Author: Tom Sullivan

Look! Up in the sky!

by Tom Sullivan

Commercial drones. Those GoPro-equipped gadgets for hobbyists, news crews, professional photographers, and drunk, off-duty, intelligence employees. Maybe even for Amazon package deliveries. (In your fever dreams, maybe.) The FAA announced proposed rules governing their use on Sunday:

The U.S. aviation regulator proposed rules on Sunday for commercial drone flights that would lift some restrictions but would still bar activities such as the delivery of packages and inspection of pipelines that have been eyed by companies as a potentially breakthrough use of the technology.

The long-awaited draft rules from the Federal Aviation Administration would require unmanned aircraft pilots to obtain special pilot certificates, stay away from bystanders and fly only during the day. They limit flying speed to 100 miles per hour (160 kph) and the altitude to 500 feet (152 meters) above ground level.

Just a tentative toe in the water, a camel’s nose under the tent. But it’s an announcement that will send eager technophiles rushing to buy the latest in remote-control spy-ware, and encourage what NPR reported last night could be a $2 billion commercial drone sector. These rules also are meant to prepare the public for further expansion of the program and assuage privacy concerns, etc., etc.

Drone testing and approval has been in the pipeline since at least late 2013:

The FAA has already permitted approximately 300 “public organizations” to fly drones, said FAA spokesperson Alison Duquette in an interview with Common Dreams. This includes drones used by law enforcement and Customs and Border Enforcement for the purpose of aerial surveillance.

Duquette said she would not disclose the numbers of drones in U.S. airspace armed with military grade weapons or spying capabilities.

Excuse me? But worry not, officials said Sunday:

“Today’s proposed rule is the next step in integrating unmanned aircraft systems into our nation’s airspace.” FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a conference call with reporters. “We are doing everything that we can to safely integrate these aircraft while ensuring that America remains the leader in aviation safety and technology.”

[snip]

“From entertainment, to energy, to agriculture there are a host of industries interested in using UAS to improve their business,” Anthony Foxx, secretary of the Transportation Department said. “But for us at U.S. DOT the first threshold always is and must be keeping the American people safe as we move to integrate these new types of aircraft into our skies.”

Yes, but. Lest you think — as yesterday’s reports suggest — we’re just talking about hobbyists, Eyewitness News, or even the police flying plastic toys in commercial airspace, there’s a little more to it (from February 2012):

“We’re going to bring aircraft back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re going to train in the [continental U.S.],” said Steve Pennington, the Air Force’s director of ranges, bases and airspace, and executive director of the Defense Department’s FAA policy board. “So the challenge is how to fly in nonsegregated airspace.”

The Pentagon too has been working with the FAA to open up U.S. airspace to its fleet of big-boy toys, nearly 7,500 combat drones (also from February 2012):

The vast majority of the military’s drones are small — similar to hobby aircraft. The FAA is working on proposed rules for integrating these drones, which are being eyed by law enforcement and private business to provide aerial surveillance. The FAA expects to release the proposal on small drones this spring.

But the Pentagon is concerned about flying hundreds of larger drones, including Global Hawks as well as MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers, both made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in Poway.

And last week Congress approved legislation that requires the FAA to have a plan to integrate drones of all kinds into national airspace on a wide scale by 2015.

The Department of Homeland Security announced its intention to double its fleet of Predators in late 2012. If Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and General Atomics have their way, there could be 30,000 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)
in U.S. airspace by 2020.

Maybe like me, you first remember the phrase “unmanned aerial vehicles” from George W. Bush’s scaremongering, Cincinnati speech about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and WMDs in October 2002. Back then, we were supposed to soil ourselves and go to war over the prospect of military UAVs in our skies. Ah, but we were young and foolish then.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a Predator!

(h/t Barry Summers)

Is it something in the water?
by Tom Sullivan

Is there something in London’s water? From the Not Gonna Happen Here Dept.:

The Conservative party needs to break its dependence on millionaires, the former Tory chancellor Ken Clarke has told the Observer, amid a growing furore over the tax affairs of the party’s donors.

After a week of some of the most intense fighting between the parties in recent years, Clarke said the Conservatives would be strengthened by loosening the hold of rich men on their financial survival.

He called on David Cameron to cap political donations and increase state funding of political parties to put an end to damaging scandals and rows. The Conservatives have been rocked in the past week by a potentially toxic combination of allegations of tax evasion by clients of the HSBC bank, whose chairman, Lord Green, became a Tory minister; tax avoidance by party donors; and leaked details of the secretive black and white fundraising ball.

