.

NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Droids are coming for our jobs


The Droids are coming for our jobs
George Lucas forgot to mention that his droids were taking jobs previously held by tax paying human beings.  How do you feed your family or purchase cars or TVs when human workers are no longer needed. 


Robots, Computers and Outsourcing = A Jobless Future
  • Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations are rapidly disappearing never to return.
  • A Giant Clusterfuck  -  Poverty is becoming a growth industry.  We are looking at a future with fewer and fewer human workers. Plus there will be far fewer taxpayers to support schools, roads, police, parks and social security.
  • What happens to the economy when there are no human workers getting paychecks to buy products.


U.S. economic momentum screeched to a halt in the final months of 2012.

The nation's gross domestic product shrank for the first time in 3 1/2 years during the fourth quarter, declining at an annual rate of 0.1% between October and December, the Commerce Department said.

The Associated Press reports that five years after the start of the Great Recession, the toll is terrifyingly clear: Millions of middle-class jobs have been lost in developed countries the world over.

And the situation is even worse than it appears.

Most of the jobs will never return, and millions more are likely to vanish as well, say experts who study the labor market. What’s more, these jobs aren’t just being lost to China and other developing countries, and they aren’t just factory work. Increasingly, jobs are disappearing in the service sector, home to two-thirds of all workers.

They’re being obliterated by technology.




More American Workers Outsourcing Their Own Jobs Overseas
Our true economic picture as told by Onion TV News.



Are droids taking our jobs? 
Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating -- jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work? Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain't seen nothing yet.



Check out your groceries or drugstore purchases using a kiosk? A worker behind a cash register used to do that.

Buy clothes without visiting a store? You’ve taken work from a salesman.

Book your vacation using an online program? You’ve helped lay off a travel agent — perhaps one at American Express Co., which announced this month that it plans to cut 5,400 jobs, mainly in its travel business, as more of its customers shift to online portals to plan trips.

Software is picking out worrisome blots in medical scans, running trains without conductors, analyzing Twitter traffic to tell where to sell certain snacks, sifting through documents for evidence in court cases, recording power usage beamed from digital utility meters at millions of homes, and sorting returned library books.

Goodbye Tax Money
Robots and computers are eliminating tens of
millions of jobs and the taxes those human workers paid
to support government services from schools to medical
care and social security.

Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other devices becomes more capable of doing tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future has arrived.

‘’I have never seen a period where computers demonstrated as many skills and abilities as they have over the past seven years,” says Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of “Race Against the Machine.”


“There’s no sector of the economy that’s going to get a pass,” says Martin Ford, who runs a software company and wrote “The Lights in the Tunnel,” a book predicting widespread job losses. “It’s everywhere.”

The numbers startle even labor economists. In the United States, half of the 7.5 million jobs lost during the Great Recession paid middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000. But only 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained since the recession ended in June 2009 are midpay. Nearly 70 percent are low-paying jobs; 29 percent pay well.

In the 17 European countries that use the euro as their currency, the numbers are even worse. Almost 4.3 million low-pay jobs have been gained since mid-2009, but the loss of midpay jobs has never stopped. A total of 7.6 million disappeared from January 2008 through last June.

Some occupations are beneficiaries of the march of technology, such as software engineers and app designers. But, overall, technology is eliminating far more jobs than it is creating.


Killer Robots to Replace Soldiers
Defense departments around the world are funding the creation of robot warriors.
See the stories below:

Terminator - The Navy's 1st Robot Killing Machine
.
Killer Robots are Coming 
.
Terminator Robots - War without Warriors


In the U.S., the economic recovery that started in June 2009 has been called the third straight “jobless recovery.”

But that’s a misnomer. After the recessions that ended in 1991 and 2001, jobs lost were slow to return, but they all returned within three years.

But 42 months after the Great Recession ended, the U.S. has gained only 3.5 million, or 47 percent, of the 7.5 million jobs that were lost. The 17 countries that use the euro had 3.5 million fewer jobs last June than in December 2007.

This has truly been a jobless recovery, and the lack of midpay jobs is almost entirely to blame.

Fifty percent of the U.S. jobs lost were in midpay industries, but Moody’s Analytics, a research firm, says just 2 percent of the 3.5 million jobs gained are in that category. After the four previous recessions, at least 30 percent of jobs created — and as many as 46 percent — were in midpay industries.

