Not planning on this being a long update, though I never intend for some of these posts to be long and yet they always get that way. I initially intended on this post to follow the one I'm working currently. That post in the works relates to the topic of two of Mr. Bryan's (The Civil Rights Lawyer on Youtube) videos detailing law enforcement corruption. Obviously I changed my mind and decided on this update coming first. This update isn't the long update I was working on for some time, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Of the two videos I will be featuring in that post, one relates to nepotism and favoritism by law enforcement. I will briefly touch on the blatant examples of favoritism that Michelle Dickerman experienced from the Charlottesville law enforcement, including going over some the retaliatory actions taken by the jail just to screw with me during my confinement at the jail in 2006.
I will also briefly touch on an example where Michelle Dickerman's family many years ago appears to have blatantly pulled strings with a family friend, one that was in a convenient position of some authority. This resulted in apparent favoritism that allowed Dickerman to receive an academic honor that wasn't legitimately earned. If you have to pull favors just to stay in the running for it, you didn't earn that honor at all. This wasn't something that was just observed by me but our entire graduating class as well. I doubt Dickerman is even aware of just how many people had a negative view of those events and of her after it took place. Then again her narcissism probably shields her from any criticism or awareness of how others view her. Michelle Dickerman is not a woman who possesses the gift of introspection after all.
The issue of that past special treatment, to get an academic honor that appears to have not been legitimately earned, isn't a critical issue. But it does help to establish a history of such behavior by the Manweiler family. Establishing prior behavior is important when it comes to legal issues. Since it is clear that someone in a position of authority meddled in my case in 2006, it is important to demonstrate that entitlement issues and calling in favors for special treatment is nothing new for Michelle Dickerman or her family.
The main focus of this specific update post however is to go over work issues and plans for the blog.
As for the work issues - it appears that I was overzealous with my optimism on my employment. In fact it wasn't actually that long after the July update was posted before I was slapped with a change in the situation. I mentioned that we had new work coming in and that layoffs would not be a risk for now. I was very wrong on my understanding of the situation.
The amount of work was mostly for other sectors of the business. I knew that not all of it was going to my specific group, but I did hope there was more on the plate for us than what we actually got. Granted more work at all is a good thing for a company, but if that work isn't going to your specific sector then you personally are still shit out of luck. We did have the primary shipyard we work with send more work our way and we still have that project I received the new training I spoke about. But that new project looks to only have about six months of work in total and it isn't a continuous six months.
Also the rumor is that the shipyard we're partnered with on our primary work is attempting to hire in-house people instead. This is being done in order to stop outsourcing the work to engineering companies. While it's just a rumor right now, it's also a rumor supported by evidence. There are already employees who have switched over to that shipyard due to the pay incentives. We've been told flat out that if this yard stops sending work to us everyone in our group will be looking for employment elsewhere.
Unfortunately that is the nature of contractor work. Which normally isn't a big deal, especially in this day and age of more places opening up to remote work. At least it isn't a big deal if you don't have a felony on your record. If you do have a felony your mobility in this field is extremely restricted. A lot of employers don't like you.
Shipyards look the other way sometimes with tradesmen like welders and fitters, but they have a different expectation for those in white collar positions requiring more technical knowledge and trust (though designers tend to be more blue collar in personality type at least as opposed to those who are strictly engineers). Employers in this field especially don't like felons because there are a lot of boomers still running these type of places. The older generation tends to stick around a long time in engineering and shipbuilding, and they tend to have certain opinions on anyone finding themselves on the wrong side of the legal system. It's also actually a 'small world' in this particular industry, and it's real easy for word to spread about you and you suddenly can't get hired by anyone.
I encountered the dislike of felons with every engineering company I applied to during that gap of years in my employment post-2006. There were a couple employers who expressed a tentative interest in giving me an interview at least, but they asked the employment agency helping me if I was at least off probation first. I wasn't at the time unfortunately and their response to that was not only 'No' but 'Hell No'.