Meanwhile here in the Colonies, The Man Who Would Be Bush III is looking to lock in Mitt Romney’s network of presidential campaign donors from the “private equity and investment worlds.” It’s a trick Jeb Bush learned from his no-accountability brother, George. Suck all the air out of the GOP candidates’ Green Room room along with the money:

“It’s absolutely a kind of aggressive shock-and-awe strategy to vacuum up as much of the fund-raising network as you possibly can,” said Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and a prolific Romney fund-raiser now helping Bush. “And they’re having a large measure of success.”

On the other side of the pond, however, the conservative Ken Clarke has had the scales fall from his eyes:

“What happens is that the Conservatives attack the Labour party for being ever more dependent on rather unrepresentative leftwing trade union leaders, and the Labour party spends all its time attacking the Conservative party for being dependent on rather unrepresentative wealthy businessmen. In a way both criticisms are true. And the media sends both up.

“The solution is for the party leaders to get together to agree, put on their tin hats and move to a more sensible and ultimately more defensible system.”

As previously noted, Clarke wants to see a cap on political donations. And it’s not just Tories having attacks of common sense:

Announcing that a Labour government would launch an independent investigation into the culture and practices of HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service] with regard to tax avoidance, [Labour leader Ed] Miliband told a Welsh Labour conference in Swansea: “The government’s failure to tackle tax avoidance is no accident. It has turned a blind eye to tax avoidance because it thinks that so long as a few at the top do well, the country succeeds. It thinks that wealth and power fence people off from responsibility. It thinks the rules only apply to everybody else.”

Imagine that.

Could any of this be contagious? Maybe there’s a vaccine they’re not taking in London that Villagers can not take here.

Election integrity but not elected integrity
by Tom Sullivan

It’s a cliche anymore to say that people who get distraught when women they don’t know want an abortion show much less concern for other people’s children once they’re born. But a headline from the inbox yesterday reminds me this is not the only area of public policy where such behavior holds.

One of the state’s GOP websites regularly reproduces in whole press releases from the Voter Integrity Project, North Carolina’s spinoff of True the Vote. This week’s 10-alarm headline? Curbside voting. Did you know that “there is no actual ‘proof’ of disability required” for the disabled or aged to use curbside voting? That you don’t have to show a photo ID at curbside voting? And that George Soros-backed groups will use this “curbside loophole” to help “drive-by voters” circumvent the state’s new voter ID law?

No code-speak there, huh?

But it strikes me that all the alarmism over the integrity of elections by people who devote themselves to undermining public confidence in them dissipates like morning fog once candidates take office. Ensuring only their preferred candidates come to term is what’s important. The integrity of those electeds and the actual legislative process afterwards? Not so much.

People whose only power is at the polls are a threat to democracy. Money wielding unprecedented influence in the halls of government at both the state and national level is much less of a concern.

Climate change gets biblical
by Tom Sullivan

Two stories this morning bookend the ongoing saga of climate change: sea level rise and drought. Biblical plagues almost.

Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell visits the Norfolk naval station to see the impact of sea level rise on naval operations. Large tides and heavy rains already leave some areas underwater. A storm had moved through the area the night before, leaving trucks at the main refueling depot axle-deep in seawater:

“Military readiness is already being impacted by sea-level rise,” says Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who mentions that with all the flooding, it’s becoming difficult to sell a house in some parts of Norfolk. If the melting of Greenland and West Antarctica continues to accelerate at current rates, scientists say Norfolk could see more than seven feet of sea-level rise by 2100. In 25 years, operations at most of these bases are likely to be severely compromised. Within 50 years, most of them could be goners. If the region gets slammed by a big hurricane, the reckoning could come even sooner.”

Already, employees have a hard time getting to the base when the roads flood. The state of Virginia is in charge of 300 miles of flood-prone roads in the Norfolk area. However, addressing that threat is not a priority for climate deniers in the legislature.

