WE don't generally wander far from local, but the PJTV Trifecta (below) caught our collective eye.  Living next to Canada makes Border Patrol a part of daily life, 24/7.  WE like having a secure border, and national security is a truly enumerated federal duty.  Knock on wood we're probably safer than people on the southern border.

But there's a another program here that few citizens are aware of - regular and totally "un-warranted" photo surveillance that Whatcom County (and a slew of partner agencies) engage in on a regular basis.  This aerial surveillance now being done using Pictometry.  What once was merely "mapping" is something very invasive.

Pictometry is not garden variety aerial photography for mapping and measuring for public work.  Using airplanes, look-down and oblique photos are taken regularly and then compared to prior images using a specialized computer program to watch for changes, to see what people are doing.  Boy, if that doesn't fit the definition of "surveillance" WE don't know what does.

Who's watching?  All kinds of agencies are (see list after this paragraph), including the Lummi tribe. The whole purpose is to actively snoop on citizen activity, peering at everyone's home, yard, or farm by taking oblique photos periodically without having to establish "probable cause" or get a warrant.  If the Pictometry computer program flags some perceived activity or change to your property (from a long list of options)  you're subject to further investigation, or maybe even a knock on the door.  Who's privy to what extent of the photo bank isn't clear.  Do they all share everything?  Is there any protection from abuse?  Most importantly, is this much un-warranted surveillance justified?  What would a court say if a citizen objected?

Those involved:  Whatcom County (numerous departments), City of Bellingham, the Housing Authority, Blaine, Everson, Lynden, Sumas, PUD #1, the Conservation District, the "Council of Governments", the WTA, Lummi Nation, Ferndale, Lk Whatcom WAter & Sewer (and who knows how many more - the feds too?)

There were no public hearings about the adoption or expansion and continuation of this program.  There's never been a chance for the citizenry to weigh in over a number of years (4 or 5).  Pictometry is being renewed for 2015 (and perhaps longer), it was in the county budget.  For a taste of the terms, look at this agreement and a truckload more here.

And are these pictures public records?  Will "the people" be permitted to "see" the pictures and reports - Pictometry "product" - that our public servants see?  Not a chance. WE have good reason to expect access to be denied (records withheld) "to protect citizens privacy" (!) if you could believe the hypocrisy of such an oxymoronic excuse. These photos and reports ("product") is being held in the hands of a very tight circle of "interests."  Carefully read this stock clause in all of the Pictometry agreements:

How does all that cozy vendor-agency protection square with the Public Records Act, which says:

If you were lucky enough to attend An Evening with Bill Whittle last month at the Mt. Baker Theatre (sponsored by the Northwest Business Club), you were witness to the inspiration for the following video, live on-stage. See if you can spot the tag line.

Bill Whittle said in a previous Firewall, that you don't hear the phrase, "Hey, it's a free country" much anymore. He's right; you don't. Because it really isn't. Back then, you were free to do pretty much whatever you wanted, subject to a few well-known, well-understood, common-sense restrictions (murder, theft, vandalism, etc.).  Civilized "was" as "civilized does." Crime was something that could be recognized, related to real harm.

Today, it's just the opposite: only the most trivial choices are up to the individual. Anything significant requires a permit. Have you tried a simple home remodel project lately? Government bureaucrats are taking our freedom and selling it back to us as permits.  If you don't pay ritual homage to The Man there will be hell to pay.

From time to time WE shares interesting little tales from the mainstream meed-yah.  Nags and nanny statists, take note that (drum roll)

Breakfast Downgraded From 'Most Important Meal of the Day' to 'Meal'

MSN News, Aug 22, 2014

"You didn't eat breakfast? Don't you know it's the most important meal of the day?"

In the bitterly divided world of breakfast habits, otherwise reasonable people become evangelists. Why is it acceptable to make people feel guilty about not eating breakfast, but it is not acceptable to slap those people?

This week health columnist Gretchen Reynolds at The New York Times did the slapping with science, reporting on two new nutrition studies. She concluded, "If you like breakfast, fine; but if not, don’t sweat it."