Even after I was off probation I couldn't get anywhere. That only changed when my previous employer hired me, and that only happened because they were the only ones who didn't check into my background. Other employers demanded to know about criminal record on the application itself. With a warning that not including it was grounds for immediate termination of employment when discovered. Some only wanted to know if it was within 10 years (which it was during my employment gap), but others wanted to know about any serious legal issues in your background no matter how long ago it was.
Some places will not hire a felon just out of some misplaced moral principles. The term felon for them immediately conjures images of violent gangbangers with tear-drop face tattoos who are waiting for the opportunity to commit another crime.
Even without the negative view impacting you, most of this work involves either a majority of military work or they at least dip into that pot from time-to-time. Hiring a felon means risking the chance they can't get clearances or approval to go on base. Sometimes you are approved to get on base but when requesting to get access to the ship itself you get denied. Which means the felon you hire might not be able to do the work you hired them to do. If it turns out that felon's background prevents them from doing their job, you've now wasted time and lost other potential candidates that moved on after you turned them down to hire the felon. You can see why it's a gamble for employers.
Obviously a lot of places just don't want to take that risk at all - and no they will not take your word that it won't be an issue. My saving grace has been the training and experience that I have. Having in demand skills helps but clearly not enough when you have a felony.
One thing that hasn't helped my mood or my belief in the stability of my employment, is that the climate here in my current employer has declined. Granted it may have always been like this and I was just hired during a lull when nobody was stressed out. Especially since I was warned that this employer has a reputation of being rough on its employees when I first told one of my old coworkers about the new job. It used to be much worse however based on the things I've been told by people who have been here a long time. I was told that just a handful of years ago it wasn't uncommon to get screamed at by a manager and loudly told "I'll fire your ass right now". Sometimes the work dried up suddenly and a manager would go around tapping employee chairs with the comment "Come see me in my office", and everyone knew those people were being laid off.
While getting screamed at doesn't seem to be going on so far, it has been a repeated thing to see emails with general statements about an intention to fire or write up people over a lot of things. Which doesn't exactly help morale around here and I think it's not something that encourages employees to stick around. I see a lot of angry and stressed out people at work, far more than what I saw at any of my old places of employment.
To make things worse, after one major issue with a previous job we completed even the managers got threatened with being fired. "Shit rolls downhill" as the saying goes, which is likely why we're getting the previously mentioned emails lately. It also means that nobody will be sticking their neck out for anyone else's employment status given that even managers are under the gun lately. So you can take a guess where that leaves me.
I've already gone through with the new apartment that I discussed in the July update, as I'm not going to sit in limbo on that while waiting to see how things pan out. I've been waiting a year at this current employer to see if anything negative is going to happen. For some time however, it's just going to be bare minimum furniture while everything else sits in storage in Arlington. I had initially thought of slowly bringing things out of storage over time depending on how secure I felt my job was, but obviously I've changed my mind on that plan. I'm not happy by the way about having to keep things barebones in the apartment in case I have to buyout the lease after my employment tanks. But it does make certain decisions I've made much easier to follow through when things finally go down hill in the future.
Recently I have decided that I will probably attempt to leave this job and move to another employer in the near-future. Having my employment continue to hang over my head is not something that is good for me given the severe level of anger towards the guilty parties that has been steadily increasing over the years. Granted, I absolutely run the risk of a new employer telling me to go to hell when they discover my felony charge, but I don't feel I have any other options at this point. Which once again - it doesn't help that level of anger towards Michelle Dickerman.
There are only two reasons I'm sticking through it right now. The first is that the project I received the training for is actually a pretty serious one with a lot of eyes on it outside of the company, and it is actually one of the more interesting projects I've had in a long time. I haven't had something this interesting since back before my life got wrecked in 2006, when as a still fairly brand new designer I was picked to be on a small team that planned out the repair work on the air and gas systems for the USS San Francisco - which was the submarine that crashed into an underwater mountain in 2005.
