Running For Office on the Tinfoil Hat Platform

22Mar/1011

Running For Office on the Tinfoil Hat Platform

The Mayor

The local political scene isn't normally very exciting to me. Louisville has had the same mayor since 1986 (with the exception of a stretch from 1999-2003 during which the local government reorganized), and he's been popular enough that he's been effectively unchallenged whenever he's come up for reelection.

Last year he decided not to run for what would be his sixth term overall (his third under the reorganized government), and instead take a shot at the Lieutenant Governor's office.

This has thrown the field wide open, and as of this writing, there are approximately eleventy thousand people considering running for the soon-to-be-available Mayor's office.

Including Connie Marshall.

An article appeared this morning in the Louisville Courier-Journal describing Marshall's...unusual...history and political platform. I'll need to start with an excerpt from the article because there's no way I could do this justice on my own (emphasis mine):

Before she began her bid to become Louisville's next mayor, Connie Marshall's public life could be traced through more than a dozen lawsuits she has filed in U.S. District Court against corporations and federal, state and local government officials.

Marshall said in an interview that she is the victim of discrimination, abuse, government surveillance and electromagnetic attacks, which she describes as piercing and humming electronic sounds that come into her home through telephones or other electronic devices.

She said the assaults come from satellites or drones that often hover above her western Louisville home, causing her pain and sometimes paralyzing her for minutes. She's not sure who is behind the attacks, other than “corrupt officials on the state and federal level.”

Satellites? Drones? Seriously?

Marshall's reasons for running for mayor have something to do with wanting to rescue her grandchildren from foster care, which they apparently were placed in after Marshall was attacked at work and after she was involved in a class-action suit against federal judges. It's not clear from the article whether those events are in any way connected.

Ms. Marshall, a former Tina Turner impersonator (!), claims she wants to eliminate the corruption in the Metro government that she believes has victimized her and others through the years.

Among her claims:

Her telephone is often rerouted.
Her email is blocked.
Her postal mail is intercepted.
She is being watched through her television ("You can tell when it's happening because the TV (screen) gets real bright.")
The fact that she has never won a lawsuit is evidence of government corruption.

I wonder if somewhere these guys fit in:

Marshall has attracted the support of Derrick Robinson, founder of an organization called Freedom from Covert Harassment and Surveillance, a group dedicated to, well, being free from covert harassment and surveillance, including the electronic attacks and mind control that the U.S. Government has been researching for decades.¹

One problem with claims like Ms. Marshall's is that they're difficult to falsify² - if she wins a lawsuit (for example), it's proof that she's been victimized, but if she loses all of her lawsuits, it also proves that she's being victimized. If nobody else can see the drones over her house, it's not because there are no drones - it's because they're hovering above the clouds, or because they're cloaked, or because they moved.

Over and above the rather unusual nature of her claims, though, is the fact that she seems to be basing her candidacy on a set of personal grudges rather than on any particular set of goals that one would normally associate with the office of mayor. She's also shown nothing in the way of apparent qualifications to hold the office, apart from the trivially obvious ones like being alive and breathing. It's not clear how being a former Tina Turner impersonator would prepare one for public office. Perhaps she can seek some advice from Sarah Palin...

I'm not sure why the C-J felt the need to put Ms. Marshall's issues on the front page of the paper today with almost nothing in the way of criticism or evaluation. They seem, at best, fringe, and by featuring them so prominently, the C-J may be lending them more credibility than they deserve.

-Jay

----------

¹To be as fair as I can, I will point out that the CIA has conducted research into various behavioral/mind control techniques, and much of what is known about these programs is quite bizarre. I'm reasonably certain, though, that none of it involved covertly observing people through their TVs.

²Joshua Zelinsky had a good post discussing falsifiability at Religion, Sets, and Politics. Falsifiability is a very useful criterion for assessing many claims, but it isn't the only one or even necessarily the best one.

Be Sociable, Share!

Filed under: critical thinking, Current Events, Kooks, politics Leave a comment

Comments (11) Trackbacks (1) ( subscribe to comments on this post )

Joshua Zelinsky
March 22nd, 2010 - 19:51

This sounds close to outright mental illness. However, it may be difficult to define or determine whether someone is mentally ill when there are other people with the same belief. In this case the FFCHS people seem to be a group of people with shared beliefs. So at what point do we label this mental illness?

I’m reading some of their material now and the paranoia level is fascinating. They have a slideshow http://www.slideshare.net/Freedomfchs/ffchs-slideshow/1/yes . The sixth slide lists some of the symptoms of what they call cover harassment and surveillance. These include “Hostile treatment by strangers on a consistent basis.” They also list problems with jobs and increasingly strained relations with family members. How the covert harassment causes all three of these is not explained. The family members one is particular hard to explain. I’m not sure I can even posit a mechanism that would work that way.

They also claim that victims have been targeted by directed energy attacks. I’m not even sure what they think the government is trying to accomplish with this. If I had to come up with an explanation I’d suggest some sort of bad scifi plot involving prophecies about what certain people will do in the future and manipulation by the evil government of those people to slowly control the prophecies. I’ve watched to much late night/early morning scifi.

( REPLY )
- Clever Badger
  March 22nd, 2010 - 20:38
  
  There may be a distinction worth making between people who believe in (for example) government mind control in concept and those who believe that the government is trying to control their mind specifically, but I’m not sure that it’s a very sharp distinction.
  