That's reasonable, sure, if apathetic. Nutrition science as a field has in recent years been bisected over the importance of breakfast. The research speaks with more nuance than the lay breakfast pusher. But the new studies land a weight of evidence thoroughly outside the realm of "most important meal."

In one study, 300 people ate or skipped breakfast and showed no subsequent difference in their weight gained or lost. Researcher Emily Dhurandhar said the findings suggest that breakfast "may be just another meal" and admitted to a history Breakfast-Police allegiance, conceding "I guess I won’t nag my husband to eat breakfast anymore."

Another small new study from the University of Bath found that resting metabolic rates, cholesterol levels, and blood-sugar profiles were the same after six weeks of eating or skipping breakfast. Breakfast-skippers ate less over the course of the day than did breakfast-eaters, though they also burned fewer calories.

“I almost never have breakfast,” James Betts, a senior lecturer at University of Bath, told Reynolds. “That was part of my motivation for conducting this research, as everybody was always telling me off and saying I should know better.”

One thing I've learned as a health writer is that a wealth of academic research is the product of personal vendettas, some healthier than others. The crux of the breakfast divide is a phenomenon known among nutrition scientists as "proposed effect of breakfast on obesity," or the PEBO. It's the idea people who don't eat breakfast actually end up eating more and/or worse things over the course of the day because their nightly fast was not properly broken.

Some studies have supported that idea, but a strong meta-analysis of all existing research last year by obesity researchers found that "the belief in the PEBO exceeds the strength of scientific evidence," citing poor research and bias in reporting.

Another study published last year researchers at Cornell had people go without breakfast for science, and those who skipped ended up eating less by the end of the day.

In a third study published last year, also in July—breakfast scientists might simply refer to as "the month"—a large study in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation found that eating breakfast was associated with significantly lower risk of heart disease. That remains the most persuasive pro-breakfast case to date.

"I refute the dogma that inevitably creeps into discussions of breakfast. Skipping breakfast can mean many different things," wrote David Katz, director of Yale University's Griffin Prevention Research Center, at the time. Katz introduced additional philosophical dilemmas: "Research about breakfast tends to divide the world into those who skip, and those who don't. But deferring and skipping are not the same. Skipping despite hunger, and deferring for want of it, are not the same. And clearly all breakfasts are not created equal."

For example, as Reynolds proposed, "Preparing a good breakfast can be as quick and easy as splashing some milk over cereal." You're definitely better off with no breakfast than with most cereals, which are primarily sugar, but another study from Harvard Medical School found that people who ate breakfasts of whole-grain cereals had lower rates of diabetes and heart disease compared to skippers.

If you ever visit the Internet's most-read site for health information, you'll see an articlepresumptuously titled "Why Breakfast Is the Most Important Meal of the Day," which mainly focuses on kids and the lore that they do better academically if they have eaten breakfast, but that's overblown and really not a clear conclusion. As Katz put it, "We have little information about adolescents, little information about the benefits of breakfast in well-nourished kids, and little information about how variation in the composition of breakfast figures into the mix."

But shades of grey do not satisfy my bitter-divide hypothesis. Let's still say there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who eat breakfast, and those who don't. If you're a breakfast deferrer who feels cowed by breakfast evangelists, a good way to stand up to them might be to echo Betts:

"More randomized experiments are needed before we can fully understand the impact of breakfast."

Or as a joke, "If you like breakfast so much, why don't you marry it?"

Or, with a very serious face, "Don't tell me how to live my life."

In what might be described as a cross between a TED talk and a civics roundtable, the Northwest Business Club is presenting a speaker event so big it will be held at the Mt. Baker Theatre:  "An Evening with Bill Whittle," August 29, 2014.  Here's the blurb:

      Whittle is a popular champion of what’s best about American liberty and its principles. With incisive wit and inescapable logic Bill examines the links between honest science and progress, and the importance of Common Sense Resistance to illiberal policies that cripple human advancement and creativity. Local notables from the Pacific Northwest will join Bill on-stage for a panel discussion of the major issues in our area.

