Precursor to newest Constitutional Amendment: Only the government may own cameras

Long Island police make mother of three pay for taking photos of decorative helicopter in front of airport. This case involving Nancy Genovese is but one of many cases where law enforcement officers have been exposed for harassing and hurting people who are guilty of absolutely nothing. It's a long trend here in the United States. The government can spy all it wants, while the people are increasingly prohibited from expressing themselves or even from being curious. A lot of people are squeamish about Wikileaks, but it Wikileaks is an organization that does nothing different than the New York Times claims to be doing, yet the United States has illegally forced it into submission. And although Nancy Genovese did not claim to be doing serious investigative journalism, the American Vision News reports that she was was acting as a citizen journalist:

Nancy Genovese stopped her car on the side of the road across the street from the airport in an area that is open and accessible to the public, and crossed over the road to the airport entryway that is also open and accessible to the public to take a picture of the helicopter display. While still in her car, she took a picture of the decorative helicopter shell with the intention of posting it on her personal “Support Our Troops” web page.

Continue ReadingPrecursor to newest Constitutional Amendment: Only the government may own cameras

National policy regarding fossil fuel subsidies keeps getting distorted by campain contributions

At United Republic, Bill McKibben reports on the obscene amount of Big Oil lobbying each year in Congress. It amounts to $146 Million per year. Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison have launched a new bill that dramatically cuts subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. McKibben notes that no member of Congress makes rational arguments in favor of fossil fuel subsidies. No arguments need to be made, because money talks:

According to Open Secrets, the oil and gas industry has already spent $37.6 million lobbying the federal government in the first few months of the year alone. They also spend buckets of money on campaign contributions to persuade our elected officials to vote for policies they favor. A recent vote in the Senate revealed just how persuasive campaign cash can be. A bid to end taxpayer subsidies for the five biggest oil companies failed to get the 60 votes it needed. The 57 senators who voted to end the subsidies received about $6 million from the oil and gas industries, compared to a whopping $24 million pocketed by the 41 senators who voted against the bill.

No wonder America is so slow to move to elementary conservation methods and sustainable energy production. This is not a new story, of course, but a continuation of legalized bribery that infests the entire electoral system. Even worse, this is a system that severely punishes representatives who do the right thing.

Continue ReadingNational policy regarding fossil fuel subsidies keeps getting distorted by campain contributions

The provocative cover of Time Magazine

I was surprised to see the cover of the most recent Time Magazine: an attractive young woman breast-feeding her 3-year old boy, who is standing on a chair to reach her breast, wearing army fatigues. I'm not shocked or disturbed in the least by the breastfeeding. There is nothing wrong with public breast-feeding. The subject of the main article, Attachment Parenting, does intrigue me, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Continue ReadingThe provocative cover of Time Magazine

Preparing for missile attack

New round of insanity. Preparing for missile attack by blowing our infrastructure money: The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday backed construction of a missile defense site on the East Coast, rejecting Pentagon arguments that the facility is unnecessary and Democratic complaints that the nearly $5 billion project amounts to wasteful spending in a time of tight budgets. Won't they soon say that they need a West Coast Plan too, and a Southern Plan? The military-industrial complex will never have enough.

Continue ReadingPreparing for missile attack