Some of the most startling studies have focused on midskill, midpay jobs — think travel agents, salespeople in stores, office assistants and back-office workers like benefits managers and payroll clerks. An August 2012 paper by economists Henry Siu of the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich of Duke University found these kinds of jobs comprise fewer than half of all jobs, yet accounted for nine of 10 of all losses in the Great Recession. And they have kept disappearing in the economic recovery.


What hope is there for the future?

Historically, new companies and new industries have been the incubator of new jobs. But even these companies are hiring fewer people. The average new business employed 4.7 workers when it opened its doors in 2011, down from 7.6 in the 1990s, according to a Labor Department study released last March.

Technological innovations have been throwing people out of jobs for centuries. But they eventually create more work, and greater wealth, than they destroy. Many economists are encouraged by history and think the gains eventually will outweigh the losses. But even they have doubts.

“What’s different this time is that digital technologies show up in every corner of the economy,” says MIT’s McAfee, a self-described “digital optimist.” “Your tablet [computer] is just two or three years old, and it’s already taken over our lives.”

Occupations that provided middle-class lifestyles for generations can disappear in a few years. Utility meter readers are just one example.

As power companies began installing so-called smart readers outside homes, the number of meter readers in the U.S. plunged from 56,000 in 2001 to 36,000 in 2010, according to the Labor Department.

In 10 years?

That number is expected to be zero.


(The Florida Times-Union)





 

Is the Justice League movie dead?


 

Has Warners Cancelled The 'Justice League'?
  • If the 2013 Superman film Man Of Steel tanks the studio may pull the plug on the Justice League.  Never mind Marvel is making billions on superhero films.
  • Except for Batman, the classic DC characters are not being used properly.


Everyone getting all excited about the forthcoming Justice League film just hold onto your hats – the movie might not even be getting made.

A recent report by Variety assesses the future of Warners studios and pinpoints that the Henry Cavill-starring Superman film Man Of Steel is the key target for them this year with regards commercial success.

This much we already knew; what we didn’t know is the suggestion that the success of that film could impact plans further down the line – namely the production of the Justice League film. If the film tanks it’s unlikely that that film would then happen – disappointing news for all those who’ve reported on rumored directors, actors, plots and characters so vehemently.

As Variety points out, Warners hasn’t been able to fully exploit its DC Comic titles that well – Christopher Nolan’s Batman films aside – with Green Lantern most notably struggling at the box office.

The studio has of course been prospering elsewhere, with the likes of the Harry Potter films, The Hobbit, and The Hangover franchise all doing well in recent years, as well as Batman. Yet in turbulent economic times, even the biggest movie companies know that the collapse of their fan base could always be just one bad film around the corner, and so the suggestion that The Justice League is being treated cautiously is a sensible, if not slightly disappointing, decision.

(www.contactmusic.com)


Justice League
(DC Universe) 2014 Trailer [HD]
Its DC Universe Online.  Not an actual movie, but wouldn't it be awesome if it was!  A beautifully done production.  Why this is not a full length movie is beyond me.

Yes!  This is the way Wonder Woman should have always been done.



 
Man of Steel - Official Trailer





The Avengers
Over $1.5 Billion at the box office.  Marvel has been raking in billions, but the studio that owns the rights to the Justice League keeps finding excuses not to make a movie.
 

The Dark Knight 
The three Christian Bale Batman films brought in nearly $2.4 Billion at the box office, but the studio that owns the rights to the Justice League keeps finding excuses not to make a movie.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

New Yorkers flee taxes for bikini friendly Florida


Welcome to Florida.
Let's see - Freeze your ass off and pay insane taxes in Big Government loving Socialist New York or move to the tax free, bikini friendly Sunshine State of Florida.  A tough choice.


‘Wall Street’ flees New York for tax-free Florida
  • With phones and computers you can work anywhere.  So why freeze your ass off and pay insane Marxist taxes in New York?
  • A dirty little secret.  Somehow states like Florida, Washington, Texas and New Hampshire get along just fine without a Marxist income tax.


The New York Post reports that the city’s hedge-fund executives are flying south — and it’s not for vacation.

An increasing number of financial firms, especially private equity and hedge funds, are fed up with New York’s sky-high city and state tax rates and are relocating to the business-friendly climate in Florida’s Palm Beach County.

