Responding to Oklahoma Editorial “Populist candidate tackles tolls”

Oklahoma Capitol Investments responds;

January 31, 2010 at 8:17 am

The Oklahoman Editorial

Jan 30, 2010

WHAT is it about lesser-known candidates for governor who flit in and out of populism?

In 2002, independent Gary Richardson campaigned on eliminating tolls on the Turner Turnpike, ignoring the fact that the people themselves had agreed to cross-pledge revenue from that toll road to pay for less-traveled turnpikes.

State Sen. Randy Brogdon, a Republican running for governor this year, wants turnpike toll increases to be the exclusive domain of the Legislature with the high barrier of two-thirds approval.[. . ]And now Brodgon wants to micromanage the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority because it had the audacity to raise tolls last year.

. . .

You will be thanking that “populist” candidate if it keeps us from getting what the poor people in Texas are getting from the NTTA!   “Raping” seems to be  a common description of the situation.

The OTA is cutting deals with several other states to share our information for toll interoperability and contrary to the story we are being given about about the tag scanning cameras being for uninsured motorists, they really are for us.  Our representatives have no role and there is no oversight to the OTA as best I can tell.   The AG saying no doesn’t bother them, of course our Gov. (ex-offi cio member) was right with them.

Oklahoma-Oversight council approves restructuring of Turnpike Authority bond

04/27/2006

The OTA is seeking to restructure about $690 million in bond debts…

Gov. Brad Henry signed SB 1057 April 10.  In December, Att. Gen. Drew Edmondson issued an opinion that OTA did not have authority to enter into interest rate swap contractshttp://www.icapitol.net/topic_01OF0MMAHX/readstory.oki?storyid=0SF1225H0

NTTA  and the OTA are working hand in glove on their new schemes charge state residents.

Read More;

http://okcapitolinvestments.wordpress.com/2010/01/31/populist-candidate-tackles-tolls/

Intelligent Bathroom Fixtures and Systems: EXISTech

As Americans why should we settle for less than the Utmost in Modern Safety and Security in our homes?

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Study: Texting ban, Distracted driving laws don’t stop crashes

Study: Distracted driving laws don’t stop crashes

WASHINGTON — A new insurance industry study has found that state laws banning the use of handheld devices to make calls or send text messages while driving have not resulted in fewer vehicle crashes.

The study, released Friday by the Highway Loss Data Institute, examined insurance claims from crashes before and after such bans took effect in California, New York, Connecticut and Washington, D.C.

The organization found that claims rates did not go down after the laws were enacted. It also found no change in patterns compared with nearby states without such bans.

Adrian Lund, the group’s president, said the finding doesn’t bode well “for any safety payoff from all the new laws.”

Six states and the District of Columbia ban talking on a hand-held device for all drivers, while 19 states and the District of Columbia ban texting while driving, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.

The Highway Loss Data Institute, an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said its findings “don’t match what we already know about the risk of phoning and texting while driving” and said it is gathering data to “figure out this mismatch.”

It said one explanation could be an increase in the use of handsfree devices in places with bans on handset use while driving.

Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the governors association, said the new study “raises as many questions as it answers.” The group is concerned that bans on handheld devices simply encourage more drivers to use handsfree devices, which, it says, are just as risky.

Read more;

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/insurance-study-finds-state-distracted-driving-laws-dont-reduce-number-of-crashes/

Rep. Charles Key wants state law to stop federal interference with low-power radio stations

Thanks to Andrew Griffin and Oklahoma Watchdog for caring about both the “little guy”  as well as the low power people!
January 28, 2010

OKLAHOMA CITY – Rep. Charles Key wants state law to stop federal interference with low-power radio stations.

The Oklahoma City Republican submitted House Bill 2812 to allow low-power broadcast despite Federal Communications Commission authority effective Nov. 1.

The “Communications Freedom Act” would give stations that are not interfering with existing signals authority to broadcast without federal license.