Here's an example of Bill Whittle at the top of his form:

Yes, he's conservative; maybe even a little bit libertarian. Whittle appears regularly on the internet’s PJTV and BillWhittle.com in “Firewall,” “Afterburner,” and “Trifecta” episodes. His 11-part “Mr. Virtual President: Your Government” series, a collection of signature commentary and political parody, was released in March 2014. Whittle has a very large following from coast-to-coast and internationally with many thousands of subscribers following his work, which has received millions of hits on YouTube, PJTV and BillWhittle.com.

Local notables from the Pacific Northwest will join Bill on-stage for a panel discussion of the major issues in our area. Sort of like a Trifecta:

Visit the nwbclub.org site and BillWhittle.com to learn more. Tickets are on sale at Mt. Baker Theatre. Here’s a link to a full-color flyer that you can download, print and distribute in your neighborhood.

GET YOUR TICKETS ahead to save yourself time standing on line!

The executive branch, with an army of bureaucracies, professes to implement legislation passed by congress. The trouble is, these vast and callous government agencies have assumed the authority to make regulations having the force of law, without deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed: they're not elected! There's inadequate feedback. 

Yet, when designing the American form of government, our founders created a separation of powers, so that congress would have a check on the executive branch, and they gave the executive branch the veto power over congress. The way congress checks the executive branch is by refusing to fund it. There are several agencies that are in dire need of a reigning in of the purse strings. WE take you to Cle Elum, where citizens decided they'd had enough ... 

Continue reading ... 

Citizens should not have to take time off from their day jobs, don overalls and manually push back against our own government by hard labor. We should be able to prevail on our representatives in congress to defund our oppressors. Well, maybe not our representatives west of the Cascades, because they really like big, oppressive government, but you get the idea. 

Glen Morgan at the Freedom Foundation posted an update on the home detention policies of Washington State. This has local relevance because it was a Whatcom County resident who noticed that it was trivial for criminals to remove location tracking hardware in order to move about freely when in fact they were under home detention for failing to exercise their rights responsibly (i.e., they broke the law, and infringed on others' rights). And the authorities were either clueless or careless. 

King 5 reports,

Next week is candidate "filing week," that important window of time that kicks off election season. Left and right, once again a crop of wannabees will vie to win all sorts of offices - some powerful, most less-so.  But every contest will matter.

As we're subjected to months of low blows, breast beating and virtuous claims (again -from left and right) citizens must do their damndest to figure out who is most like the people, willing to represent and respect the wisdom of "the folks" ... and which characters are more or less hankering to rule.  Yes, rule.  WE don't care for elitism, particularly the kind of arrogant "we know better than you" elitism that relies on the command and control of a few to impose their brilliance on others. What's so pathetic is, elites that crave that much power are not quite smart enough to recognize that if it takes force to impose an idea, it may not be such a good idea.

Will another river of cash be pumped into Whatcom County to divide the community and poison our local election process?  That's a distinct possibility.  All successful cons repeat their tricks on the unattentative and trusting; a dime for every quarter that's the grifters code.

MAY 6, 2014 11:01 AM
Steyer Strikes Blow against Small-Town Unions 

The environmentalist tycoon pours money into a local election to kill a job-creating project. 

In 2009 — the immediately preceding time four  council seats contested last year in Whatcom County, Wash., were open — candidates spent less than $7,000 on their campaigns. But during the 2013 election cycle, spending skyrocketed, with outside groups forking over as much as $148,000 to campaign for a single council seat.

There’s one man primarily responsible for this precipitous spending hike: Tom Steyer, an environmental enthusiast, hedge-fund manager, California billionaire, and emerging Democratic kingmaker.

Steyer’s interest in these four obscure local races is simple. The Whatcom county council will ultimately decide the fate of a proposed coal-export facility on the West Coast. If it receives approval, it would be the largest such American facility on the West Coast, but Steyer and his green allies fervently oppose the use of coal, so they spent heavily to support council candidates likely to vote against the export facility. Their efforts were ultimately successful, with candidates perceived as green winning all four contested seats.