And they’re being welcomed with open arms — officials in Palm Beach recently opened an entire office dedicated to luring finance hot shots down south.

“Florida is a state of choice,” said Thalius Hecksher, global development chief for Apex Fund Services, who moved many of his operations to Palm Beach. “It’s organically grown. There’s no need to drag people down here. It’s a zero-income-tax jurisdiction.”

There are other perks, too — like the fact that it was 77 degrees and sunny there yesterday.
“And the lifestyle!” Hecksher added.

Federal tax rates are the same in Florida and New York.

But there’s no state income tax in the Sunshine State. Compare that to New York, where the state and local governments took $14.71 of every $100 earned in 2010, according to state records reports the New York Post.
The only state with a higher rate is Alaska.

And Florida residents lost 3.31 percent of their income in total taxes, versus New Yorkers, who pay just over 5 percent, according to the National Tax Foundation’s latest report, which used 2009 Census figures.

That’s a substantial difference in bottom line for those who stand to make millions of dollars a year in income.

Also, commercial property values are much cheaper in Florida, and New York City will likely become even less friendly to businesses when Mayor Bloomberg leaves office next year, hedge-fund executives said.


New Yorkers Flee High Taxes in Droves
New York State accounted for the biggest migration exodus of any state in the nation between 2000 and 2010, with 3.4 million residents leaving over that period, according to the Tax Foundation.

Over that decade the state gained 2.1 million, so net migration amounted to 1.3 million, representing a loss of $45.6 billion in income.




“You weigh all of the benefits for being here to those in New York, and they outweigh them every time,” said Evan Rapoport, CEO of HedgeCo.net, which is expanding its presence in Palm Beach County.

“This fiscal-cliff issue, with tax rates continuing to go up. We’re seeing where we’re going with taxes,” he said.

“In our industry, the people we’re talking about are $1 million-a-year earners. So when you’re talking about tax rates, it’s more meaningful.”

“Then,” he said, echoing Hecksher, “there’s the lifestyle issue.”

The demand is so high that officials in Palm Beach County have set up an entire office to answer questions from city hedge-funders looking to relocate.
Tax Free Florida
Relocated New York finance exec Thalius Hecksher
enjoys warm Fort Lauderdale yesterday — and he
loves Florida’s lack of income tax, too.

“We’re not doing a multimillion-dollar marketing campaign. We don’t need to,” said Kelly Smallridge, who heads the Palm Beach County Business Development Board, which set up the special unit to handle inquiries and marketing.
“They’re coming to us.”

Without warning, Smallridge said, her organization only recently started getting inundated with hedge-funders.

“The door was open because of the high-tax environment” in the New York area, Smallridge said.

“Smaller companies were moving completely out. Larger ones, looking for expansion opportunities, wanted to expand here,” she said while touting her group’s “free and confidential” consulting services.

The firms can easily pick up and move out of the New York region because technology allows them to do their work anywhere, she said.

That’s exactly what Hecksher — whose company services hedge funds around the world — did when he was looking to expand the firm’s US presence.

New Jersey-based Apex, he said, could easily have chosen Manhattan or Greenwich, Conn. — but instead, the company followed the industry to the tax-friendly Sunshine State.


Taxpayers fleeing the frozen Marxist Hell-hole of New York
for the sunny tax free state of Florida.


Panama City, Florida Beach Bikini Parade









Students on Spring break get airborne before a bikini parade in Florida.










The GOP needs to follow Marco Rubio on immigration


GOP Mayor Pedro Rios
In my area of California Pedro Rios was the Republican candidate for the state legislature in 2012.  As a child Rios came to America as an illegal alien from Mexico.  He later became a citizen, businessman, joined the military, became Mayor and is a Conservative Republican.


“If Rubio helps lead us into sanity on the issue it would be great for him and very good for the GOP. We need a savior on immigration.”
- - - Ed Rogers, Republican lobbyist and longtime operative


By Gary;

The great debate on immigration begins.  Republicans must not fall into the immigration trap Democrats have set for them.  The Left wants us to oppose any reforms.  That way Conservatism is painted as racist.

As Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants said, the GOP needs to stop being the stupid party.  We need to let Senator Marco Rubio lead Conservatives to the promised land on immigration reforms combined with enforcement.
GOP Governor Nikki Haley
Daughter of Sikh immigrants from India.

