Mayor Reed – Do you understand unreasonable prior restraint?

The U.S. Constitutuion

No, this won’t be a scholarly dissection of Constitutional Law. The question, Mayor Reed, I am leaving in your capable hands, as my professor of Constitutional Law did with me a few (ahem) years ago.

Professor Rogers, who was engaging with me in what seemed like a very long set of questions and answers, said something that made me feel like crap. Not because he was inappropriate; he was decidedly not. But because he was right.

I don’t recall the questions. I only recall that I got to a place in the inquiry where, rather than considering and giving an answer, any answer, that reflected my analysis and risk being wrong, I took the short route to hot-seat freedom. My response to his thoughtful question was an unthoughtful, “I don’t know.” And my momentary bliss at getting to the end of my personal Socratic hell was blasted to dust when Professor Rogers responded, “I think you do.”

So, to you, Mayor Kasim Reed, I ask the question, have you read the brief in Turturice et al. v. City of Cleveland. It’s not long, but it’s lovely; don’t leave all the fun for your lawyers.

Once you have read it, please distinguish for yourself:

• that a regulation of a right that is otherwise protected by the U.S. Constitution must, in each instance of enforcement, be evaluated to determine whether it represents an overbroad and unreasonable prior restraint

It is not enough that whoever wrote the regulations that you think you were enforcing may have considered certain public interests at the time that it was written. Let me say that again. Especially because it is a right protected by the United States Constitution, it is not enough that a city consider this question once, at the time of adoption. It must be considered each and every time that the City exercises its inherent enforcement discretion by electing to limit, evict and/or arrest its citizens.

So it now falls to you. What do you think about the decision to evict Occupy Atlanta from Troy Davis Park on October 25, 2011? What public interest was served by evicting and arresting those who were occupying the park? Sanitation? Weren’t the citizens actually cleaning the park daily? Crime? Security? Weren’t the occupying citizens actually ensuring the safety of the occupiers and other citizens? Weren’t the public coffers potentially relieved of regular costs, rather than increasing the need for monies?

• I believe that the local press has attributed a statement to you that the occupiers were costing the city. It just makes me wonder, in this sidebar, who authorized the “necessary” pressure washing of the park sidewalks on what I recall was Saturday, October 15? You might consider training your staff on unnecessary, even extravagant, use of public monies if it was not your personal decision. And by the way, what public interest is there in flying police helicopters over lawful, pre-curfew assemblage of citizens, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the ground, discussing aspects of their preparation to petition the government?

You have the opportunity to reconcile the U.S. Constitution with your local ordinances, instead of allowing the ordinances to appear to be equal and even superior to the U.S. Constitution. You must answer the question, “Did I do that? Did I reconcile a local ordinance on public spaces with the right of the people peaceably to assemble espoused in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution?”

Please do yourself a favor and don’t stop at, “I don’t know” lest Professor Rogers be in the room.

The 99 Percent Declaration

Yesterday I started a new blog where I could focus on a holistic approach to nutrition and health, and what did I write about?  The Declaration of the 99 Percent!  What was I thinking?  That topic really should have been posted on this blog.  Or maybe I should stick with one blog.

Argh.

Well, the jury is waaay out on whether I’ll continue a second blog, so for now, I’m cross-posting to the 99Percent Declaration to rein it back in here, where it belongs.

The U.S. Constitution

If you haven’t read it, you should.  Prepare yourself for participation grounded in our most awesome Constitution and its First Amendment.  I’m sure this goes without saying, but just in case you haven’t yet had your coffee, notice the First Amendment as the Basis of the 99 Percent Declaration.

And then you’ll see a list that forms the basis of possible grievances to be included in a Petition to Congress, The Supremes, The President and all Federal political candidates.  What’s in the list of suggestions?