“The Legislature of the State of Oklahoma declares that: A transmission of energy, communications or signals by radio originating inside the State of Oklahoma, that has not been proven and adjudicated by the Oklahoma court system or the Federal court system to specifically be causing, or to have caused quantifiable harm to, or interference with the transmission or reception of energy, communications or signals from: a.) within Oklahoma to any place beyond its borders. b.) any place beyond the borders of Oklahoma to any place within Oklahoma, or c.) or to places beyond the borders of Oklahoma; is not intended to be involved in interstate commerce.”

It specifies “a transmission of energy, communications or signals by radio” that is noncommercial is “not intended to be involved in interstate commerce” or is not meant to affect interstate commerce.

“How can the FCC regulate something under the interstate commerce clause (of the U.S. Constitution) when (low-power FM) is neither interstate nor commerce?” asked James Lane, an Oklahoma City-based activist with We Are Change Oklahoma.

Lane noted that low-power FM should be embraced by states and communities. A great example, he said, is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans-area radio station crews left the area and low-power station personnel stayed behind to broadcast public service information.

“We’re making this an issue of standing up to the federal government which we believe is overstepping its Constitutional boundaries,” Lane said.

Read More;

http://oklahoma.watchdog.org/2010/01/27/law-would-keep-fcc-off-low-power-radio/

Army War College Biometrics Task Force April 15, 2009

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Certegy Stinks!

My check was refused at a clothing store at the local mall last week.

The clerk entered my check as usual and recieved notice that there was a “prior authorization” notice returned which meant she had to call a number and speak loudly and clearly into the telephone so that the robot on the other end could hear (as well as any nearby shoppers).  At the end of the call she informed me that my check was declined.

My account balance was well over the amount of the check I wrote, with no outstanding or unpaid checks so I wondered what the problem was.  It took the girl some time to locate the number of the company responsible for the decline so I asked her if this was unusual.  She indicated it was not at all unusual for checks to be declined and tried to put me off by suggesting I call my bank.  I told her I was quite sure that my bank had nothing to gain by preventing me from accessing my money and insisted that she find the number of the check approval company for me.

When I got the 800 number I dialed and  found myself broadcasting my information to the deaf automatron on the other end of the phone who finally informed my that although my account was in good standing my check had been declined due to my check writing pattern which unfortunately, in some machine’s estimation, fit an unusual or suspicious pattern.  I was also informed that this was for my protection and the protection of the merchant.

Strangely, I did not feel more secure knowing that some company has taken it upon themselves to turn a buck by mining my check writing habits and then using some sort of unknown algorithm to sever my ability to access my own money.

Since it was apparent that no human was available for me to take my case to, I uttered some very foul language to the stupid robot voice which replied “I’m sorry.  I didn’t get that….”

The next day I wrote 3 checks at various locations with no trouble but when I returned to the store (these were my 15 year old daughter’s must have item, you understand.  I would have never went back were it a choice)  Expected whatever had been the trouble the day before to have been cleared.  Nope.  Certegy declined my check again!

I did speak with my bank today and was told that they have no connection to these check approval companies and that they gather information from a variety of sources and make a determination as to the risk level of the shopper with this information.

Something is very wrong here.  How does this company have any right to interfere with access to my account?  I know what the suspicious pattern is;  I usually use cash whenever possible but during Christmas shopping my husband and I did write a few.

This is the trouble when datamining techniques designed for the arguably benign purpose of marketing is applied to situations that will inevitably cause damage to innocent people.  While my check writing habits may be abnormal compared to the habits of the entire nation or even state, they are absolutely normal for ME!  Why should I be penalized for being an individual?  These same techniques are also being used in law enforcement as method to predict the likelihood that any one of us is veering toward criminal behavior.

Just as I was singled out because of non-conformist check writing habits, we are being given special attention by law enforcement for our behavioral variances.  Being denied the ability to write a check for no real reason is aggravating but being veiwed as a possible threat or terrorist by people with guns is terrifying!

http://axiomamuse.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/fusion-centers-and-data-collection/

I am not sure what I can do about this but when running a search on “Certegy” one of the first results was a complaints page.  I discovered that what I experienced was in no way unique.