Immigrants have been coming to America for centuries.  Sorry, but they are not going to magically vanish tomorrow night.  They are in our schools, work in our cities, open businesses and they do pay many taxes into the system. 

And don't you dare bring up welfare.  American citizens from Main Street to Wall Street are all sucking on the public teat of the government.  There is no point to singling out immigrants while American citizens are lining their pockets with welfare cash.

The desire to open a business and own private property that is safe from government theft is universal among the peoples of the world.  Mexico has just elected two pro-business Conservatives as President.  The new President of South Korea is a Conservative.  Chile has a pro-business Conservative President.  Conservatives have come to power in Japan and in Spain.

A business friendly GOP needs to make real alliances with the the pro-business elements in immigrant communities of Hispanics and Asians.  Conservatives can either grow up and make those alliances or hand power over to the Marxists.


Hispanic Republican Governor Brian Sandoval of Nevada




Former California GOP Assemblyman Van Tran
The anti-Communist Vietnamese community in California has given the Republicans a much larger share of the vote than most other immigrant groups. To win Republicans need to recruit candidates who can speak the language of immigrant groups and relate to their issues.


Some 14% of Californians are of Asian heritage.

Saudi Arabia funds Islamic Terrorism in Mali



A Media Cover-Up
Saudi Arabia finances Islamic Terrorism
  • PBS reports and the rest of the media ignores. . . . but what else is new.


By Gary;

I need to start watching PBS news more often.

By pure accident I just happened to stop on PBS and catch the video below on the liberation of Mali from Islamic terrorists.  The Elite Media news is totally retarded with their 43 second "headline" stories with no depth or real content. 

This PBS report shows the Mali Army with captured documents showing wire transfers from Saudi Arabia to the Islamic terrorists in Mali.

Has the rest of the Elite Media reported this?  No.  And that is standard operating procedure in modern news reporting.  The so-called Elite "reporters" simply copy and paste the press releases of the political hack class.  No thinking is involved.  No hard questions ever asked.

It should also be noted, the Elite Media (including Fox) has done endless propaganda style "reporting" on the civil war in Syria.  The standard story line is about the "evil" Syrian government and those freedom loving rebels. 

The FACT that the Syrian government is secular and protects Christians is never featured in news stories.  The FACT that the Islamist government of Saudi Arabia is arming and funding fellow Islamists to overthrow the secular, pro-Russian Syrian government is conveniently not covered.

Thank God for news on the Internet.  You don't hear the truth on TV.


PBS News - Malians 'Thrilled' to Have Jihadists Driven Out
In Mali, government forces made advances against Islamic extremists who have dominated certain regions for nine months. French forces were airdropped north of Timbukto and helped drive the rebels to the north.





Also see our article THE FEDERALIST - "The West both supports and opposes Islamists."


Islamist Terrorists in Mali




Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Military fires machine guns in downtown Miami


Military fires machine guns in Miami
A Blackhawk helicopter conducts a training exercise over downtown Miami on Thursday, Jan. 24, 2013. (Source: CBS4)


Military "drills" in urban centers
  • “Diving Blackhawks, blank rounds of machine gun fire, strafing runs, troops rappelling from choppers, and road blockades.”
  • Goodbye Constitution.  It was good to know you.


The Police State  -  Military “exercises” in populated urban environments are now so routine, so commonplace, they are no longer reported by the national media and are left as “human interest” stories for local news stations.

For instance, in Miami last Thursday, units of the military industrial complex staged yet another training exercise reports Infowars News.

“Diving Blackhawks, blank rounds of machine gun fire, strafing runs, troops rappelling from choppers, and road blockades,” writes Karen De Coster. “All over the skies of Miami at night, just a few days ago. According to this local TV clown in the video, this event was for the purposes of ‘meeting requirements,’ preparing for overseas military drills, and making sure the equipment is in check.”


Machine gun fire
Military helicopters firing machine guns in a "drill" while flying over downtown Miami, Florida in January 2013.




The Running Man
Opening Scene of the 1987 futuristic Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller where military helicopters use machine guns for food riot crowd control.

Hollywood and reality are now coming together in one giant clusterfuck.




Martial Law
Military Black Helicopter Drills descend over Miami, Florida in May 2012.




