How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

[BillBoard]

How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

I am giving this question very serious thought, and the answer I keep coming up with seems very simple: -publicity!

Corrupt people hate publicity, they hate it when people find out their scams.

But then in the age of the internet, why aren't more people taking action?

Well, it seems to me so far, by empirical evidence, that most people have no clue what their rights are.

Go ahead an ask a few people, how does the process work if they are arrested, 999 out of 1000 cannot tell you how the process should work or how does it work in reality.

Hell, even ******* lawyers have no clue how the system should work, even worst, if the citizens don't know shit about their rights, decent cops, judges and lawyers cannot clean up their own house because they lack support from the very citizens they are supposed to serve.

Grim, but not hopeless.

Any thoughts?

[c1ue]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

My own view is that publicity is not enough. Publicity can and has caused extremely blatant but specific abuses to be curbed, but it doesn't help with the myriad minor abuses which occur everyday to everyone.

My action in this regard is to attempt to use software to introduce automation to help parking consumers. The area I work on - parking in major cities - is I think a good example.

While everyone can read the posted signs for parking restrictions, the 2 million parking tickets issued in San Francisco in 2010 (SF has less than 400K registered cars, with perhaps another 350K regular visitors) clearly indicate that many, many people don't.

And while reading a sign seems simple, in reality few people are interested in learning all the rules associated with parking - many of which are not posted.

The 72 hour rule, for example, is not posted anywhere. This is a law which states that a person cannot park their car on the street in San Francisco for longer than 72 hours; if they do so then they can be cited and towed. This actually happens quite a bit.

Other examples of rules that aren't posted:

incline parking - you must curb your wheels if the street grade is over 3%. But how can you possibly know this? Sure, Lombard street is obvious - if you could actually park there - but in reality something like 1/2 of all SF streets are at or over 3% grade.

white zones - for businesses, no parking during business hours (9 am to 5 pm). For apartments, no parking from 9 am until 10 pm

Parking meters: once upon a time, they operating only Monday through Saturday, 9 am to 6 pm. There were some which operated 7 am to 6 pm, mostly concentrated downtown. There were 3 zones of parking meter cost: $2 in the outskirts, $3 in the mezzanine, $3.50 in the peak areas.

Today the parking meter costs vary widely. Some meters operate until 11 pm. SF will implement Sunday meters soon. Some other meters operate until 7 pm. Costs can be anywhere from $0.50 to $4.25 to $18 (special event). Some meters have 1 hour limit, others 2 hours, 4 hours, or no limit.

You can see where this is going. At a certain level, people just switch off because it just isn't worth it for most people to invest the time and effort to learn and keep up with all that is going on just with parking.

The complexities of laws and regulations in all the other areas can be just as ridiculous.

[Raz]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

"One of the surest signs of tyranny is the enactment of so many laws that even the educated and informed classes cannot comply with them".

Thomas Jefferson

[BillBoard]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

My own view is that publicity is not enough.

You are right Clue, apathy is another issue to overcome.

How about the mechanics of the system? With a debt-issued currency, the usury works in an imperceptible manner. People cannot stop working to become engaged in the political process.

With parking cases the abuse is egregious and very opportunistic, by setting the pain threshold at the point where people rather pay than learn their right or be inconvenienced local governments are getting away with massive loot.

[c1ue]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

How about the mechanics of the system? With a debt-issued currency, the usury works in an imperceptible manner. People cannot stop working to become engaged in the political process.

If you want to address the problem of raising awareness on how accumulated economic value is stolen via dollar devaluation - obviously this cannot be fixed with information.

And even if more information were to be made available, there really is nothing most people can do about it. Switching over to pure barter is simply not an option for most people - and trying to accomplish anything without involving dollars as a person living in the United States is equally difficult.

There are still some things that can be done. Opensecrets, for example, has great information about the details of donations and candidates.

My suggestion would be that either they or someone else create a web site where say the top 100 or 1000 stories in the MSM are replicated, but with Opensecrets data appended.

It would be eye opening, I suspect, if you were to read a modified version of an MSM story where the senators pushing 'X' which in turn benefits corporation 'Y' had in turn received 'Z' in donations from said corporation.

Doing this for the voting record would also be interesting. 'A' million for, 'B' million against, A paid by 'C' corporation, 'B' paid by 'D' corporations. Aliens vs. Predator.

As I've noted before, my personal view is that money must be removed from the elections process. I've looked into a lot of details and the effects are abundantly clear, but as noted previously by both of us, most people simply aren't interested or have enough time to do the same.

Fixing the governance problem is the first step - removing donations is pretty much a pre-requisite.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

If you want to address the problem of raising awareness on how accumulated economic value is stolen via dollar devaluation - obviously this cannot be fixed with information.

And even if more information were to be made available, there really is nothing most people can do about it. Switching over to pure barter is simply not an option for most people - and trying to accomplish anything without involving dollars as a person living in the United States is equally difficult.

There are still some things that can be done. Opensecrets, for example, has great information about the details of donations and candidates.

My suggestion would be that either they or someone else create a web site where say the top 100 or 1000 stories in the MSM are replicated, but with Opensecrets data appended.

It would be eye opening, I suspect, if you were to read a modified version of an MSM story where the senators pushing 'X' which in turn benefits corporation 'Y' had in turn received 'Z' in donations from said corporation.

Doing this for the voting record would also be interesting. 'A' million for, 'B' million against, A paid by 'C' corporation, 'B' paid by 'D' corporations. Aliens vs. Predator.

As I've noted before, my personal view is that money must be removed from the elections process. I've looked into a lot of details and the effects are abundantly clear, but as noted previously by both of us, most people simply aren't interested or have enough time to do the same.

Fixing the governance problem is the first step - removing donations is pretty much a pre-requisite.

