I had a mental picture of an attorney grilling a speed camera in the witness box when I read your text.
Sadly, these speed camera manufacturers have dedicated expert employees who "testify" on behalf of the speed cameras produced by their employer.

Sadly, that aforementioned population has the sheeple mentality and very few will snap out of it and challenge the status quo.

 

I am not positive. Well, not for states with brains. Here, in FL a few cities have already taken them down for Constitutional reasons. We can only hope more Governments see the light...then again, I have spend the past two weeks fighting governments for stupid ****....(trying to build a new clinic and a shed at home).

 

Lol, thats awesome. Not the lying, but your reply.

Sounds like a win to me.

 

Some strategy about how to make change.

So great question in there and to me its about being as effective as possible. When I went up against the Chief of the Environmental Police (ranger) it was because they were doing a divide and conquer of citizen uses of a public space that I had enjoyed for more than 25 years at that time. He was in a newly appointed position. Me being me, I spent more than year speaking to every single person I encountered on the trail, provided them email address to complain, created a website of reports from behind the scenes. I worked with an advocacy group as the citizen but not group member so I could speak freely, which every brown nosing scum politico really hates. We organized mass mailings to the mayors office, shut down their servers, demanded meetings and negotiations. So this lead to meetings with the Mayor of Baltimore, Senators from Baltimore County threatening them, and the enforcement could never get traction. That Senator, now retired said to the Mayor that I was one of the most well prepared people he had ever met. I showed up with about a thousand pages of their own documents to disprove nearly everything they said. Everyone was on the side of the people but this ranger. That directly effected the ability of that person to do their new job. Thats why they harassed me, so I went to internal affairs because its about creating a record that will stick with him for life. After enough people complained about him, he was fired. The hard issue here is that the land is in the county but owned by the city and they dont take care of it and they (City DPW) didnt want to recognize its use by the public because lazy, crooked and ignorant, just take it away and let it rot. They had fired the former police a decade earlier when they were caught smoking crack. Its located in a very nice area and they started closing it more after the pandemic so people are up in arms again, but due to my job, I can not fight "the man" who are as corrupt as they get in Baltimore City. Oh and fun fact, the ranger, Luke Brackett (sp) went by the name "The Profile Defiler" back on myspace and had a picture of himself with a crackhead looking girlfriend...and the next relationship we uncovered and disclosed was that he was sleeping with the city lawyer...good riddance Luke, you ****wad.

Next, I learned to testify. I attend and speak at County or City Council meetings, the State houses, you name it. When I was young my dad would say sarcastically that if I didnt like something, to write a letter, go go live in another country. My most long lasting instance of making change was when I was the primary citizen (cause everyone else was paid or from an advocacy group) testifying for a controversial subject over years of time. I had very high level people congratulate me on my strategy which then made me very popular in this new industry...and they were retired LEOs...My strategy is that I would engage each Senator or Delegate individually to answer any questions that they asked that never got an answer so when the guy funded by big alcohol is making non factual generalizations, I would address it in a way that he understood.In three minutes I would dress 15 different people most of whom were shocked at how I did this. I testified when a bill was brought up on the same day as gun laws in MD and started with a big joke. After one of my first big speeches I had a dirty lobbyist get in my face and threaten me for what I said but little did he know, I had all the friends in the room. I made it fun, serious, and factual and it made it hard to argue with me. During the time I worked on this project, I had a person ask me why I continued to fight for something that will never happen. He was old and rich and I was young and am still working on the latter but my answer to him was that I had nothing to lose and since most people are irrationally afraid of the government, that if I didnt do it for the people, who else would. I got many standing ovations throughout my journey, and being someone that is not ever looking for a thanks, it was a bit odd for me but I was doing for the people. The hard work and persistence paid off. I built a 140million dollar business in four years from scratch....for someone else. Now I am the owner of my own and going to do it all again. I also constantly educated the state through tours, hosted big conferences for education in this industry with famous adjacent people showing up swell as politicians and regulators. This one is a thirty year journey on a very difficult path that will finally pay off.

Letters, Ive written lots of letters, made friendly with administrative assistants so I can get through to who I needed. Proactive unplanned meetings. I once heard of a law that just passed in DC and found out who was in charge, showed up the next day at opening on the top floor of a government building asking to chat. The person at the desk said he just left. I saw the elevator door close. I ran down 16 flights of steps and he was on the sidewalk waiting for a car and I introduced myself to him and that was the beginning of a nice cordial back and forth. I helped with the passing of those regulations as well

Ive watched council meetings on the web and when I heard them ask a question that nobody knew (in my area of expertise) I called and emailed to help. Next thing you know Im giving expert testimony.