Politicians more focused on the 24-hour news cycle don’t seem to have room in their world for the kind of longer-term planning climate change demands and you’d think their job descriptions would. Republicans once talked openly of the issue as a national security matter, writes Goodell, but that talk “vanished from the party after 2008, when the GOP turned into a subsidiary of Koch Industries.” Perhaps they will pay more attention once the newly passable Arctic Ocean becomes a flash point between the U.S. and Russia.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the continent …

“We are facing a water situation that hasn’t been seen in California for 1,200 years,” says Marcia Kemper McNutt, editor in chief of the journal Science. The Washington Post’s Darryl Fears examines the coming megadrought researchers from NASA, Cornell and Columbia predict for the American southwest and plains:

The research is newly published, but its findings are not dramatically different from similar studies in the past. Beverly Law, a specialist in global change biology at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry, co-authored a study of megadroughts three years ago.

It showed that a drought that affected the American West from 2000 to 2004 compared to conditions seen during the medieval megadroughts. But the predicted megadrought this century would be far worse. Law said Thursday’s study confirmed her previous findings.

“We took the climate model . . . and compared” two periods, 2050 to 2099 and 1950 to 1999, she said. “What it showed is this big, red blotch over Southern California. It will really impact megacities, populations and water availability.”

Their study is here.

In anticipation of shortages, corporate players are already gobbling up public water systems. Wet gold, you might call it. Between magnates who want to sell you the water you drink at a tidy profit, frackers who want to tie up public water to drill for oil and gas, and the droughts and coastal flooding caused in part by burning what they extract, you’ve got a perfect storm of a cultural disaster brewing. Or a swirling, economic death spiral. Take your pick.

Goodell writes reassuringly:

The House Armed Services Committee is now chaired by Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, who argued in a 2011 op-ed that prayer is a better response to heat waves and drought than cutting carbon pollution.

Steve Martin tried that as a rainmaking con man in Leap of Faith. Maybe that was Thornberry’s inspiration.

We have met the enemy …
by Tom Sullivan

The shooting deaths in Chapel Hill, NC of three students sparked candlelight vigils last night:

Thousands gathered on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on Wednesday night to pay tribute to three local students who were shot to death the night before.

Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her younger sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were killed on Tuesday evening in the couple’s apartment in a leafy suburb of Chapel Hill.

The hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter trended early on social media as users complained that media coverage of the shootings would have been greater had the shooter been Muslim instead of the victims. Coverage has since picked up from Sydney to London.

In an emotional press conference, the family of the victims called on federal authorities to investigate the “execution style” shootings as a hate crime (video) directed at the three for their faith.

What strikes me are the reports that the alleged shooter had a history of angry confrontation with neighbors and had an obsession with parking and noise. He had a carry permit and displayed his weapon to the victims in a previous encounter. They and other neighbors were afraid of the guy. Enough so that someone previously called a meeting to discuss how to handle him (more video). The faith of these particular neighbors could have been the factor that allowed the alleged shooter to finally vent his rage on them rather than others.

But then there’s this background on the suspect:

Hicks was known for his temper and confrontational behavior. His ex-wife Cynthia Hurley, who divorced Hicks about 17 years ago, said his favorite film was “Falling Down,” in which a disgruntled and unemployed defense industry worker played by Michael Douglas goes on a shooting rampage.

“That always freaked me out,” Hurley told the Associated Press. “He watched it incessantly. He thought it was hilarious. He had no compassion at all.”

After tragedies like this, our first reflex is to ask, why? Mental illness, maybe. Ethnic hatred, maybe. Too many guns, maybe. Those are our default answers. They’re easy. But is there something bigger going on?

To put this violent incident into a larger context for a moment, just glance at the front page of Raw Story this morning. I found these headlines:

Tech mogul John McAfee reveals he now lives in Tennessee and is ‘constantly armed’

Chris Kyle called man who killed him ‘nuts’ just before shooting: attorney

Tennessee man forces ex to carve his name into her skin with box cutter, then rapes her

Indian man paralyzed after Alabama cop body-slams him for walking in wealthy white suburb

Woman miscarries after Georgia cop who didn’t ‘appreciate her tone’ tackles and sits on her: lawsuit

Senseless violence is widespread in this country. Still, notice anything in common about the geography of those stories? What’s that famous saying from Pogo?

Twisted in Tacoma
by Tom Sullivan

You know, in an alternate timeline we might chalk up this kind of attacker to congenital misogyny, inappropriate toilet training, or just being a horrifically twisted excuse for a human being:

Police in Tacoma were searching for a suspect who allegedly attacked a lesbian woman by stabbing her and writing homophobic slurs on her body.

It was late. She was looking for her lost dog.

