Baitball Blogger
Baitball Blogger's JournalWhy I think people leave Florida after five years -- not because of the hurricanes. A HOA story
My city is definitely experiencing some kind of power issue in City Hall. I heard the Mayor resigned, which might not be such a great loss because he was pro-development. But, when something this big happens in City Hall, I tend to wonder how it's going to affect the rest of us, since everything in this community comes down to currying support from the cronies in order to legitimize political machinations. That means giving those cronies an opportunity to get something they desire, that they can't get through legal channels. In my HOA's case, back in the nineties, it came down to looking the other way as the cronies took over our Association common grounds. This is the reason I put up security cameras. It's times when the network is trying to gather support, that everything goes haywire.
Back in the nineties there were private meetings held with the presidents of all the Associations in our Master Planned Development. Back then, there were at least two dozen private Associations under the same P.U.D. One Master HOA claimed that they were the umbrella protection over all of them, ALTHOUGH, the documents do not support their claim. The Master HOA became a political necessity because of the way this County operates. People do need protection against the County government's overreaches. But what the board of the Master HOA decides to do with that power, usually comes down to the integrity of each member that serves on that board. Sadly, some have Napoleon complexes.
Back in the nineties, the Master HOA board did not operate under the laws of Florida. Their meetings were usually private, secretive and if they couldn't pull in a president in time to curry support for one of their decisions, they would tap one of the cronies who lived in our developments. That was true, especially if they had to rely on phone calls to build consensus for one of their ill-advised decisions.
Now, I don't give this city high marks for following best practices when it came to land-development, but the response by the civilians was worse. It was like the powers-that-be allowed them to walk into a legal quagmire, and in the end they were forced to accept Settlement Agreement terms that the then president of the Master HOA was unable to even read. He was only allowed to initial the bottom of the pages. It was such a clusterfuck of legal process. I didn't know it then, but we were deep in a rabbit hole.
What a mess. But it was the kind of experience that allows me to say without equivocation, that if newcomers to Florida leave this state after a five year stay, it's not because of the hurricanes. It's because of the community hostilities that occur when small circles of power try to follow their own private agendas, and try to keep things secret. That is the true hidden monster to tackle in Central Florida. Until we do, this place will never be a welcoming place for decent people.
So, anyways. My cameras. Because of my experiences from the nineties, the one thing I do look for is when neighbors sneak out at the same time in the early morning hours, contrary to their usual habits. It's something I look for because this is how the good buddies operated in the nineties. Breakfast meetings. And this morning, two of the usual suspects got up early and departed at exactly the same time, contrary to their usual habits. These are two people who do not socialize with each other, though they were each one degree away from people who were behind the clusterfuck of the nineties. The last time something similar to this happened, the golfcourse brought in a heavy machinery to fill in holes in the area behind my house that were probably dug up by gopher turtles, and then they proceeded to raze the last ten feet of my property, destroying my plants! So I have a legitimate concern, wondering what is going to happen next.
Add to that, that there has been a lot of interest in the property lines along the golfcourse. More than usual, golfcarts are riding the property lines along our homes. And the children of the well-connected in this community, are taking great liberties with the fairways. Something I keep track of, because our children were chastised for getting near it.
Good-buddy networks make Florida suck. But certainly give me something to write about.
Makes me sick when they say, "This is OUR building," as if that justifies the storming of the
Capitol when we all know they meant to steal, destroy, kidnap and possibly murder. Why can't they just stop and recognize that their intentions point to the fact that they are criminals.
They don't own our public areas. At best, public places are common ground. Places which are available to ALL of us. But I know it's pointless to make that comparison, because this same crowd does not respect common ground. In areas like mine, common area are targeted for hostile take-overs. Adverse Possession. And it looks like this kind of thinking has gone from stealing open spaces on plats and HOA areas, to now trying to take over our Public buildings.
Just to reinforce that connection, I do distinctly remember that kind of talk "They work for us," being spread around a City Hall public meeting, at a time when the community leaders, along with elected officials, led us all into a lawsuit that resulted in a two million dollar settlement. From what I observed, civil lawsuits that end in settlement agreements that no one pays for directly, do not create an incentive that will put down the kind of thinking that results in abusive take-overs. So I'm not surprised to discover that 22 years later, we are where we are today with these idiots storming the Capitol Building.