Now maybe it was intended to mean that it was just announced to the public in June, but that's not the way it reads on Wikipedia in my opinion. They make it sound like the idea was thought up in June, but the Navy absolutely knew what they were going to do before that. Granted I'd expect those of us in the submarine departments to know about this stuff before the public does, but there is definitely a difference between when we did our work and when Wikipedia says the decision on repairs was announced. I'm not surprised about this however - there is a reason why you don't cite things straight off a Wikipedia page after all. It's just funny to see it on something I had involvement with.
I actually got picked to do this over people that had a lot more experience and company time under their belt. This wasn't the only time that this kind of thing happened, it was just the most notable instance of it. I was actually on track to progress very far in that career until the 2006 case brought all that to a screeching halt permanently. Bit off topic, but it shouldn't be surprising that I have really bad thoughts towards the people who derailed that career through their bullshit and lies. Anyway, given that this current project I'm on is a significant and interesting one I'm hoping I can see it through. I do not have high hopes for that however.
The second reason I'm sticking through it for now is because of the recent company-paid training I received for this current project. One of the other senior designers on my specific team has not only left the company but also the industry. He is suffering from burnout and wants to step away from this line of work for awhile. Which I completely sympathize with since burnout has been a big issue for me as well, for reasons I might get into in the future. He has no intention of ever working at this specific company again even if he returns to engineering work, so he isn't concerned about burning any bridges when leaving. I have no wish to burn any bridges here even though they will absolutely not be hiring me ever again due to their knowledge of my felony charge.
If I were to leave now, that puts the company in a worse spot given that another designer on this project, on an already small team, has left. Being down a designer on this project is already a big problem for the company, and if I head out now that will only make the situation worse. They will have to scramble to find someone, and specifically someone that has training already, since they don't have the time to train anyone else thanks to the deadlines on the project. This would be bad enough, but to also leave them after I just received good training at the company's expense - well you can imagine that's going to leave them feeling just a little pissed.
I'm not worried about pissing them off out of concern for not being accepted back in the future - because they are not going to rehire me anyway given my situation. They absolutely don't like the felony on my record. The only reason I made it in the door is because I was rushed forward into being hired and working before background checks were complete, and once they did find out someone went to bat for me to avoid my firing. If I leave I can't remotely see them accepting me back anyway (at least not until some years go by and some people retire along the way) so burning bridges don't matter in that regards. What I really want to avoid is encouraging the company or anyone employed there to speak ill of me after I leave. That whole "small world" issue in this industry as I mentioned previously.
If I leave them with a really negative view of me, they would be more inclined to warn future employers who contact them for employment verification that I have a felony. Maybe they aren't allowed to do that - but how would I know for certain who tipped them off if the new employer doesn't tell me about who informed them of the felony?
If I at least stick around and complete this project they paid to train me for, they might not say anything about my felony when they are called to verify my old employment with them. Nor would I have to worry as much about any black mark being spread through the industry about me. No guarantees on any of that obviously, but I feel I have a much better chance of avoiding the situation if I don't piss them off or make anyone regret speaking up for me.
So while I think I need to seek another job right now and have other offers being made, I will try to at least stick it through this project before I leave. That could be a mistake of course and it probably is. I learned the hard way from my former employer that loyalty towards a company isn't something that will be reciprocated. Which is why I had loyalty towards the people I knew there and not the company, but in the end that still didn't amount to anything when the UK office that owned the company gave everybody a pink slip. Of course my main reason behind not leaving that previous company was over the same felony employment issues I'm facing now rather than any loyalty to a company. But I need to make sure I don't fall into the same trap, and that I pull the ripcord before it gets pulled for me.
