Coping: Help for a Public Official

Often in our early-morning sit-downs, we cover light, different, and a little bit of the “out-there.”

But this morning, we begin with the serious side.

There are two items which you really need to think about because they both involve aspects of freedom – living in the democratic republic – for which we stand.

So there I was Saturday morning, relaxed and half-snoozing when the phone rings.

It was a long-time subscriber to Peoplenomics® who is a public official in a large governmental unit.  And elected official, whose name I won’t give, this man’s one of the watchdogs of freedom…

He’s the sort of elected official who actually reads proposed laws, thinks about them, holds them  up to the measure of his state and the federal constitution.  In other words, exactly the kind of fellow you’d want in office representing the general public:  He’s open to all sides of issues and conscientiously votes what he finds in his heart to be in keeping with core American concepts.

In short, a really good guy.

So why was he calling me to chat about a law-making issue?  I’ll paraphrase…

“George, I wanted to see what your feelings are about chest-cameras for our police officers.  I’ m wrestling with this one…

Not exactly the kind of thing to wake up from a Saturday morning snooze with a sharp answer for, but I rolled through the pros and cons as I saw them:

On the pro side:

1.  The presence of a chest-cam protects the officer from charges of excessive force, charges of abuse of power, and is a pretty good record of how a suspect is reacting and behaving.

2.  In the event of violence against an officer, anyone committing violence against an officer would likely b e captured on video along with critical other evidence…so it protects the officer again.

On the con side, however:

1.  Who will review the video tape?  Will entire shift content be videoed, or will only initial responses?  What is policy on when to “roll tape” and to go cameras off?

2.  One that video is in police custody, what is the likelihood that the video will be scanned in the future using facial recognition software and a “potential criminal file” started, even if the police questioned a suspect (* you for example) and then went on their merry way? 

Would this kind of uncertainty over future disposition of footage outweigh the improved safety (and quality of evidence) that the chest-cam provides?

The police right to take and use video in public places is pretty well established.

But suppose a neighbor of your says (lying of course) that you are growing six marijuana plants and calls the cops because of the smell and your grow lights keeping the neighbor awake.

The cops show up, cameras running, but knowing your neighbor is a prick, you’ve killed the lights and turned on the exhaust fans.  You really have 17-plants growing.

Opening the front door, you have a chat with the officers, who video the encounter…but since you have the fans on and they don’t have a warrant, that’s the end of it.

Except, when they get back to the station, a video operator uses the newly developed THC fluorescence filter and notices a tiny spot on the carpet in the background on the floor while you were chatting.  Shouldn’t have dropped that dutchie, boy. Ja’maica mistake?

“OMG, the THC Filter says there has been weed in this house.  This is grounds for a warrant!”

The cops them come back, impound your plants and you’ve off to jail along with a perfectly good chain of custody to back up their case.

We chat about the Constitutional balance for a while,. but I eventually come down on the side of the police chestcams, because a couple of cameras rolling on crime would possibly prevent future “people acting badly” cases like Ferguson and Baltimore.

And please note that I didn’t say which people.  Just, people because there are racists of all colors and power and positional authority abusers of all colors – I’ve met representatives of most.

My called continued…

“The other problem we have is that if we download the camera footage to a government-owned server, under the public records laws of this state, that video is all DISCOVERABLE for two years.

So not only could a lawyer for a defendant secure all the footage about a partcular crime but they could also go fishing through all the video ever recorded by an officer and fine unrelated cases which might then be cast as showing an officers predisposition to act in a certain way…”

I figure the way to prevent this kind of lawyering would be to limit lawyer access to only the case video where the lawyer’s client is involved.  Otherwise, the lawyer could conceivably also drag in people with no criminal record (those questioned by an officer whose character the lawyer is trying assassinate) and they have no business being privy to that.

Moreover, when would the chest cams go on?  I think at the officer’s discretion or when they arrive at the scene of a call…their discretion.