“He ran up behind me and he said something like why don’t I sound like a boy, that I look like a boy,” she recalled. “And that’s when it started.”

“Are you a dyke?” she said the man asked. “God hates fags.”

Chris told Tacoma police that the man stabbed her in the breast, jaw, left forearm and left thigh with a pocketknife. Police said that the suspect then stripped away her clothes, and wrote “dyke” on her buttocks and back.

But in this timeline, we could just as easily blame the suspect’s religion and ask Congress to authorize airstrikes.

The terrorist is still at large.

A simple matter of law, justice and dignity
by Tom Sullivan

“This is a simple matter of law, justice and dignity,” says Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of North Carolina-based Campaign for Southern Equality in a web statement. “Our fundamental hope is that LGBT people and families would be treated equal under the law and in the social fabric of the South,” she told the International Business Times.

Beach-Ferrara reacted to the refusal of some probate judges in Alabama to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday to deny Alabama’s request to delay a federal judge’s ruling that green-lighted the marriages in Alabama. The court is set to rule later this year on whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage:

Many of the state’s 68 probate judges mounted their resistance to the federal decision at the urging of the firebrand chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore. He is best known for refusing more than a decade ago to comply with a court order to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments from the state Supreme Court’s offices.

In Mobile, about 10 gay couples who had expected to be granted licenses first thing in the morning found the marriage-license window closed indefinitely.

Several legal scholars observed that Moore may be within his authority, technically, saying the injunction only prevents the state’s executive branch from enforcing Alabama’s same-sex marriage amendment:

In two memos, one on February 3 and the second on February 8, Moore wrote that probate judges aren’t bound by the injunctions. In the first memo, he said that probate judges aren’t required to defer to the district court’s reasoning—essentially leaving it up to them to decide. In the second, he changed his mind, and ordered probate judges to disobey it “to ensure the orderly administration of justice.”

“Roy Moore got it right,” wrote Florida law professor Howard Wasserman on the Prawfsblawg legal blog last week. “And without bigoted or anti-federal rhetoric.” Probate judges are not covered by the injunction, and Moore is within his rights as head of the judicial branch.

At the U.S. Supreme Court, justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Thomas wrote, “I would have shown the people of Alabama the respect they deserve and preserved the status quo while the Court resolves this important constitutional question.”

I wonder if Thomas would have felt the same in 1963?

Wait. I got this.

by Tom Sullivan

McClatchy asks an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry how the Islamic State justifies its blood lust:

They cherry-pick Quranic verses out of context, apply the most rigid interpretations of jurisprudence and excuse just about any brutality by saying they’re waging a defensive jihad on behalf of aggrieved Muslims worldwide, according to Jocelyne Cesari, a renowned scholar of Islam who’s part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s working group on faith and foreign policy.

Swap out “Quranic” with “Bible,” “jihad” with “preemptive war,” and “Muslims” with “Christians” and this could describe death penalty proponents in Texas or torture apologists across America.

See if this doesn’t sound familiar:

Q: What religious grounding does the Islamic State give for its atrocities?

A: They say they’re in survival mode. They believe that conditions for Muslims today are a danger to your soul as a Muslim. They don’t see their jihad as an attack; they see it as defensive jihad.

Wait. I got this. “We fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Preemptive jihad. Who’da thunk that strategery would have become so popular?

Veni, vidi, vaya con Dios
by Tom Sullivan

It seems a bright eighth grader in Vermont thought it would be a good idea for the state to adopt a Latin motto. So Republican state Sen. Joe Benning introduced legislation recommending Stella quarta decima fulgeat (“May the fourteenth star shine bright”). The phrase harkens back to when Vermont entered the union as the 14th state.

Wonkette has what happened next:

And then Burlington TV station WCAX put the story on its Facebook page with the headline, “Should Vermont have an official Latin motto?” and all Stupid broke loose when morons thought that Vermont was knuckling under to a bunch of goddamned illegal immigrants.

An email from Benning to the Vermont Political Observer captured the irony:

I anticipated suffering the backroom internal joking from my colleagues in the legislature. What I did not anticipate was the vitriolic verbal assault from those who don’t know the difference between the Classics and illegal immigrants from South America.

A couple of samples:

“I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin places have American mottos?”
“ABSOLUTLY NOT!!!! sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries”
“How do you say idiotic senator in spanish? I’d settle for deport illegals in spanish as a back up motto”
“Hell No! This is America, not Latin America. When in Rome do as the Romans do!”