When the time comes to leave, I'm hoping for something 100% remote rather than the hybrid remote situation I currently have. I'm currently looking at another employer in the Arlington VA area that many of my former coworkers at D&P signed on with. At the very least they might be willing to do a hybrid remote setup like I currently have. One former coworker of mine lives in New Jersey and only works out of that company's Arlington office one week out of every other month. I'm not putting all my eggs in that one basket though and have been keeping my eye on other remote jobs out there.
None of this is set in stone however and I'll just play it by ear for now. But as I said before, being in this kind of situation isn't helping my anger towards the damage inflicted from the 2006 case as you can imagine. The only reason I'm having to deal with this is due to Michelle Dickerman's lies and criminal acts, as well as the crimes of the trash in authority who aided her vindictive behavior. Someone's definitely going to get to see my own level of vindictiveness in the future thanks to all I and my family have been forced to go through.
In the mean time, I've made a few decisions about the blog and some of my posts. I posted this update before the lawyer commentary video because I've changed my mind on putting out that long post I was working on. I also now intend for the lawyer commentary video to be the last post on this blog until I have the michellemanweiler.com website up to an acceptable level.
I've mentioned in previous posts that I was having trouble figuring out what I actually wanted to do with everything I wrote in that very long post I was working on. It really doesn't have any direction or point because it's an update that morphed into something else over the last couple years I've pecked away at it. Hell I was still with my old employer when I first started the original. A lot has changed since I initially started writing it. It also goes over topics that I feel deviate too much from the main issues addressed on this blog.
As an example, one of the subjects I went over was all the available methods that make it possible for me to get ahold of a firearm anytime I wanted regardless of the laws in place over felons with firearms. My intention behind this writeup was simply to make a point about how absolutely useless the felony charge actually was, and how it hasn't actually stopped any of the things the guilty parties claimed were the reasons behind railroading me into it. As I said in the July update, for now I intend on jumping through the legal hoops first to get my right to own a gun restored the legal way. But I'm absolutely not concerned about being told no in the future, because in the end I'm going to exercise that right anyway.
If the concern was to keep me from owning a firearm, the felony charge wouldn't actually have prevented that from happening once I stepped out of jail on November 2006. It not being legal for me to do something isn't the same as actually stopping me from doing that thing. If I wanted a gun all these years I'd have been able to go forward with that intent anytime if I wanted. The same with claiming that the felony prevented me from taking violent action. How exactly...? I'd still love to know how me being a felon actually stops that from happening. Because it absolutely doesn't. It's no different than thinking a protective order actually does anything to protect someone - when in the end it's just a piece of paper.
The intent of that long post (at least one intent, it was actually all over on various topics) was to point out how nothing about the felony actually stops the very things they claimed were their reasons behind my railroading. But we all know that those reasons were lies in the first place. Those claimed reasons were never the intention behind what they did to me. Vindictiveness was the reason. Because the only thing accomplished by railroading me into a felony they knew I was never guilty of, is that it made everything a hell of a lot worse for Michelle Dickerman and her family. Dickerman just hasn't figured that out yet.
As I said in the July update post, doing what they did to me in 2006 has kept me focused on wanting these people to answer for their actions for going on 20 years now. That isn't stopping and it isn't going away. If Dickerman hasn't figured out she made everything worse after almost 20 years then everyone has seriously over-estimated her abilities.
Hell if Dickerman didn't figure it out back in 2006 then the point still stands - because everyone else at the time knew it was going to make everything worse. Even the prosecution didn't believe it was going to make anything better - they just wanted to try to keep the responsibility for whatever happened later to be off of them if at all possible.
As my lawyer put it, Warner Chapman wanted me to be a felon because "if Ms. Manweiler (Michelle Dickerman) ends up dead on the evening news at least nobody will point the finger at them". They were quite wrong about that, as once people found out what really happened in 2006, and more importantly about the hammering I received, everyone would have said the prosecution would have pushed the situation to that point. The public would be correct in that belief. I have never accused the prosecutors in this case of being smart, I've only accused them of being criminals.