If you want to put an end to these criminal activities, the penalties must be stiffer.
Trump is going out with a whimper, not a bang. My prediction.
I've seen it so many times in the tribal behavior in my local community. They are tough talking when they outnumber you. If they think their group has their back, it's constant bravado, bullying and bullshit. But the moment they are singled out, everything changes. That's when they resort to the, "You can't kick me when I'm down." strategy.
And here, it's resorting to your kindness, mercy and sympathy in a hope for forgiveness and forgetfulness, in return for nothing at all. That's when you hear about someone in their family who is sick, or even terminally ill. "My husband has cancer." Or there is some other life challenge that they are dealing with, "I have six kids to put through college." Or they have back problems or some other medical issue. And this is where it gets alarming, because they walk down the street, lame, dejected or holding their backs like it's a Woe is Me parade. And it's not the walking that's the problem. It's their street too. They're entitled. But, it's the timing. They would appear when I am out in the front yard gardening, which isn't often. It's hard not to think that it's an incredible coincidence.
Maybe I fell for these ploys in the early years, when I was younger and still abiding by rules of civility that worked in the country I was born in. The problem is, they do it so often that you finally can't ignore that they're not really remorseful. It's all just a game to them. And then you realize that you and your family are not immune to the same human experiences, and yet, you manage to make it through the day without conspiring in the same ways they do.
So, I take these local experiences and I can predict that when Trump realizes that it's over for him, he's going to do the same thing. He is going to break with his usual brash, crass behavior and resort to the "You can't kick me when I'm down" strategy. Expect some family medical issue to surface and a last ditch effort to pull the sympathy strings of the nation.
One last bit of advice: Don't fall for it.
I live in a suburb of Orlando that is very red.
I know exactly what they're fighting for. They're fighting for away of life that allows them to cheat democratic methods. Instead, they prefer the backwater process that allows them to use closed social networks. They grow up in these communities, seeing their parents connect with good ole boys that help them take shortcuts, while the rest of us are left clueless and gasping for understanding. There is no organization that they can't undermine, including our HOAs.
Let me ask you. Where does anyone get the fucking idea that any of these kids plan to be good, honest citizens that respect a legal and fair process, once they grow up? They know how to undermine the fair process, by resorting to backwater conversations and meetings.
THAT's what they're fighting for. They know they can continue to cheat the system as long as Republicans are in control.
Seeing how the confederate monuments are taking a hit, I hit upon a new observation:
You are not part of the real American experience, unless your culture gets thoroughly trashed, toppled and tuned-out. Today we've come full circle. Today, the confederate culture in America is experiencing the hostile behavior that they helped create. A taste of one's own medicine, I believe is what they call it.
Just some errant free association thoughts today about social behavior.
First, I was thinking about Memorial Day and the solemn tribute we give to our soldiers who paid the highest cost to protect our freedoms. And then I thought about how people interpret how we should best respect that sacrifice, because there are two camps. I imagine there are derivations, but this morning, I was thinking about the two conflicting ways that we interpret the phrase, "soldiers who died to protect our freedoms."
One side interprets this sacrifice much like they do in religion, Jesus dying on the cross for us, sacrificing himself in order to cleanse us enough to be allowed into heaven. For that sacrifice we owe him a devotion that dictates the terms we should live by. And the best way to understand those terms is to listen to His autocratic interpreters from church, defining the rules that we should live by.
Well, that's how conservatives think that we should respect the sacrifice that soldiers made for us, by lining up and allowing ourselves to be led by whatever social mores makes sense to them. It usually involves stepping aside as they social engineer whatever culture stabilizes their ability to live well, and continue dictating to the rest of us.
The second camp is quite the opposite. Our definition of freedom does not put chains on thought. Quite the opposite. We follow our own conscience and our own dreams. We even reserve the right to define and expand on the definition of "American Dream." I say this, because living near conservative circles you get the impression that the only concept of the "American Dream" that we're allowed to have is home ownership. It's definitely on the list, but I imagine that a country of more than 300 million believe that one indication of true freedom, is to be able to define our own dreams, and not be dictated to.