"I wouldn’t say [Steyer] was decisive, but he definitely moved the needle [in] the environmental candidates’ favor,” says Todd Donovan, a political-science professor at Western Washington University, which is located in Whatcom County. “He provided an unprecedented amount of money spent on behalf of the environmental candidates, and they all won — and they were fighting an uphill battle. . . . We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Steyer’s political action committee, NextGen Climate, gave $275,000 to the Washington Conservation Voters Action Fund, which in turn spent at least $210,000 on the Whatcom county-council elections. But it’s impossible to get an exact figure for how much Steyer money was spent in Whatcom County.

Randy Pepple, a Republican political strategist in Washington State, says Steyer’s lack of transparency was particularly alarming.

“Instead of Tom Steyer for NextGen PAC writing the checks, instead he wrote them to other organizations that were spending money, particularly the Conservation Voters,” he says. “He hid it. For all his challenges on Politico to be transparent, up here, he laundered money through political committees, so it was not entirely clear where he put all his money.”

Outside cash may have played an instrumental role in the Whatcom county-council elections, but that’s not the only development bothering some of its residents. In particular, union members in Whatcom County are concerned that, if the coal-export facility fails to garner council approval, there will be a huge economic cost.

The proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal would export up to 54 million metric tons each year, the majority of which would be coal extracted in Wyoming and Montana being shipped to buyers as far away as China. The export terminal would also pay more than $92 million in state and local taxes in the two-year construction period alone, and then contribute $11.2 million a year to the government’s coffers after the project’s completion.

Approval would result in nearly 4,500 construction jobs, as well as 1,250 permanent jobs in Whatcom County — no small matter in a region where unemployment in February 2014 was 7.4 percent. And many of the jobs the Gateway Pacific Terminal would provide are unionized, a fact that hasn’t escaped the notice of local labor leaders like Mike Elliott, a spokesman and lobbyist for the Washington State Legislative Board of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen.

“These are the types of jobs we want to create,” Elliott tells National Review Online. “We weren’t going to get on board with these projects unless they would use union construction people and union longshoremen to run the thing. But opponents brought in this billionaire environmentalist from California, and not just him — they’ve come up with a whole lot of money. They’ve got more resources than we will ever have, and it makes all the difference in the world. You shouldn’t be able to come in with a wheelbarrow full of money and influence the electoral process. I just think that’s wrong.”

In Whatcom County, Steyer’s big donations helped Democrat-affiliated groups outspend their Republican counterparts two-to-one. But he may well have created an interesting dilemma for Democrats during future elections. Steyer’s spending in Whatcom County pitted environmental groups against organized labor, creating a deep division among two of the Democrats’ key constituent groups.

Steyer’s spending may have a similarly divisive effect on the national stage. In February, he pledged to donate more than $100 million in support of environmentalist Democratic candidates. Just two months later, the Obama administration announced it would opportunely delay its decision on the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project as reviled by environmental groups as it is beloved of Big Labor.

Ken Oplinger, a self-identified “business Democrat” who served as head of the Whatcom County Chamber of Commerce for a decade, tells NRO that while intra-party divisions may not be enough to win labor over to Republicans, they may well split the vote between Democratic candidates.

“In Whatcom County, because the coal terminal was such an all-encompassing issue, it really did play a role because it was the key issue for labor,” he says. “In places where economic development and jobs [are pitted against environmental concerns], you’ll see that happen, and it’s going to be on a case-by-case level. The blue-green connection is still there, and it’s still strong. But they’re going to disagree on some key issues, and when [they do], it may play a role in those races as it did in Whatcom County.”

— Jillian Kay Melchior writes for National Review as a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum


- - - -
While Steyer's bio reads like Mr. Green, you can find out more about the guys actual corporate interests and investment strategy from this April 24, 2014 article at the Wall Street Journal:

Tom Steyer's Glass House

The anti-Keystone billionaire throws stones at the Kochs, but what about his motives?