The store that I had the trouble with was the Buckle in Sooner Fashion Mall in Norman.  I imagine they must have a choice in which company handles the check verifications.  If so, they might want to reconsider using Certegy.  I will never step a foot back into that store.

Have a look;

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/certegy.html

“Doctors take note: You are not in control anymore” MD finds Patient Vaccinated without approval

“Your patients can be harmed by vaccines that you have not ordered– while your back is turned.”

see also;

Drug firms ‘drove swine flu pandemic warning to recoup £billions spent on research’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246370/Drug-firms-drove-swine-flu-pandemic-warning-recoup-billions-spent-research.html#ixzz0dzDxacPr

Vaccination Without Doctor Approval In a US Hospital

S. Humphries, MD

January 22, 2010

H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccines are now being given to sick hospital patients with or without their doctor’s consent.  This is being done despite there being no data on the safety of doing so.

I am a licensed, board-certified nephrologist, otherwise known as a kidney specialist, working in a large, city-based hospital.  Because I rarely admit patients to the hospital other than for specific procedures, such as a kidney biopsy, I only recently became aware of my hospital’s policy regarding flu shots for sick people. Waking up to this new rule made me realize that Big Pharma is getting closer and closer to bypassing doctors completely to deliver direct patient “care”.

We have an elaborate electronic charting system at our hospital. All of the medications and procedure orders are placed into the patient’s record by doctors and nurses so that every person has access to all that is happening with the patient. A few weeks ago, I arrived to see my first patient of the day, a patient with a kidney ailment that leaks protein and usually progresses to complete kidney shutdown. When I opened her electronic chart, I expected my section to be empty.  Instead, I saw an order for an influenza vaccine with my name on it. Even more shocking was that the order was highlighted bright blue, meaning, the shot had already been given.  I thought perhaps I had opened the wrong chart or some sort of mistake had been made.  But it was the right file; her name in the upper left hand corner.  And my electronic signature was on the page after the order. My patient, with kidney failure and an autoimmune disorder had been given a flu shot without my consent.

I was informed that according to a hospital policy that had been in effect since 2007, a pharmacist is permitted to visit a patient and offer them a flu vaccine. If the patient agrees, the RN is instructed to administer the shot and document the event in the chart. The attending physician’s signature stamp is used to complete the order.  No one called to ask, “By the way, your patient wants a flu shot; can we give her one?” I’m not sure what was said to her, but she obviously agreed, and I didn’t need to be involved.  The pharmacist had written an order for an injectable substance that I considered toxic and inappropriate for my patient, and it was administered by the RN before I even got to the floor.

My dissatisfaction eventually made it to the Chief of Internal Medicine who challenged me to produce peer-reviewed journal articles in support of my objection. There were dozens of case reports of kidney disease or small blood vessel inflammation following influenza vaccination.  In fact, one paper cited 16 patients in its written report(1).  Under-reporting of adverse vaccine reactions is a known phenomenon.  The National Vaccine Information Center estimates that only about two percent of adverse vaccine reactions ever get reported.  It would follow that written and published case reports found in medical journals represent a miniscule sampling of the totality of vaccine injury cases.  These implications should evoke at least some curiosity on the part of doctors and health care advocates.

The peer-reviewed literature was delivered to the department head.  His initial response was to suggest that future vaccination orders be signed off by another physician so I didn’t have to be involved with the process of a nurse giving a “routine” flu shot.  But the point had been missed; flu shots should not be given to sick patients.

http://www.medicalvoices.org/vaccination/articles/vaccination-without-doctor-approval-in-a-us-hospital.html

Use it or Lose it! Open Carry NH

I am heartened by the civility displayed by the officer and Mr. Ridley but this seems to be the  exception when people stand their legal ground with law enforcement. Anything less than  Immediate and unwavering compliance with demand from an officer is treated as reason enough for the officer to move to force.