Since this was an exercise in free association, my next thought was of the many ways that conservatives try to herd us. They try to abridge any form of free thought that they feel threatens their authority. I sort of went full circle, thinking back to the beginning, how they use the sacrifice of soldiers to stop us from bringing up concepts and ideas that destabilize their way of life. Certainly, their form of religion is meant to subdue reactionary behavior by convincing their own people that they should forgive transgressions, (which turns out to be very subjective, as to who should be forgiven, and who deserves their wrath. It's like a brainwashed army.)
So, we have religion and patriotism used as two mechanisms to control behavior. But what happens when they can't reach you through their institutions, because you've learned to avoid them?
Ha! That's a trick question. Even if you don't belong to their institutions, other people do. Your friends, your family members. Someone always knows someone who knows someone you know. And that's how messages get transmitted. Which, in turn, teaches you to redefine the concept of friendship, and the expectation of family ties. It's a challenge when you're bi-cultured, and the rest of the family is not.
From my perspective, it's easy to resolve all the conflicting messages. The soldiers that died for us, they fought to defend our freedom from foreign transgression. To honor that sacrifice, we in turn, have to fight to protect our individual freedoms inside our borders.
And only in America, can you have a culture war going on where two different groups of people believe in the very idea, that we have to fight other Americans to protect our individual rights, putting us in constant conflict.
That's how far I got in my free association this morning. To determine who is right, and who is wrong, we would have to examine the situation to determine what group has taken unfair advantage of the situation to aggrieve the other side.
Following the trail of the Great Facemask Heist of 2020.
I found at least three references to explain how our supply of facemasks vanished. Two of them have to do with federal approval. And I think that's why Jared Kushner was whining about the federal stockpile did not belong to the states. He knew the U.S. was shipping them abroad for their own reason.
Case Point 1: Many of us were saying early January that the U.S.'s supply of facemasks were being diverted to China. We knew this as customers seeking facemasks from our hardware stores and were told that a Chinese man came and bought their entire stock. And now we have the definitive proof, posted right here on DU:
Billions of face masks sent to China during Australian bushfire crisis
"Employees of Chinese state-owned companies were directed to purchase whatever they could find in the way of masks and protective clothing to send back home in a massive humanitarian effort."
"Between January 24 and February 29, the National Customs in China inspected and released 2.46 billion pieces of epidemic prevention and control materials, including 2.02 billion masks and 25.38 million items of protective clothing. The official report also states the value of these supplies was worth 8.2 billion yuan (approximately $2 billion)."
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142462576
Case Point 2: Let's see what our government did in return. Pompeo proudly announced that the State Department aided private individuals and corporations to send 18 tons of PPE's to China. This may be in relation to the first post. They were aiding the Chinese effort.
The United States Announces Assistance To Combat the Novel Coronavirus -- February 7th.
"This week the State Department has facilitated the transportation of nearly 17.8 tons of donated medical supplies to the Chinese people, including masks, gowns, gauze, respirators, and other vital materials. These donations are a testament to the generosity of the American people.
Today, the United States government is announcing it is prepared to spend up to $100 million in existing funds to assist China and other impacted countries, both directly and through multilateral organizations, to contain and combat the novel coronavirus. This commitment – along with the hundreds of millions generously donated by the American private sector – demonstrates strong U.S. leadership in response to the outbreak."
https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-announces-assistance-to-combat-the-novel-coronavirus/
And more recently:
Case Point 3: Pence task force freezes coronavirus aid amid backlash
"Trump aides were alarmed when they learned of the exchange, and immediately put the shipment on hold while they ordered a review of U.S. aid procedures. Crossed wires would only confuse our allies, they worried, or worse—offend them. And Americans confronting a surging death toll and shortages of medical equipment back home would likely be outraged.
Vice President Mike Pence soon realized another step was needed: After a phone call asking a foreign leader’s help with key supplies, he ordered his staff to make sure the review process wasn’t holding up coronavirus-related aid to countries that were assisting the United States."
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/31/pence-task-force-coronavirus-aid-157806
Case Point 4: Need to walk the dogs and I'll post a link later, but this is the more recent bit of information that the Fed are not only competing with the States, but that they are diverting our stock to the commercial market to auction off to the states.
