK)
Cities thus have no powers except such as are given to them by their charters and the general law. Barnes v. City of Dayton, 216 Ten. 400, 392 S.W.2d 813 (1965)
Municipal charters will be strictly construed, and clear authority for the powers assumed to be exercised under them will be required. The provisions of the charter are mandatory; and, if in conflict with an ordinance, the charter must prevail. Municipalities may exercise only those express or implied powers delegated by the general assembly in their charters or under statutes. Marshall v. Nashville, 109 Tenn. 495, 71 S.W. 815 (1902). City of Lebanon v. Baird, 756 S.W.2d 236 (Tenn. 1988)
Any fair, reasonable doubt concerning the existence of a power is resolved by the courts against the corporation and the power is denied. All acts beyond the scope of the powers granted are void. Mayor of Nashville v. Linck, 80 Tenn. (12 Lea) 499 (1883)
Only those powers can be implied from charter language that are essential to the object and purpose of the municipality. The corporate authorities of the city have no power other than that which is for the protection of the city and the good of its inhabitants. City of Memphis v. Memphis Water Co. 67 Tenn. (8 Baxt.) 587 (1876).
An ordinance may be declared unconstitutional because violative of the spirit of the constitution equally as if in contravention of the words or paragraphs thereof. Nashville v. Hager, 5 Tenn. Civ. App. (Higgins) 192 (1914)
Independent local judgment
Martial law is forbidden in the bill of rights in section 25. “That martial law, in the sense of the unrestricted power of military officers, or others, to dispose of the persons, liberties or property of the citizen, is inconsistent with the principles of free government, and is not confided to any department of the government of this state” (emphasis added).
Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, imposed martial law by emergency decree, illicitly applied to the general public and not restricted to government operations. He did so fraudulently, in violation of T.C.A. § 68-5-104.
Hence, no city official is bound by any order, rule or edict from the purported office of governor, or the person of William Byron Lee. And no county official is, either, under the same principle.
Mayor Gary Davis is bound by his oath to God to uphold the constitution, and to not live in the fear of man as he insists on the defense of the people, their persons, estates and liberties. He does so under the constitution.
The constitution is to be construed to give effect to the intent of the people adopting it, as found in the instrument itself, and it is presumed that its language is employed with sufficient precision to convey that intent. Where this presumption prevails, nothing remains except to enforce this intent. Shelby County v. Hale, 200 Tenn. 503, 292 S.W.2d 745 (1956)
A constitutional provision will be taken literally unless its language is of doubtful import. Courts construe a constitutional provision as written and will not read any ambiguity into it. When the words are free from ambiguity and doubt, and they express plainly and clearly the sense of the framers of the constitution, there is no occasion to resort to other means of interpretation. Shelby County v. Hale, 200 Tenn. 503, 292 S.W.2d 745 (1956). Chattanooga-Hamilton County Hosp. Auth. v. City of Chattanooga, 580 S.W.2d 322 (Tenn. 1979).
Provisions of the constitution are presumptively mandatory, and no provision shall be construed otherwise, unless the intention that it shall be so construed unmistakably and conclusively appears upon its face. Gouge v. Burrow, 119 Tenn. 376, 104 S.W. 526 (1907)
Every positive directive contains an implication against anything contrary to it, or that would frustrate or disappoint the purpose of the provision. Lynn v. Polk, 76 Tenn. (8 Lea) 121 (1881)
The constitution must be construed as a whole. The whole is to be examined with a view to arrive at the intent of each part. Effect is to be given, if possible, to the whole instrument, and to every section and clause. If different portions seem to conflict, the courts must harmonize them, if practicable, and lean in favor of a construction that will render every word operative, rather than one that may make some idle and nugatory. One part is not to be allowed to defeat another, if by any reasonable construction the two can be made to stand together. No part can be construed so as to impair or destroy any other part. McKinney v. Memphis Overton Hotel Co., 59 Tenn. (12 Heisk.) 104 (1873). Memphis v. Memphis City Bank, 91 Tenn. 574, 19 S.W. 1045 (1892)
A city government’s charter contains enumerated powers. A county mayor operates within the confines of statute in the Tennessee code, and is not free to deviate, innovate, make it up as he goes, exercise any discretion apart from state law, as Gov. Lee has done, and as Becky Barnes, the Hamilton County health department administrator (recently retired) has done.