I know this is long but these are many examples of how to strategically make change that goes beyond voting. Vote every instance you can, or dont ever complain..you have no right more powerful. As for process, thats the checks and balances that are normally working to some degree.

It takes passion, dedication, stubbornness, and sometimes difficult or uncomfortable choices. Its important to truly remember that WE are the people and that government is made up of people just like you and me. They have a job, and its not to work towards dividing people but bringing them together. "The government is there to do what the people cannot or will not do for themselves." All sides of the coin these days need to get back to the basics and stop living in their polar filtered ignorant worlds. In the words of the great Big Lebowsky "this aggression will not stand, man".

Fight for the the things that effect your family, then your community, then your State and then the Fed. Fighting about things that other people do with their lives is not the way to make progress, only foes, and often is a losing battle. I dont care what anyone else does at all unless it endangers life and limb or property. I also have a keen awareness that winning takes a long time and its about making little steps and progress, and that there is no winning when considering others.

Do all of these things respectfully but using powerful words and arguments. Do not participate with fundamentalists that cant compromise. Do not attend modern protests. Singular well choreographed free speech is the best way in my opinion because there's no distraction and there is no agenda other than being honest in your ask which can be done one on one. Nobody will take you seriously if you act like a moron, are loud or threatening.

Ive tried to keep this completely politics neutral so please dont ruin the thread. Im an unaffiliated voter for about 28 years and have no party affiliation. It allows me to speak freely with both eyes open.

Last thing a politician that I asked to say something on my behalf was later called out in the news for what he said. The next time he saw me I felt so bad because it was completely misinterpreted but he called me out and was like "hey you saw I did that for you". Had I listened to the advice he gave me I be retired by now. this is not that advice but he once gave a speech about the power of the voter and I am going to paraphrase the meaning. Imagine you are a politician and 50% of the people vote and 50% of the votes are for you. 20000 people in a district now turns to 5000 people. Now, maybe ten percent of them will write a letter or make contact, and maybe half of them will ask a question. So now you have a district of 20,000 represented by the most outgoing 250 voices. Those voices are remembered and appreciated and they will now "do for you". Ive donated 250 dollars my whole life, so thats not the cause. Its the squeaky wheels that gets the grease.

Anyway, thanks for hanging in for the read. My path has been anything but normal and its constantly dynamic.

Oh, and in case im too abstract in how this relates to "vote them out", it happens through education. Sometimes people need their eyes open to a new experience.

 

^If there was a way to bookmark this post(Baltistyle “How to vote them out”) I would ^

 

I Appreciate it. I think it’s important for everybody to have a reasonable cause to fight for, which can be respected by all involved in the process. I don’t believe in perfect and I don’t believe in 100% so I never have disappointment in expectation. Much like learning how to fix a car, we don’t always do it right, sometimes we need help, other times there’s a fix with little work involved and always be aware that we might create more problems if we don’t follow the processes laid out prior to our involvement in said repair. We also need to trust in the people that are leading us through the repair. Before I ever got involved in “opening my mouth” or taking risk, I bought a book which is right in my drawer which had a legal historical history which allowed me to understand the difference between my wants, thoughts and reality. That book is now nearly invalid because of the changes that most of (US) society has made since it was published 30+years ago, but without knowing the precedence, someone that is 25 years old today has no idea how we got here and may start walking it backwards. I’m VERY lucky to be able to say that I have never lost my freedom along the journey…close though, very close.

Onward and upward.

For those of us that share stories about how we like to speed, we obviously have a little bit of a screw loose. You just can’t have too many screws loose where you fall apart at speed or endanger others.

 

I appreciate that people like you are out there with the discernment and vigilance to keep the needle in fair territory. You're not asking for a free pass or something for nothing, you're asking for fairness and accountability. Thanks for what you do.

 

The CRAZY thing to me (and a friend is is currently a high school Principal at a "charter" school). The public schools have stopped teaching history. This is part and parcel with renaming teams and tearing down statues. History will repeat itself, mistakes and all.

 

stopping the teaching history is tantamount to stopping the teaching of accountability. And therein lies our future if this trend continues to grow like a slow cancer. But I'm biased by my own life so I'm sure there are other plausible outcomes. 'Keep moving forward.'