• An immediate ban on contributions to political candidates by corporations, PACs, unions, and everyone else, with campaigns to be completely publicly financed.  AKA “campaign finance reform” when you watch or read about it on the MSM.
• An immediate abrogation of Citizens United v FCC.  That is, curtail the power that corporations and PACs have over, under, around and through our political process.  Sorry, Supremes.  You screwed the pooch on this one.  No surprises there.
• Prohibiting federal employees from being employed by the corporations that they directly regulated while in office (I’d personally like to see the reverse, too)
• Congressional term limits (I personally don’t really like them.  If campaign finance reform really ends all private donations, the power brokering by corporations and other monied interests should be sufficiently curtailed as a first step. If people want the same representative, they should be able to keep him/her.)
• Reform the tax code, eliminate loopholes that allow the richest 1% to pay less than The Average Jolene.
• Single payer healthcare for all.
• More power to EPA to shut down violators, especially those where an intent to violate the law is demonstrated.  Oooh.  I’m all tingly.
• Plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable figure by 2020 (which is just around the political corner).
• Passage of a comprehensive jobs and job-training act (think the WPA)
• Student loan debt relief, especially in light of higher-than-ever corporate profits in the face of our young not able to get jobs.
• Immediate passage of the DREAM Act (I don’t know about this one.  I only know that the solution to immigration must be a global one, based in compassion – which DREAM appears to be – but also with population control requirements, both before and after new potential citizens enter our nation).
• And there’s more.

But while greater minds than mine are working on our brave new world, I am still ciphering on the issue of one blog or two.

Money, food and spirit – all grounded in sustainability

This weekend at Occupy Atlanta, I learned about a whole new world of stuff that I know nothing about.  That’s the good news, I think.  This mountain of stuff moved from the “I didn’t know that I didn’t know that” into the “I know that I don’t know that” column.  Firmly, strongly, solidly in the “I know that I don’t know that” column.

The stuff:

• The Fed – oh my gosh.  You should have heard me yesterday tell my neighbor and friend, Chris Busing (who is now running for Council, City of Clarkston, Georgia), that my brain wasn’t big enough to consider this one and that those who do understand it should just handle it.  Today, after a few hours of sleep, I realize that I actually do need to develop at least a half-working knowledge about The Fed and how we can fix it.  You may have noticed that my “The Fed” link was to Wikipedia, but I don’t know enough to recommend another starting point.  To get The Fed’s story about itself, here’s a link to the people, The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, who do The Fed.  When in Their presence, does one genuflect, or merely curtsey?  Geez.  More to learn.

• How to start building a system that I want by moving my money from Wall Street banks to a credit union or local bank, say, on November 5.

•  How to really and truly grow my own food and thrive in a community of food growers.  I also realized that I haven’t used any of the compost I’ve been making for the last few years.  All those vegetables that I’ve wasted over the years that have ended up on a pile in the yard – mostly intended for the critters to treat it like Mo’s Midnight Snack Counter, which hasn’t turned out to be quite the hotspot I intended – should be really rich compost by now.  I betcha I’ve got some great worms.

But in the meantime, and throughout all this learning and doing, I am remembering that I need to keep a smile in my mind’s eye.  Here is a link to a technique called The Inner Smile, which allows one to generate a healing energy for the body and mind.  If you do it as described in the link last thing before going to sleep, take a look the next morning at how you feel upon awakening.  And then share.

And I’ll close with the word “sustainability”.  Whatever we do, whatever we design in The Grand Undertaking that Occupy is, it must be, first, last and always, sustainable.  The question that should be asked, before deciding on any outcome, is whether a practice, if carried to its extreme, would be sustainable.  If there are any, “yea, buts,” you have an unsustainable practice.  Don’t do it.  Don’t go there.  When I think of “unsustainability”, almost all of the problems that we have, that I know that I don’t know about, have that in common.  Monsanto’s making seeds that do not allow the plant to reproduce itself and that can infect other plants, rendering them incapable of reproduction, comes to mind.

Oh, wait, I’m smiling.

Let’s do this thing.  Together.  Smiling.

Whether the Georgia Aquarium dolphin shows are educational

A few weeks ago, I posted a blog on this topic, and if you had the great good fortune to have seen the videos in the blog, you would have seen first hand via video shot by a customer of the Georgia Aquarium that the Aquarium’s dolphin extravaganza was, shall we say, a little lean on educational value.

Seeing unvarnished home movies likely provides something a tad closer to the reality of the dolphin show than a highly polished piece that the Georgia Aquarium would put together as an advertisement.  Make sense?  It does to me, too.

Those home movies are no longer available, but since I want to continue to provide information and facts surrounding the Georgia Aquarium and dolphin captivity, it appears that I’ll have to rely at least in part on the G.A.’s own video.  But before I show you the video, let me set the stage a bit.  It may look like I’m straying off topic, but just hang with me.  I’ll bring it all home.  I promise.