In the above video, we hear the staccato of door guns pounding away as “military-style choppers” swooped a couple hundred feet above traffic on I-395 in downtown Miami.
From the local CBS disinfo ministry:
The training is designed to ensure that military personnel are able to operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment. It also serves as a mandatory training certification requirement.
An “exercise” to acclimate Floridians to the presence of military troops (invariably mingled with cops also sporting combat attire and weapons) went down in April, 2011 and “frightened many residents in the area.”

(Infowars)




"Remain calm.  We are here to protect you."





Seven Days in May
An political thriller movie released in February 1964, with a screenplay by Rod Serling, starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas. about a military takeover of the United States.

Communist Chinese move into Afghanistan



China moves into Afghanistan
Chinese Communist state owned enterprises have already bagged three multi-billion-dollar investment projects
  • Huge Chinese oil drilling and iron mining projects.
  • The U.S. is footing the bill for "security" while the Chinese rake in the cash.


China is drilling for oil and mining in Afghanistan.  The security is provided by the American taxpayers.   There is only one possible conclusion:  our government is run by fucking morons.

China, long a bystander to the conflict in Afghanistan, is stepping up its involvement as U.S.-led forces prepare to withdraw, attracted by the country’s vast mineral resources but concerned that any post-2014 chaos could embolden Islamist insurgents in its own territory.

Cheered on by the U.S. and other Western governments, which see Asia’s giant as a potentially stabilizing force, China could prove the ultimate winner in Afghanistan — having shed no blood and not much aid.

A Government of Idiots
Your United States Foreign Policy Team.

The U.S. and our NATO allies pay the price in Afghanistan of broken bodies, lost lives and treasure, while our "brilliant" foreign policy team (from the very best schools) allows contracts for oil drilling and mining to go to state owned businesses of Communist China.


Many countries have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. But it’s only been since 2007 that China has attracted attention with its investments. In November 2007, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) won the tender to invest over $2.9 billion to develop the Aynak copper mine, which is the second-largest copper deposit in the world reports Foreign Police in Focus.

This was not only the second-largest investment in Afghanistan in recent years – equivalent to one-third of all foreign aid spent in the country between 2002 and 2007 – but it also raised China to the top tier of investors. In a more recent deal in October 2011, the PetroChina Company Ltd (CPNC) plans to invest about $300 million in three oil fields in northern Afghanistan.

Besides its unique strategic position, Afghanistan's less known feature, its abundant mineral resources, is very attractive to resource-hungry China. China has become the second-largest net oil importer in the world since 2009. 

According to an International Energy Agency scenario, Chinese oil imports are estimated to grow from 4.3 million barrels a day in 2009 to 12.8 million barrels a day in 2035, rising from 53 percent to 84 percent of its total demand. It is also dependent on foreign imports of copper and iron for 80 percent and 53.6 percent of its needs respectively, and its consumption will grow by 5-10 percent per year in the future.

An Afghan man rides his bike past a China Merchandise Trade
Center in Kabul, Afghanistan.
 (Musadeq Sadeq / Associated Press)

In 1960s and 1970s, Soviet geological exploration revealed numerous mineral reserves in Afghanistan. After 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey updated these findings and estimated that the untapped mineral deposits are worth $1 trillion.

Three kinds of resources are most valuable to China. Deposits in the Aynak region contain about 240 million metric tons of copper, one of the largest copper reserves in the world.

The largest iron deposit in the country, meanwhile, is the Hajigak deposit. The region contains 1.8 billion tons of iron ore, an enormous amount of which is world-class quality. Finally, most crude oil occurs in the Afghan-Tajik Basin, and most of the natural gas is located in the Amu Darya Basin. The estimated mean volumes of petroleum were 1,596 million barrels of crude oil, 444 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and 562 million barrels of natural gas liquid. On top of these traditional resources, U.S. surveyors recently discovered a rare earth element reserve with at least 1 million metric tons of lanthanum, cerium, and neodymium in the Khanneshin area of Helmand province.

Another important energy contract, CPNC's $300-million oil exploitation project, concerns northern Afghanistan. The three oil fields in Zamarudsay, Bazarkhami, and Kashkari, which contain a total of 88 million barrels, are adjacent to Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Little is known about the terms of the contract, but the investment will include a production facility and a transport network (pipeline). Considering the low population in the region, there will be less local development of infrastructure investment than in Aynak.