The reasoning here is that an HR department or internal investigations would have a field day with off-hand remarks between officers between calls.  I have many friends who are cops – damn good professionals – but some of the sh*t you see in the field can and does get reduced to hardcore language which wouldn’t pass PG-13, if’n you follow.

“If you have any more ideas, George, let me know?”

Well, as it turns out, I did.

Toss it out for readers   (that’d be you if the coffee is still perking) to comment on and pass along the comments to my elected official friend as soon as possible.

Chestcams on police don’t bother me.  Adding a requirement that timecode be inserted so there’s no “after-the-fact” editing, would be a good idea, too.

Your comments welcomed…I will pass them along…

How We Lose of Freedom:  Virtualizing the U.S.A.

The second serious point (before we wander into the less serious stuff) is to recount the simple revelation in this weekend’s Peoplenomics report because it explains how Trade Laws are going to be used to Trump Civil and Constitutional Law.

It’s all there for the reading on the www.wikileaks.org site.  It is contained in the Chapter Four contents of TPA and the TISA b.s.

Simply it works like this:

Under present law, if a trading company out of Taiwan, or example, has a beef with a US company, it can bring suit in the U.S. Court system.  The U.S. domiciled entity is well represented and well-protected.

Under the Obamanistas Secret-Sell-Out plans, all this supposedly “innocent” trade crap would change and remove US courts from trade / international business disputes..

What would happen under the new (sovereignty-robbing plan of the Globalists) is the Taiwan company would make their beef a “trade” complaint.

This would trigger arbitration (by a panel which would be majority non-US, Mexican for example) and the Trade laws which are being secretly strung together by the traitorous congressoids, would place the issue beyond reach of the U.S. judicial system.

Once trade issues have been removed from the US legal system, other items will fall, as well.  Including, if memory serves me, our former forgetful female ex=-secretary of state was pushing for UN small arms control, did she not?  (It’s early and I’m not fully awake yet).

The deal is that once an international TRADE accord is done, then we simply go through a 10-20 year period of international agencies banding together to steal American sovereignty from the outside….without firing a shot.

America gets killed by bad trade deals stealing jobs and our civil courts. 

“It’s all for your own good…free trade is good for everyone…”  And if you believe that bullshit, you don’t know how to look at simple charts, like this chart of the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs which (please look carefully) has cratered.

We have fewer manufacturing jobs now that at any time since BEFORE  WW II if you ignore the little (and I mean tiny) post 2009 bounce.  And this is NOT the per capita chart.  They don’t roll that one out…if makes things even worse looking.

This is why Obama and his cronies dare not let you read  and discuss their pending Trade Bills, Fast Track, TISA and all the rest of it.  IT SELLS US OUT IN THE LONG TERM.

The operant game here is “Pin the Tail on the Ass-Clowns”  and say, what is that big red ball on the end of your nose?

Peoplenomics subscriber feedback:

George,

I read your analysis twice and I believe you are spot on. I think its’ one of your best Saturday reports ever.

Ron

And I commend the simple core idea to you this morning because this is the legal version of GMO foods.  May sound really good at first, but it’s all a matter of time till freedom is “rounded up.”

Another subscriber note to ponder:

Hi George,

I read the PN issue this weekend and was impressed by you’re putting together the pieces. This morning I saw this:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nra-gun-blogs-videos-web-forums-threatened-by-new-obama-regulation/article/2565762

It gives me the creeps! The most valuable thing about the USofA is our freedom, in all respects. This is prior restraint over free speech, and could easily ramify to many other areas of society(such as criticizing those in power, for instance.

I can see a correlation to what you were discussing Saturday, and perhaps it’s just another preparation for hot war. Then again, it may just be another political overreach.

Any thoughts?

Oh sure:  First they came for the union leaders, then the socialists.  And then they came for the gypsies…

Like the ACLU has often held:  Rights are always taken first from people too lazy or unable to defend them.

But you do love trade laws, right???  Spoonful’s of sugar in the Hemlock.

We have Courts…or at least we used to.  Globalists will steal that, and it’s what this Trade Crap is all about:  Crap in Trade.

Da Flyin’ Hams:  Notches on the Gun Barrel

We now return you to the lighter side of Monday morning.