 

If we can all acknowledge that we all have bias than it makes it easier to understand and work with others. I’ve had my fair share of classes in psychology, law and policy and my economics background helped me understand that everyone has different values. How many hamburgers are worth how many hotdogs to you? I attended college in an area that couldn’t have been any more different than how I grew up. My umbrella was removed so I was exposed to something new.
Since I like giving fun stories, I was driving home from Maine when the terrorist attacks happened in 2001. Since I was listening on the radio, I called my dad and said hey am I gonna have trouble going through New York City on the way home to which he said just turn around and go back to school. I literally had no idea the extent of what was going on and I was thinking that I was going to be able to drive by and see it in the distance. When I got back it was still super early and the buildings had not collapsed yet. I went and hung out with a friend that had a TV that I found at the coffee shop and his background was that he was Iraqi and his dad was part of Saddams regime. He said to me with tears in his eyes how special it was that we had a friendship that would be unimaginable to him previously because I am of Jewish (non religious) heritage. He felt he would lose his freedom. Learning that there is actually a reality beyond what he was taught was very powerful. We were just a bunch of hippies that could not have cared less about some other person’s religious history.. I knew him for years and he never said anything like that prior but he was obviously very moved.

These types life experiences have hopefully helped me evolve in a manner where I can judge individuals, and not groups, and learn from the lessons of the past.

 

reminds me of something I just read:

"The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals." - Richard Dawkins

I am learning that if I can decouple labels from groups, and release myself from the mind prison of irrational and/or poorly self-processed (ego driven) resentment, I may find a freedom that Dawkins alludes to.

the best way for me to study myself, a person, is to study millions of other persons (by way of history and human analysis on many spiritual and intellectual levels). I work in a place that's vastly different socioeconomically, much much worse, than the place that actually live where I have a garage with German cars that are ridiculously overpowered. perspective is everything they say. I contemplate from time to time: How am I gonna teach my children poverty when they'll never see it themselves personally. Don't get me wrong I don't regret my life or how I live it. But I also don't regret moments of juxtaposition of my life against those of lesser means.

thus my needle moves forward and I can find more meaning and value in the present moment. The past is after all just a memory and the future is a thoughtful expectation.

my best friend says to me from time to time if I'm on a rant - "there's all sorts of people in the world." It serves two goals:

1) zoom out, look at the big pic (bill maher says you usually don't understand something if you're too close to it or too far away)

2) as you mentioned, @Baltistyle , everyone out there has different values, expectations, sources of joy and sources of grief/suffering (physical or mental/spiritual). Most of these data points are things I cannot change, nor should I. The only person I can control is myself. And this isn't to negate or diminish the value of all the societal issues discussed above. This is just Saturday morning metacognition.

 

I likeit the coffee in saturday morning...


That's a pretty good perspective, @PeterUbers. And Dawkins is right. Look at how the powers to be are propagandizing individuals to hate not just other individuals, but entire groups of individuals. Black vs White (and vice versa), Blacks vs Hispanic, Whites vs Indians (the dot, not feather), and so on. The powers to be knows this and use this tactic to their advantage. Used to be the poor vs. the rich. That went away after Occupy Wallstreet.

 

Freud would say it is the innate need of an animal’s greed and need to succeed (genetically) that makes people act the way they do. The first day of an environmental law class I took, the teacher wrote up on the board three words, nature, law, and society, and what we did was talk about how if we removed the anthropocentric view that we could see that many of the choices were just reminiscent of how animals would act, and that there are the natural laws of nature and necessary laws of society and you can’t decouple them regardless of how some people think we humans are “so special”. We aren’t special and we are full of flaws. There’s strong and weak, parasites and hosts. This will never change. Where people tend to go awry is when they want to control others with their own ideals, but are unwilling to be controlled themselves by other ideas. Those people are not looking to be equal, they are looking to be in power. They are looking to be the predator.

I feel much of this erosion of societal norms came with Myspace and then Facebook, where I saw people try to ruin other’s lives in group think mentality so I have never participated in any form of that type of social media. Reality became very obscured at the same time a persons reach became infinite.