Chinese Communists make money and create jobs with Afghan Oil
while the U.S. goes bankrupt and Americans are unemployed.

Afghanistan & China Sign $7 Billion Oil Contract



Chinese Petroleum Company Settles Afghanistan Oil Deal



























China has invited Central Asian states to invest in road, rail and energy projects, using a $10 billion loan package that will extend Beijing's reach in the resource-rich former Soviet region.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the country's state-run banks were prepared to fund projects including a rail link from Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan. China, along with Russia, also planned to launch a new satellite in the region, he said.

Wen was speaking on Wednesday at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional security and economic bloc linking China, Russia and four Central Asian states. China pledged the $10 billion loan package at an SCO meeting in June.

"We intend to invest this money in infrastructure, energy and production projects, in order to facilitate development of the real economy," Wen said in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.   (Reuters News)

Americans pay the ultimate price in blood and treasure and idiots running our government can't even get American companies contracts to drill oil in Afghanistan.  Instead the Communist Chinese get those contracts.

Big Government: "No discounts to your customers"



Government Price Controls
Fresh Market "violated" state regulations by daring to sell milk below cost
  • Republican run Louisiana requires retailers to markup milk at least 6 percent above invoice and shipping costs. 


A Louisiana supermarket was forced to yank its low-cost milk special after state auditors objected to the price.

Fresh Markets in Perkins Rowe was selling milk for $2.99 a gallon as part of a weekly promotion deal, but Louisiana requires that retailer markups be at least 6 percent above invoice and shipping costs, Fox News reports.


State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said Fresh Market violated state regulations by selling milk below cost as part of a promotion.

The supermarket routinely sells a gallon of skim, 1 percent, 2 percent or whole milk for $2.99 on Tuesdays, limiting the quantity to four per customer, according to The Advocate.

“They can sell it 6 percent over cost all day long. It’s when they sell it below cost that it becomes a problem,” Strain told the paper.

Strain’s office reportedly sent an auditor to the store to investigate the Fresh Market promotional deal after getting a complaint.

During the second week of January, the price for a gallon of whole milk in Baton Rouge ranged from $4 to $6.89.


Milton Friedman - Agriculture Subsidies





Big Government says:  
"Thou shalt not discount milk to the common people."


Monday, January 28, 2013

San Francisco sets up 1984 spy system



San Francisco streetlights will spy on you
  • Liberal, Conservative, Democrat, Republican.  So-called political labels have no meaning.  Both political parties eagerly fund a powerful Big Brother system to spy on your every move and record your conversations.
  • The DHS is funding street light spy systems in cities all over the U.S.


Liberal Democrat San Francisco, California is the second-most densely populated urban area in the US, but those nearly one million residents of the City by the Bay are about to lose what little amount of privacy they have.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has started work on a program that will update a number of the city’s 18,000 streetlights during the next few years. Those new installations might do a whole lot more than just illuminate sidewalks and keep streets lit for cars, though. Through part of a pilot program, city officials can send data wirelessly between more than a dozen of those streetlights.

What kind of data can a lamppost collect, though? In San Francisco, the answer is a lot.

According to a report in the SF Bay Guardian, Paradox Engineering of Switzerland has already started testing streetlamps in the city that have the ability to wirelessly transmit data from traffic signals and surveillance cameras from one device to another. Soon, though, there will be more than just 14 cameras with that kind of capability. Additionally, the city is currently searching five vendors to test even more advanced lampposts across the city reports RT News USA.



During last year’s Living Labs Global Award in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the LLGA gave Paradox the go-ahead to start testing lights in San Francisco. In a just-issued Request for Proposals, the city calls on others to pitch similar products.

In the request, the City writes that as they begin replacing the 18,000 streetlights, the SFPUC “also plans to install an integrated wireless communication monitoring and control system” in order to manage the devices.”

“Ideally, the wireless system will accommodate other wireless devices, unrelated to street lighting, in a common wireless system mesh network,” the request reads.

When the City goes more into detail, the kind of devices that will need to connect to the lamps are brought to light. “Future needs for the secure wireless transmission of data throughout the City,” reads the report, may include gunshot monitoring, electric meter reading, street surveillance, public information broadcasts and other types of monitoring.

"San Francisco thought they were upgrading their 18,000 lamps with LEDs and a wireless control system, when they realized that they were in fact laying the groundwork for the future intelligent public space," LLGA cofounder Sascha Haselmeyer tells Open Source Cities.