In SUM, this Administration has a lot of explaining to do if they are diverting our stock to China and Bangkok, and competing against the States. Trump should be impeached all over again for this.
This was predictable. All of it.
(Reposted on a Duer's recommendation)
What is happening today within American society started long before today. The seeds were evident in the nineties and could be observed in a simple exercise that the Chamber of Commerce conducted every year. My friend told me about this. She participated in the exercise.
The Chamber of Commerce would hold a session with people in the community, dividing them into three groups. One group was defined as the wealthy, the second as the teachers and health workers and the third as the poor. The wealthy were allowed access to coffee and a table of pastries that were in the room. It was determined that the wealthy could invite others to the food and drink if they wished.
And then the three groups were sent to three different rooms to assess how they wanted the exercise to "evolve" based on their qualities. When the poor group made it into the room, they discovered an empty room. No chairs, no tables.
When the groups again reconvened, the person monitoring the exercise asked what everyone determined. Mostly, questions were asked to get a full understanding of their group's power and ability or limitations. The monitor answered their questions, explaining that there were consequences to their decisions. And then the monitor told them that they were to go back into their respective room to determined what would happen next. When the poor group got up, they stole the chairs in the conference room to have something to sit on.
When the groups again reconvened, the wealthy group had penalties set up for the poor for stealing the chairs. They seemed to enjoy using their power to inflict hardships on the other groups. They even withheld food from the poor eventually "killing" a few from starvation.
I don't know where the pandemic twist came in, but the wealthy were so annoyed with the poor group that they tied the hands of the health service group from helping the poor to ensure that they would only provide assistance to the wealthy.
By the end of the day, only the members of the wealthy group survived.
Which, I might add, would not really happen that way because viruses don't discriminate based on financial portfolios.
The Chamber of Commerce said that of all the times they conducted the exercise they had never seen such dire results. That was in the nineties and that kind Highlander exhibition reflected what I felt was going on in my community.
On edit: It may have been an organization invited by the Chamber of Commerce that would conduct these exercises, and not the CoC themselves.
Yup. They try to implicate everyone around them, and own them.
I was a victim of fraud in the nineties. The older residents of my community were holding meetings behind our backs and already had agreement between themselves about how they were going to fleece our community, stripping it of our common grounds. They excluded us out of critical meetings with the new developer who was going to finish off the second phase of the development. They were told by a good ole boy with connections to the Mayor into believing that we had no power to stop the new developer because our community had not yet been turned over to us. So, they assumed our common grounds were up for grabs, and let us believe that was the situation. They thought that if they could cooperate with the developer, and support his plans that the developer would agree to transfer the common grounds around their property over to them. So they participated in a con-job, bullying and willfully spreading lies to the rest of us about the status of our community.
In the end, I figured out that the Mayor's friend lied to all of us. I found the papers he had signed ten years earlier that transferred the community over to us homeowners. In other words, we had all the rights to stop the new development, but the greed among the homeowners who wanted those common grounds interfered with a clear understanding of what happened.
I spent the last twenty plus years firming up the details to clearly see the extent of their evil machinations. I had to, because I knew I had been conned. You see, in order to cover up the extent of their conspiracy, they had to hold HOA meeting to make it look like they were on the up and up. I attended those meetings, which I call the Sitting Duck meetings. It was in those "legal" HOA meetings where they spread lies and misinformation in order to control what we knew, which then, limited the decisions we were able to make. We were being conned.
But, they must have felt pretty stupid because their con job blew up in their faces when the developer took over the property he wanted with a replat, and then told the crooks in my community thank you, but he didn't have the power to deed common grounds over to them. They must have been furious. They figured out that the good ole boy friend of the Mayor had lied to them. But they kept it to themselves and I believe they have been using the Association funds and common grounds to make themselves whole. It's those private meetings that they hold between themselves that turns this into a conspiracy, because they never stopped gaslighting.
And here is where I connect with your post: They told everybody outside of our community that we had approved every step of the decision making process because we attended the Sitting Duck meetings where they gave us an American Kabuki dance. It will always be a reflection of this horribly corrupt community, how they tried to spread their stink on us because we attended the "legally noticed meetings" where information was strategically spread to us.