  The FFCHS “symptoms” look like the sorts of things that just about everyone experiences at some point. I suppose if I were going to try to contrive a connection between these symptoms and “covert harassment”, I might claim that the strangers in question were actually agents sent to agitate me in particular. Or that my family members had been co-opted by the government, or something like that. That sort of rationalization suggests some grandiose delusions to me.
  
  Now, you might recall that PZ Myers had a post about a year and a half back dealing with some directed energy crankery (also discussed by Skippy, here. I’m not sure that there really needs to be a reason for such attacks – if you’re important enough that the government feels the need to covertly harass you, then you’re probably important enough for them to bring out the big guns.
  
  Damn. Even just trying to think with that mindset is giving me a headache.
  
  ( REPLY )
CONNIE MARSHALL
March 22nd, 2010 - 21:18

HI,

I’m Connie Marshall. I would be more than happy to provide you with a copy of a statement found in my bank account that stated, “Problem with Ky Gov., Check federal government papers in file before releasing info. to anyone,” or would you like a copy of the cd from a forensic anaylst of my coworkers at BlueGrass Automotive (Person_1, Person_2 and Person_3) discussing killing me and taking me to the KKK and also discussing a woman they handcuffed in a building,” would you like a copy of the documentation of my grandchildren being beaten and made to go without food in foster care while one of them put food in his pockets to feed the other one, or would you like the tapes of every official in this town refusing to assist with the above. Anytime you are ready to see the truth which includes three tapes with narration pages, a 195 page journal, just to name a few. contact me, BUT I BET YOU WON’T. Let’s have a public meeting and get it all out in the public. May God give you exactly what you deserve, I await your call.

( REPLY )
CONNIE MARSHALL
March 22nd, 2010 - 23:10

Hi,
Connie Marshall again, I was also assaulted three times by Person_4 at Blue Grass Automotive and went to the hospital twice once by ambulance, would you like to see the bills from the assaults from Person_4. I also had bugs thrown in my hair and was subjected to perverted email by Person_5 (one of the owners). I did not receive assistance from the FBI, local police, etc., instead all of the aforementioned was covered up. Now, have some guts and leave all of this on your website and when you are ready to discuss facts and you get tired of writing fiction, give me a call or meet me after a Mayoral Debate and we can discuss getting together. ALL, YOU WANT CALL, YOU WRITE FICTION.

Connie Marshall

( REPLY )
- Clever Badger
  March 23rd, 2010 - 20:41
  
  Ms. Marshall -
  
  First of all, the salient facts that I mentioned in my article were all published originally in the Courier-Journal on 22 March 2010, an article which you were presumably interviewed for and the contents of which you are presumably aware. My personal opinion on statements made in the article may or may not (for the sake of argument) be correct, but since they are accurate reflections of my thoughts, they are most certainly not fiction.
  
  Second – you will no doubt notice that I have edited out the names of several individuals in your comments. I did this not because I am attempting to “cover up” anything on their behalf. You, by virtue of the fact that you and your claims were presented in a public newspaper, have implicitly put those claims up for public evaluation, and have declared yourself to be a public figure. Those individuals whose names I have removed did not chose to declare themselves public figures. (While it is true that they are, if I remember correctly, all named in court documents that are available on the open internet, one must make an effort to ferret those documents out.) Note that nothing besides those names has been deleted from your comments. I have a fairly liberal editorial policy here, and the only things that get deleted as a matter of course are spam comments. Note also that I can change that policy at any time, and will not hesitate to do so should anyone’s comments become threatening, gratuitously vulgar, or onerous to the point where I get tired of policing them.
  
  Third – based on a comparison of the claims that you’ve made with the publicly available records, I personally don’t find your claims to be credible, and consequently I have no personal interest in reviewing the materials you mention. I’m sure that if you look around you can find other venues to present your materials.
  
  Finally – I bear no personal animosity towards you, but I don’t think there is much more to discuss here.
  
  ( REPLY )
CONNIE MARSHALL
March 23rd, 2010 - 05:26

Hi, Connie Marshall,

CORRECTION TO THE LAST SENTENCE
All you won’t call, you write fiction

I did not want to give you an excuse to write more fiction.

( REPLY )
Skippy the Skeptic
March 23rd, 2010 - 09:56

I know I shouldn’t feed the trolls, but according to the Western District Court of Kentucky (re: Civil Action 3:05CV-261-S) -you’re- the one who’s writing fiction.*
:-3

CB, the link into my blog is bad. Looks like the URL you’re using has an extra quotation mark at the end that ought not to be there.

*Thank goodness for Scribd.com

( REPLY )
- CONNIE MARSHALL
  March 23rd, 2010 - 18:22
  
  IS THAT THAT BEST YOU CAN DO? MY PRAYERS GO OUT TO YOU.
  
  Connie Marshall
  
  ( REPLY )
Skippy
March 23rd, 2010 - 20:59

I dare you to make less sense.

( REPLY )
Gerard Gudino
June 22nd, 2010 - 16:25

I am being tortured via satellite voice to skull and pain on my body
specially on my head burning sensation and bad feeling like fainting
they make my mouth hurt when they talk to me.

( REPLY )
- Clever Badger
  June 23rd, 2010 - 07:06
  
  No, dude, you’re really not.
  
  ( REPLY )