I told you my son (G-II) was coming down to do some serious sky-diving.  As he wrapped up his U.S. Parachute Association C-License this week, he did something we have been talking about for a long time:  Having 2-meter ham radio contacts while under canopy in a large metro area.

The scene-setter is this was a high altitude “hop & pop” from about 16-thousand feet.  He just uploaded it to YouTube about midnight local time…so you’ll be among the first in the world to see this unique blend of hobbies…

G-II has a fine saying: 

If I was wealthy people would call me eccentric, but since I am not, people just call me crazy.

Well, um, yes, the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.  At 10:22 into the video, there’s a shot down from the head-cam and you can see the diagonal of the unmarked runway at SkyDive Spaceland which was his base of operations.

And, yes, that’s the narrower than the 2-lane roads around it, where Ures truly set down the Musketeer both times, dropping him off Thursday and then going in Sunday morning about 8 AM to take him back up to the Uretopia Ranch.

We also had our first father (airborne) to son (on the ground) ham radio contact, with me able to hear him about 15  miles out.  He could hear me something like 45-miles out, but I was a bit busy in that timeframe…

Sometime today, we should  get a copy of the approach and landing at SpaceLand uploaded on my channel (not my best bush pilot work, but serious flying, nevertheless) and a Thank You to Houston ATC for the easy (almost direct) routing Sunday, with just a small detour for those 2,000 foot TV towers in West Houston.

G-II should also get his high “hop & pop” of a sunset skydive with some of the better Canopy Relative Work (CReW) work you’ll see…very impressive stuff….even to an old man who’s seem it all, or most of it anyway.

I wonder if the American Radio Relay League shouldn’t offer  Field Day bonus points for “From an operation balloon or aircraft” and something special for the Under Canopy category….well, that’s not a category yet…

That’ll be something for KF7OCD /aeronautical mobile and the old man, AC7X/aeronautical mobile to talk about over a chilled 4-1000 this afternoon. 

(*Decoder ring:  In  the tube-days of ham radio, the potency of an adult beverage was denoted by relative size of transmitter tube.  Thus, an 807 (or 12 volt filament version 1625) was analogous to a beer.  (Tube data sheet is here.)

Over time, the 807s/1625s that had mainly come from WW II war surplus became the 6146 – still analogous to a beer.

According to one’s taste, a mixed drink would be designed as something in the 4-250 to the 3-500Z range.  A 4-250 screwdriver would be weaker than a 4-400 or 3-500z screwdriver, for example.

The martini (over which the word “Vermouth!” has been shouted, is the venerable 4-1000. 

A few people in broadcast engineering a reported to have taken things to even higher levels.  The 3-CX3000, for example would be a triple.

A pair of  3-CX3000s (in push-pull configuration) were used to modulate a single 3-CX2500 in the legendary Collins 21 E/M transmitter.. the first one I ever got to work on.  Age 16.  (Sheesh…half a century!!! OMG old must be sneaking in around the windows here…Where’s that QCWA application?  One of these days…)

On the other end of things, when driving, or out of respect for teetotalers,  indicating a preference for a voltage regulator (“give me an OA-2”)  meant someone was driving or working on the high voltage section. 

Alcohol and ham radio have changed their relationship over the years.    4-1000’s are out of style now, as alcohol is bad for you.  But once upon a time, in a wilder, freer America, things were different, though more dangerous.  Smoking was legal back then, too.

There’s another reason why alcohol references to electronic components has changed:  it sounds plain stupid to sit around and say “Gonna get me another MRF-454…”    I mean really, really dumb. 

“I’m driving, so I’ll stick with a 1N34”…see what I mean?  Dumb.

But it reveals a greater truth:  Loss of device-level power…hmmm…sort of just like a country I knew back then, too…Before the corporate takeover.

There, to rip off Paul Harvey (a friend of our hobby): “Now you know the rest of the story…”

73 and write when you break-even…come back tomorrow and bring reinforcements!  Frequency change approved, g-day.

George  george@ure.net