In your mind’s eye, picture the strawberry pie on the menu at Shoney’s.  The big, center-posted picture on the cover.  With radiating smaller pics of fried chicken, Salisbury steak (both with a gravylike schmear), and maybe even shrimp, interspersed with various starchy concoctions, some with peas thrown in for color.

But the pie: the uber bright and shiny red of, not really the strawberries so much (yes, I think there were actual strawberries in there) as the goo that surrounds the strawberries.  The goo that jiggles, but not the same way that Jello jiggles.  Translucent, but again, not the same way that Jello is.  You know it.  More like  snot, really.  But darn red.  A mighty fine red, but one that you know isn’t real.  And this, this picture of the pie that is on the cover of the menu, that is now in your mind’s eye, with its perfect dollop of whipped cream, well, not real whipped cream, really, but some light and fluffy mixture of milk flakes, talc, high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated oil . . .  Crap.  I really didn’t mean to ruin that (open air quotes) whipped cream (close air quotes) for you.  Oh, who am I fooling?  You’re probably on your way to that single-use plastic container of Cool Whip right now.  (Are these people going to sue me for mentioning them in the same piece as the Georgia Aquarium?  Oh, I am just mean!)  Anyway.  Picture the pie.  The bright red goo.  The perfect dollop.

Flash forward to your having ordered it.  Now watch the pie as it approaches on the tray brought by the hard-working and underpaid (oops, slid into another social issue) waitress.  The reality is not quite as lovely as the advertisement.  The advertisement promised something that it didn’t deliver.

And by comparison, with that picture of the pie in your mind, that fake, fake, fake, fake, fake red of the pie that still somehow appeals to the inner 6-year-old-at-Shoneys-for-the-first-time, consider that the Georgia Aquarium is tinkering with that same appeal. The strawberry pie lie.  The reality isn’t what’s on the cover.  But what’s on the cover is what the restaurant needs you to believe so that you’ll order it.  So what does the Georgia Aquarium need you to believe?

I guess, first and foremost, it wants you to believe that the dolphins are happy.  Happy in captivity.  Happy that they are not in the ocean swimming freely with their close-knit community of family.  I guess there’s a lot they would like you to believe.  That dolphins live longer lives in captivity.  But there is also stuff they don’t want you to know.  They don’t want you know that the average life span of a dolphin in captivity is five years, when dolphins in the wild live far longer.  Or that the aquariums often give captive dolphins daily doses of medicines to control ulcers and intestinal and respiratory issues.  So you can probably expect a Georgia Aquarium online commercial to show you what it wants you to believe.  I expect you’ll see something that looks like happiness.  Jumping.  Splashing.

But what about the education part?  Surely they’ll highlight that aspect, too.  It is supposed to be central to the purpose of the dolphin show, right?  Education.  Right?

And here we are at the finish line, getting ready to watch one of the Georgia Aquarium’s own videos – one that it has placed on Youtube with all the agreements and consents that one gives when posting to Youtube – to see how it invites customers to come be educated about happy dolphins.

Soooooooo.  What did you learn about dolphins?  What do you expect to learn based on the Georgia Aquarium’s own enticement?  What education do the eleven dolphins who are held captive at the Georgia Aquarium provide to justify their continued captivity, held away from the open ocean for which they were designed?

To actually learn about dolphins and whales in captivity, watch A Fall From Freedom.

And don’t go to the dolphin show.

In the meantime, if you need entertaining, just take a gander at what we actually allow to entice us into believing that the food is good.  Or the dolphins happy.

This burger was made from happy cows, too!

Found Two Dogs 10-10-11 Clarkston, GA

I found two thirsty canine traveling companions this morning as I returned from work at about 8:00 a.m. (yes, I went to work only to realize that the shuttered building meant that today was a holiday).  Please call me at (404) 731-5841 to describe your lost pet (in case they weren’t originally together) or pets.

But since I can’t leave even a found dog blog without an editorial:  Ain’t it a hell of a note that posting a picture of a found dog/cat is discouraged so that the rightful owner can reclaim a lost pet, instead of someone who would claim to be the owner but would sell them for medical research or to be bait dogs in a dog-fighting or game fish operation.

So no pic, but two marvelous dogs who have clearly been much-loved and who much-loved their owners.

If you aren’t the owner, but would like to be added to a list of potential dog moms or dads, you, you marvelous creatures, are welcome to call me.  We’ll likely go through a fostering outfit.  Right now, I’m just trying to get the word out.