Interesting idea.....something like opensecrets.org(lousy name for the masses I reckon....sounds too conspiracy laden)

Opensecrets.org does a pretty good job of collating and slicing up the money in politics.

Maybe an opensecrets.org news app that searches news articles for politicians, bills, laws, political contributors and puts the pieces of the puzzle into perspective.

Sort of like Google News meets Opensecrets.org meets financial commentary......instead of just financial investment/interest disclosure....include political contribution disclosure...preferably embedded in the article itself.

[BillBoard]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

"One of the surest signs of tyranny is the enactment of so many laws that even the educated and informed classes cannot comply with them".

Thomas Jefferson

Raz, Alexander Hamilton is whom I would blame in part for our predicament, which is like a cancer.

And the cancer is USURY.

Alexander Hamilton knew too well the game, that's why he insisted on a national debt and centralized government.

You all have very good points, but let's not lose sight of the root of the cancer.

Look how those behind the curtain have been able to implement this vile system:

They needed a central bank to purchase the government bonds, Why? Simple, to implement USURY on a massive scale.

One of the primary discoveries of the Ancient Babylonians was that men in debt produced more than solvent men. If a man didn't owe anyone he didn't have to force himself to produce, he could slack off.

Now think about this, why does the typical Joe cannot take off from work to participate in political activities? Simple, he needs to pay the mortgage, the rent, the car, the credit card, etc.

And it all begins with the currency itself, the government bonds cannot be monetized and put into circulation without the aid of the Federal Reserve Notes.

So as you can see, we are on the right path, but have to "visualize" a way to strike at the root of the cancer.

[raja]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

Boycott the Big Banks . . . Vote Out Incumbents

[touchring]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

It's not publicity, but propaganda.

Autocratic states don't maintain control through punishment alone. Even Gaddafi doesn't just kill his opponents. He publishes his book and philosophy to convince them that he has the "right way". Grown up men crying histerically at Kim's funeral - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puMFL...feature=relmfu They wouldn't have cried like that even at their own father's funeral.

This is the reason why autocratic states maintain tight control over the media.

Here's a list of states without freedom of press - http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-inde...2012,1043.html

You will notice that Russia is the only European country inside the list.

100	Mongolia	35,75
101	Gabon	36,50
102	Cyprus (North)	37,00
103	Chad	37,67
104	Ecuador	38,00
-	Georgia	38,00
106	Nepal	38,75
107	Montenegro	39,00
108	Bolivia	40,00
-	Kyrgyzstan	40,00
110	Liberia	40,50
111	South Sudan	41,25	nc
112	United Arab Emirates	45,00
113	Panama	45,67
114	Qatar	46,00
115	Peru	51,25
116	Ukraine	54,00
117	Cambodia	55,00
-	Fiji	55,00
-	Oman	55,00
-	Venezuela	55,00
-	Zimbabwe	55,00
122	Algeria	56,00
-	Tajikistan	56,00
-	Malaysia	56,00
125	Brunei	56,20
126	Nigeria	56,40
127	Ethiopia	56,60
128	Jordan	56,80
129	Bangladesh	57,00
130	Burundi	57,75
131	India	58,00
132	Angola	58,43
133	Israel (extra-territorial)	59,00
134	Tunisia	60,25
135	Singapore	61,00
-	Honduras	61,00
137	Thailand	61,50
138	Morocco	63,29
139	Uganda	64,00
140	Philippines	64,50
141	Gambia	65,50
142	Russia	66,00
143	Colombia	66,50
144	Swaziland	67,00
145	Democratic Republic of Congo	67,67
146	Indonesia	68,00
-	Malawi	68,00
148	Turkey	70,00
149	Mexico	72,67
150	Afghanistan	74,00
151	Pakistan	75,00
152	Iraq	75,36
153	Palestinian Territories	76,00
154	Kazakhstan	77,50
-	Libya	77,50
156	Rwanda	81,00
157	Uzbekistan	83,00
158	Saudi Arabia	83,25
159	Côte d’Ivoire	83,50
-	Djibouti	83,50
161	Equatorial Guinea	86,00
162	Azerbaijan	87,25
163	Sri Lanka	87,50
164	Somalia	88,33
165	Laos	89,00
166	Egypt	97,50
167	Cuba	98,83
168	Belarus	99,00
169	Burma	100,00
170	Sudan	100,75
171	Yemen	101,00
172	Vietnam	114,00
173	Bahrain	125,00
174	China	136,00
175	Iran	136,60
176	Syria	138,00
177	Turkmenistan	140,67
178	North Korea	141,00
179	Eritrea	142,00

How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

I am giving this question very serious thought, and the answer I keep coming up with seems very simple: -publicity!

Corrupt people hate publicity, they hate it when people find out their scams.

But then in the age of the internet, why aren't more people taking action?

Well, it seems to me so far, by empirical evidence, that most people have no clue what their rights are.

Go ahead an ask a few people, how does the process work if they are arrested, 999 out of 1000 cannot tell you how the process should work or how does it work in reality.

Hell, even ******* lawyers have no clue how the system should work, even worst, if the citizens don't know shit about their rights, decent cops, judges and lawyers cannot clean up their own house because they lack support from the very citizens they are supposed to serve.

Grim, but not hopeless.

Any thoughts?

[Shakespear]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

But then in the age of the internet, why aren't more people taking action?

Because in the Internet there is only "Silence".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diT3FvDHMyo

This is what you had in mind ,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...student-strike

No internet in that image

[shiny!]

Re: How can the average man or woman begin to push back government abuse?

The God-given (not government-granted) right to protest was killed in the United States with the creation of "Free Speech Zones" at political events. Protest outside of your little box and get arrested. Silly me... I had been raised to believe that the entire country was a Free Speech Zone.