I'll never forget how they kept pointing fingers at me, because I attended those meetings. I had to dig out of feelings of Christian guilt to understand that I was a victim of fraud. I tried to change things, but couldn't, because I learned like everybody else that comes across Shadow Governments, how resilient they are, because they are basically the status quo.
And that's why I have, for the last sixteen years, avoided the HOA meetings. In this community, legally noticed meetings are just the place where they spread misinformation and outright lies in an effort to control our decisions and perceptions. Should we dare to ask the right questions, the gaslighting and bullying just increases.
The only way to stop it is to expose the corrupting nature of this small town status quo.
Little Conspiracies - More tales of bad behavior in my Florida HOA.
Sometimes I wonder how people are going to react when they read about the strange things that seem to happen all too often around here. I can tell you that I've never read anywhere else the kind of things that seem to be normal in my development. Today I'll write about how people behave when they are afraid that someone is catching on to the fact that our Association has been under the influence of backwater dealings for some time. Keep in mind that all if not most of my observations come from video clips from the security cameras that I have collected over the years.
For those that don't know, my neighborhood was involved in a larger community scandal in the nineties. The extent of the good ole boy maneuvering that took place in the early stages of the development is now coming to the surface because the poorly constructed areas are now in need of repair. No one wants to pay - and no one should since the city's backwater methods are largely to blame. The city leaders empowered the wrong kind of people who not only helped interfere with the business interests of a developer, but they also thought they could enrich themselves by defrauding members of my community by spreading misinformation about our legal rights. That is the big picture.
But I study human behavior and how this affected them in the years that followed has been a point of interest. There are patterns. Like the person who used to be afraid that someone would follow her in her early morning walks. Keep in mind that I am not usually wide awake and out of bed until after nine in the am so I have to rely on quick scans of the security camera clips to see what happened in the morning. I assumed she was concerned because a couple of time she pointed at my house before she left and her husband took a picture of my car, probably to show her that no one drove the car out of the driveway while she was gone. I just wonder how many other people she inconvenienced with what could be interpreted as defamation. Seriously, what is anyone going to do around here? We're more scared of them because of their connections.
I always wondered how much of her "fear" was made up because no one else in this neighborhood had ever moved in and walked so comfortably in and around people's houses in the early morning hours. And I say this as someone who was very concerned when she started trespassing on my property. It is something that has been remedied once I got the police involved.
But, there are still signs that small groups are still meeting and I would love to hear from other people in HOAs to find out if this kind of behavior is normal: Someone jogs in and out before or after the cabal leaves in their cars at the same time in the morning. What is the jogger, a look out? It's the same guy that comes in sporadically, but always at a time when it appears that cabal members are leaving in groups. The guy doesn't live in the community so it's a tell. .
The worst I have seen was when a group of neighbors were loaded up in a van and left for a meeting which took most of the day. While they were gone, the same two or three cars drove in and out of the neighborhood, slowly, like they were making sure no one was messing with the cabal's property. A few months after that meeting, the cable company came in and laid down new cable on their side of the community. I imagine that's why they wanted secrecy.
But I determined that this was a practiced method when I wrote to the president of the Association to discuss an issue of concern. He responded with a hand-written letter delivered to my door to tell me that he had a HOA meeting to discuss the issue and I could appear at a board meeting where he would tell us what they had decided. Except, that there was no noticed HOA meeting. They just talk among themselves and come up with a consensus.
All this happened within the last five years. Because I made a stink of things, usually by writing about them on this website, there are signs that they are waking up. Like they are finally publicly noticing our HOA meetings. But they still can't resist with those private get-togethers, which I directly relate to the backwater methods that still control every aspect of our lives.
Like this morning, when the tall man jogged in and out; and cars from the usual suspects left at the same time. And tonight, when board members met for an hour, at the same time that more of the usual suspects walked or jogged up and down the street.
It's Florida, and if I've learned anything about this community, we don't enjoy the benefits of a legally run HOA that is concerned with fiduciary responsibility because too many people are tribal and putting their interests first. And it won't get better until it is all exposed. Much like the problem we have with Trump at a National level.
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