The psychiatric world defines "projection" as the act of denying unpleasant qualities in yourself, while attributing them to others. Consider liberal billionaire Tom Steyer's riff this week about the libertarian billionaire Koch brothers.

Mr. Steyer took exception in a C-SPAN interview to comparisons between his big-dollar funding of Democrats with the Koch brothers' big-dollar funding of Republicans. The Kochs' priorities "line up perfectly with their pocketbooks—and that's not true for us," said Mr. Steyer, who is fighting against the Keystone XL pipeline. Moreover, he insisted, his politicking is "completely open," whereas the Kochs have "not been huge embracers of transparency."

Why is Mr. Steyer so touchy about motives and transparency? The media tend to give liberal spending a pass, since they assume its motives and aims are pure. Mr. Steyer's problem—and he knows it—is that his own purity remains hugely suspect, even among his allies.

It's old news that the billionaire reaped his fortune at hedge fund Farallon Capital, via investments in "dirty" oil and coal projects. Mr. Steyer, who retired from the firm in late 2012, has since publicly repented for his prior investment ways. But what many greens remember is that he didn't do so until he was caught.

Mr. Steyer had spent months fighting Keystone, attending anti-coal rallies and urging colleges to divest from "fossil fuels," before the press noted that his money was still parked at Farallon, still profiting from Kinder Morgan pipelines and coal projects. It was only then, last July, that Mr. Steyer issued a press release saying he'd directed his money be moved to a fund that didn't invest in "tar sands" or "coal" and pledged this process would be complete by the end of 2013.

And don't think that environmentalists failed to notice Mr. Steyer's specific divestment instructions. He did not say in that July press release that he was pulling his money from "fossil fuels"—only tar sands and coal. That may be because Mr. Steyer as recently as 2012 wrote an op-ed in this newspaper supporting more natural-gas extraction, and last year (as the Keystone debate raged) he helped fund a University of Texas study that supported fracking. Farallon over the years has held positions in natural-gas companies.

more

A submittal, going round the 'net:

A 94-year-old Prophecy Is Fulfilled

H.L. Mencken (born 1880 - died 1956) was a journalist, satirist, critic, and a registered Democrat.

He wrote the editorial below while working for the Baltimore Evening Sun, which appeared in the July 26, 1920 edition.

      "As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron."

-- H.L.  Mencken, the Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920

So it was written, and so it has come to pass ...

SNOPES opined further on this:

Regardless of the quotation's applicability to modern U.S. presidents, the subject at hand here is the question of whether it really issued from the pen of H.L. Mencken or whether (as is often the case) it is a modern sentiment by some contemporary, anonymous wit which has been falsely attributed to a famous pithy-but-dead commentator in order to lend it credence. 

In this case the attribution to Henry Louis Mencken, a prominent newspaperman and political commentator during the first half of the 20th century, is accurate. Writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920, in an article entitled "Bayard vs. Lionheart" (and reprinted in the book On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe), Mencken cynically opined on the difficulties of good men reaching national office when the scale of their campaigns precluded them from directly reaching out to large segments of the voting public:

"The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. 

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/whitehousemoron.asp#vhWd1BbBDXCuFe2L.99

Editorial note:   Of course the D's suggest that Bush II fulfilled the prophecy, and R's suggest it was Obama.  WE suggest they both fit the bill; and, that the people deserve better principles and performance all round.   Also - it appears that Mencken was far from a saint.

This new Parody found at the Weekly Standard is not particularly funny, given the politics of the power-happy progressives that have seized the reins here in Whatcom County, aided and abetted by a fawning local press.  Substitute Carl Weimer or Jack Louws for "the President," WWU for Brandeis, and The Herald for the press references, and ... well there you go.  [On the state level, substitute  Gov Inslee, the Puget Sound Partnership and the Growth Management Hearings Board.]  A very few persons, federal state and local, have presumed inordinate powers to "rule" nowadays.  Kiss your rights goodbye.