Peter, per your socioeconomic statement, what I found personally is that my parents have never really had any money and have not supported me since I was 18. Anything I wanted I had to work for (even as a kid to get my first nice mtb) and nobody was going to give it to me and I was not going to ask. Before I quit my last job, I was making more money than basically anyone in my immediate family ever has and I was in charge of people that were struggling day today. What I found was that I was very willing to hire people who wanted to try and wanted to work, but in the end, there was a clear connection in people‘s backgrounds and whether or not they would even show up to work. This building was located in one of the most dangerous parts of the country. The Park Heights area of Baltimore City. I would happily try and hire people from the neighborhood, and it never worked out, not once. Obviously you can’t repeat mistakes too many times in business so eventually you think about business and not people. While I don’t think I would advocate anybody experiencing poverty, I think it’s important for them to experience people with diverse backgrounds that can share their struggles and/or solutions. Whenever I could tell that one of the workers wanted to treat me a different way because of their perception of my earnings, I would always say if they work for 25 years like I did and get to the same place, I am sure they’re gonna be very happy..

Quitting that job definitely put me in a bind while I am building my new business, but I had to leave because I didn’t want to be taken advantage of anymore and I just wanted to feel better about the company culture… those owners were just the absolute worst of the worst, all silver spoon, and zero brains full of discrimination, fraud, deceit and ultimately I got to learn that I would never ever run a business that way, or treat people like that.


edited as there were extra words in there because I mostly voice texted

 

I agree with you - whether the powers at be are self aware or not of this grouping tactic - it happens routinely.

the world, they say, is divided into 8 billion people that think they're right. It's (at times) political laziness to corral people into groups (at times) and then argue against their politics, economics, ideologies, etc.

we are also a tribal species, after finishing "Sapiens" it became a bit more clear to me that tribes and small groups advanced our species and then organization, community , shared values and dare I say it ... religion/"faith" .... (cringe) played some role in keeping our morality moving in a virtuous northerly direction.

however like all pendulum, the swing back seems to reveal that tribal (cough! Tribunal cough!) behaviors, group think, mob mentalities, and religious convictions seem to push otherwise good and moral people into making non sensical and irrational decision making that leads to harm.

At the end the day .. for me, it comes down to self control and self evaluation; and there is not finish line or end point to this, as it's ongoing. As has been said by some sorta famous Greek dude, a life unexamined is not worth living.

 

well said -

group think - dangerous when driven by irrationality, however when "in the fog," everyone in the group can feed each other and sustain a terrible direction. Self examination and private courage is required, what you did in business and in life, to find solitude long enough to question your personal mission statements and contrast it against your at-the-moment situation.

some of the greatest experiences of my life have been quitting a job - scary and lots of vulnerability at the time but taught me so much about my ceiling and through the retrospectoscope I saw much of my folly and that of others - and learned how I didn't want to work or live. And this path less taken, has made all the [positive] difference.

on socioeconomic - my parents were poor, but they never let me feel it as a kid. That and childhood ignorance went a long way to insulating me. However the residue of their poverty was omnipresent as it affected all their decisions "we can't buy that... you don't need that.... why did you do that we can't afford a new one!"

inculcated with this - I became the person I am today, like many of us here, not hurting for money, but living like I have a fraction of it, thank you mom and dad. The E63 is definitely a slap in the face of that comment, but cmon, it's a kick *** experience each time you fire it up!

unwilling to look in the mirror - and who or what is the mirror? Why, other people and their perceptions and experiences of us while they are around us.

"Don't forget that I cannot see myself, that my role is limited to being the one who looks in the mirror" Jacques Rigaut.

 

Not to discount anything that PeterU, and Balti, and Sathinas are saying, obviously a lot of truth and wisdom there. I would like to add, in the spirit of Field of Dreams, that if you are looking for a fastball, you still have to watch out for in your ear! Reagan said something similar. Trust but verify. Look where unrestrained empathy and sympathy have gotten us.

 

don't even get me started on FOD, my favorite movie of all time, and I'm not a baseball fan. 😂 😇

ray is all of us - "what's in it for me!?" ... and shoeless replies: "is that why you're doing this, Ray? For you? I think you better wait here Ray."


Jk: is this heaven?
Rk: no, it's Iowa.
Jk:, I could have sworn this is heaven.
Rk: is there a heaven?
Jk: oh yeah, it's where dreams come true.

"maybe this is heaven" - maybe gratitude for what we have (right now), reasonably, is the essence of being present and living right here, right now. Not waiting for a fantasy or mythical dangling carrot that we place all of our projected successes on.