CIA to spy on your through your TV and appliances
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches.




San Francisco isn’t the first city to bring this new form of surveillance to light — literally — but it might be the biggest. In 2011, Farmington Hills, Michigan became the first city in the US to rely on something called the Intellistreets project to watch over pedestrians. For $3,000 a piece, those high-tech luminaries don’t just provide light, but also record audio and video, all data that can be sent from device to device.

“This is not a system with spook technology,” Intellistreets founder Ron Harwood told WXYZ News when his small Michigan town first started trying out the devices. With 18,000 traffic lights in a city of 800,000 possibly embracing that same technology, though, it says a lot about the growing trend of secretive surveillance in the US.

“We've become somewhat accustomed to being visually monitored by the surveillance cameras that dot our urban landscapes, but audio monitoring and widespread, covert monitoring are not so common,” the PrivacySOS.org blog reports.

Every step you take we will be watching you.

San Francisco first began installing public surveillance cameras in 2005, and four years later a report from the University of California Berkeley found that the devices failed to detersviolent crimes, including homicide, as well as rapes and drug dealing.

“Precious public safety dollars need to be spent on solutions that actually work to reduce violent crime, like community policing, intervention programs and improved lighting, not on more ineffective and intrusive cameras,” Nicole Ozer of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Northern California office said in 2009. Four years later, however, it seems as if the city is deadest on installing even more devices.

“In a few years, there may be no place to hide from San Francisco police surveillance – unless you drive to get around,” PrivacySOS adds. “The increasingly aggressive San Francisco surveillance regime appears to disproportionately affect low income people. In the privacy of your own car, you are probably free from city monitoring. But if you walk to work or take the bus, you better mind what you say.”



_______________________________________________________________________

1984 is Here

"Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." - - - Robert A. Heinlein


The ruling Elites and political parties around the world are frightened to death of freedom.


The growth of the Internet and modern technology could free the people of the world from the lies of the political Elites. But those very same technologies can also be the chains of our slavery in a centralized, all-powerful Big Brother State.

Everyday we see the Elites pulling the Big Brother noose just a little bit tighter around our necks.

Below are a few of our most recent stories on the march to a 1984 State:


THE FEDERALIST - "DHS to install microphones on city streets"

THE FEDERALIST - "Your Doctor to act as a spy for Big Government"

THE FEDERALIST - "Feds illegally "archive" every Tweet ever sent"
.
THE FEDERALIST - "Verizon DVR will spy on you inside your home"

THE FEDERALIST - "Rand Paul - Is 1984 Now?"

THE FEDERALIST - "Feds gear up illegal facial recognition tacking system"

THE FEDERALIST - "Oliver Stone: "Obama a wolf in sheep's clothing"

THE FEDERALIST - "Your TV is Watching You"

THE FEDERALIST - "The "Gorgon Stare" Spy Drone is Watching You"

THE FEDERALIST - "Feds mandate a Black Box spy device on every car"

THE FEDERALIST - "Everyone in US is under Government Surveillance"

THE FEDERALIST - "Big Brother Scans Parents and Children"

THE FEDERALIST - "Student Expelled for Refusing Location Tracking RFID Chip"

THE FEDERALIST - Feds block searches for "WikiLeaks"

THE FEDERALIST - "Scanning school children like cattle"

THE FEDERALIST - "Feds organize children to report "energy crimes"

THE FEDERALIST - "Senate attacks the very 1984 spying they voted for."

THE FEDERALIST - "Government microchips school children - 1984 is Here."

THE FEDERALIST - "Phone spy app reports you to the Big Brother Police."

THE FEDERALIST - "Censorship - This story never happened."

THE FEDERALIST - "FBI to log your photo in a data base."

THE FEDERALIST - "Obama's Death Warrants and the NDAA."

THE FEDERALIST - "Thought Police put US Marine in a Mental Hospital."

THE FEDERALIST - "POLICE STATE - NYPD spies on Americans."

THE FEDERALIST - "Big Brother Spy Cameras are Everywhere."

THE FEDERALIST - "Bill of Rights is trashed by the Federal Government."

THE FEDERALIST - "Conservatives urge children to spy on parents."

THE FEDERALIST - "Big Brother comes to New Mexico."


"People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1