Later commenters jumped in to lampoon the earlier posts, of course. Wonkette and the Vermont Political Observer have more.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

They’re comin’ ta git ya
by Tom Sullivan

No, really. I keep saying that what we’re seeing nationally is the next phase of Defund the Left. If it feels as if there’s a target on your back, dear Reader, it’s not your imagination.

On All In Thursday night, Chris Hayes spoke with Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin about Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strike 13 percent from the budget of the University of Wisconsin. Shocking enough. But there was more, as Jonas Persson and Mary Bottari reported for CMD’s PRWatch:

Walker’s executive budget (see below) amends Sec. 1111 of the statutes to remove language specifying that the UW system has a public service mission to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campus” and to “serve and stimulate society.” He strikes language ensuring that the mission of the UW is to extend “training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition,” as well as the language specifying that “the search for truth” is “basic to every purpose of the system.”

Walker backtracked, claiming the strikeout of language core to the state’s guiding principle since the Progressive Era, the “Wisconsin Idea,” was a drafting error. Politifact rated that claim “Pants on Fire.”

But this observation about Walker by Chris Hayes jumped out at me (emphasis mine):

There’s something sort of ingenious about this from a political standpoint. It seems to me that one of his M.O.s in office has been to sort of use policy as a mechanism by which to reduce the political power of people that would oppose him — progressives, the left. I mean, go after the unions, right? Which is a huge pillar of progressive power in the state of Wisconsin. And another big pillar of progressive power in the state, frankly, is the university system.

Speaking of M.O.s, this is eerily similar to what is happening in North Carolina, and no accident, is my guess. Like Walker’s, the GOP-led legislature here has been looking to weaken any foci of opposition. Three weeks ago and without explanation, UNC Chapel Hill’s president, Tom Ross, was forced from office. A local blogger offered this explanation to the Charlotte Observer:

Without a clear explanation of why Ross, 64, was being forced from his job, political consultant Thomas Mills concluded politics was the reason. Ross is a former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a financial backer of progressive groups, and that may have hurt him, Mills said.

“Maybe what they want is somebody who’s going to kowtow to the legislature, and he has pushed back about some legislative priorities,” said Mills, who has worked for Democrats. “If they want that, what’s the point in having a system president?”

Rumors fly that “third Koch brother” Art Pope wants the job.

Chad Nance at Camel City Dispatch believes much more is being targeted.:

Art Pope’s Civitas has long wanted to close North Carolina’s Historically Black Colleges… now they just may get their chance. In 2014 their hand-picked UNC Board of Governors targeted programs throughout North Carolina’s university system that are geared toward the studies of poverty, economy, climate and other sciences, and diversity studies. Any part of academia that might contradict these right-wing partisans’ anti-science and anti-working people agenda is on the chopping block.

Just this week, Greensboro got blindsided when a GOP state senator from the county introduced a bill to restructure elections for city council. (North Carolina is a Dillon’s Rule state.) The News & Record reported:

Senate Bill 36 would shrink the size of the council, fundamentally change the role and powers of the mayor, lengthen council terms, and reduce the number of council members who are elected at-large.

The changes would mean that residents would vote for two council representatives — their district member and the mayor — instead of five.

The legislation also puts four current City Council members in the same newly drawn District 4. Council members Mike Barber, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Zack Matheny and Nancy Hoffmann would have to battle it out for a single seat.

And wouldn’t you know? Of the four, three are Democrats, as is the mayor.

Same M.O.

The News & Record reports this is “the third time in recent history that the legislature has sought to rearrange a local government body.” That is incorrect.

They did it to Buncombe County (mine) in 2011, going from at-large elections to districts to weaken the influence of the city of Asheville — and increasing the number on the commission by two. Now, you can argue that it’s more representative for county voters, and it might be, but this arrived via virtually the same M.O. as Greensboro. No advance warning. No consultation with local officials or referendum of voters. Imposed by fiat from Raleigh by the “small government” people. And hanging in the air is the implied threat to do the same to Asheville city council in retribution for the city not rolling over and submitting to Raleigh’s will when they passed legislation to wrest away control of the city’s water system — that’s still in the courts — as they attempted to with Charlotte’s international airport. Remember Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr? First piece of public infrastructure he targeted for privatizing was water and sewer.

First they came for the labor unions, etc. Are we seeing a pattern here?