There have been plenty of things I've said and done over the years to make a point to the guilty parties, and this long post I was working would just have been the latest instance of making a point. But why waste my time any further making points to individuals that have never let any of this through their thick heads anyway? I've been done with making points to these "people" for awhile now and it's time I just followed through with my intentions. Which leads me back to the blog and the future posts on here.
As I said previously, my final post for awhile is going to be the one about law enforcement bad behavior and favoritism. After I make that post I need to get the website up and running. The website is very high in search results, usually showing up as the number two spot below Dickerman's LinkedIn page - which gives an idea of the amount of traffic it pulls in. Not all that traffic filters through to the blog, and yet I noticed that there are many return viewers that keep coming back to it even when they don't click through to the blog. I'm assuming this is to see if the site is updated.
The website is an important resource that I've neglected for too long and I need to correct that. It's slow going, since things have changed since the early 2000s when I first started making websites. My knowledge on setting this stuff up is limited these days compared to when I started messing with websites right after graduating high school. But it still needs to be done. I'll use modified versions of the evidence writeups I've already created on this blog to save time. This way the website can be the focal point for the public to view the details of this case when it finally hits the news cycle, regardless of the method used to get this case into the public eye.
Once the website is done I'll see about what I want to do with the blog. One thing of interest is the fact that the blog has recently seen increased attention from bots. Specifically bots out of a particular location in Asia. It's pretty clearly bot hits given the location, number of hits, and the fact that it happens pretty much 24/7. Looking into this subject online it seems a lot of websites deal with this kind of traffic from Asia.
I doubt Dickerman has anything to do with this, despite the interesting timing behind it happening all of a sudden. These bot hits are very different in behavior from the ones I previously thought had potential law enforcement connections. It isn't impossible for it to be connected to Dickerman still, as signing up for bot farms is a common tactic for fake social media engagement boosting. It could be done out of a misplaced belief that it'll cause problems for the blog but I'm just not seeing this being the case. I'm not sure what the end goal would be there, as mass hits from bots don't hurt or help the blog in anyway.
Search engines don't use bot hits as a metric for search rankings, only organic hits are used. So my search ranking isn't being affected positively or negatively by any of the bot hits since search engines just ignore those. The bots also aren't going to prevent other traffic seeing the blog or take the site down. I've got multiple view trackers on my blog and website and only one of them is set to record bots. Thus all the other trackers show nothing from these bots so it isn't like they are taking up record space from organic hits. So while the sudden interest is certainly something to take note of, I highly doubt it has anything to do with Michelle Dickerman given that the bot hits aren't accomplishing anything.
At least, if it has anything to do with Dickerman it potentially wasn't with her knowledge. It's possible that there are ties to State actors given the location that the bots are coming from. China has really started flailing around more lately. It's possible these are bots tied to the Chinese government out gathering information on someone listed as a US Government employee (Michelle Dickerman), but I'm still not really seeing that being likely. Dickerman isn't that important to garner such attention, though I'm sure her narcissism tells her otherwise. Regardless, it's an interesting issue that has presented itself, but it has little impact other than a mild annoyance from seeing it pop-up on one of the view trackers.
Now that this post has been completed, keep a look out for the final post involving Mr. Bryan's videos. I'll attempt to get that out faster since I really want to keep that one as short as possible. As I said, the really long update post has been axed, as I really don't see a point behind putting it up. So the only other one in the works for now is the videos from Mr. Bryan, and some commentary included in that post on Dickerman and the Charlottesville case in relation to these videos.
Then I'll start focusing on the website before I post here again. At least I'll attempt to hold to this, as it is always possible that something will happen that will prompt a post. Though I don't have any intentions on posting about any potential job loss on here. If/when that happens I have specific plans I intend on moving forward with, and I don't want to telegraph when this is happening. We'll see what the future holds, but hopefully after the next post I'll have that website up in a much better state fairly quick.
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