Displays of this sort are often critiqued as being trivial.  I have been dismissive in the past of people making a big deal over nitpicky details when they went to great lengths to insist that their rights be respected.  In retrospect, I was wrong.  Not everyone has the ability or requisite courage to demand that law serve the purpose it was designed for to the letter.  I applaud every single one of us who do because they are helping to draw the line in the sand for all of us, now and in the future.  I have prioritized certain rights that seem to me to be most precious but in truth, they all must be defended for any one specific one to matter at all.

I sympathize with the reality that being a police officer is a difficult and dangerous job but my greatest concern always lies with the preservation of respect for the legal and intrinsic rights of the individual.  Every time we fail to take insist upon retaining this basic respect for our rights we open the door for tyrants to prevail.

Know your rights and defend them like your life depends on it.  It does.  Our humanity depends on our liberty!

St. Petersburg Times (Florida): Data mining project benefits investigators, scares privacy experts

From Privacy Lives;

St. Petersburg Times (Florida): Data mining project benefits investigators, scares privacy experts

The St. Petersburg Times has a fascinating profile of a former drug smuggler named Hank Asher who is creating a massive data-mining project, gathering information on individuals. Asher is the man behind the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange (MATRIX), which ran from 2002 to 2005, financed by $12 million in federal grants. MATRIX was run by Florida and LexisNexis subsidiary Seisint. The data-mining program drew criticism because it included detailed files about innocent people, including credit histories and fingerprints. (A week before the announcement that MATRIX was shutting down, Seisint announced a security breach that compromised data on 310,000 individuals.)

The personal information contained in MATRIX included names, past addresses, telephone numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, credit data, driver’s license photos, marriage and divorce records, names and addresses of family members, and neighbors’ addresses and telephone numbers. Some of the data was incorrect, but people weren’t able to correct their records.

In a 2003 article, law professor Anita Ramasastry compared MATRIX to notorious data-mining program: Total Information Awareness.

As I discussed in an earlier column, TIA would have allowed the federal government to search and combine the vast amount of data that currently exists in government and commercial (that is, for profit) databases to create individual profiles of each of us.

TIA was premised on a belief that compiling as much information as possible about as many people as possible in a large-scale database would help thwart terrorist activity. The idea — called “data mining” — was that government officials would search the database for information, or patterns of information, that might identify terrorists. [...]

Unfortunately, however, the same data mining ideas that inspired TIA have appeared again– this time, in the guise of the Matrix.

The St. Petersburg Times reports:

Now [Asher] is building a super computer and a database “a thousand times more powerful” than anything he has developed yet.

Read More;

http://www.privacylives.com/st-petersburg-times-florida-data-mining-project-benefits-investigators-scares-privacy-experts/2010/01/13/#more-5793

Carbon Currency: A New Beginning for Technocracy?

By Patrick Wood, Editor  of  The August Review

January 26, 2010
Introduction
Critics who think that the U.S. dollar will be replaced by some new global currency are perhaps
thinking too small.
On the world horizon looms a new global currency that could replace all paper currencies and
the economic system upon which they are based.
The new currency, simply called Carbon Currency, is designed to support a revolutionary new
economic system based on energy (production, and consumption), instead of price. Our current
price-based economic system and its related currencies that have supported capitalism,
socialism, fascism and communism, is being herded to the slaughterhouse in order to make
way for a new carbon-based world.
It is plainly evident that the world is laboring under a dying system of price-based economics as
evidenced by the rapid decline of paper currencies. The era of fiat (irredeemable paper
currency) was introduced in 1971 when President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar
from gold. Because the dollar-turned-fiat was the world’s primary reserve asset, all other
currencies eventually followed suit, leaving us today with a global sea of paper that is
increasingly undesired, unstable, unusable.
The deathly economic state of today’s world is a direct reflection of the sum of its sick and
dying currencies, but this could soon change.
Forces are already at work to position a new Carbon Currency as the ultimate solution to global
calls for poverty reduction, population control, environmental control, global warming, energy
allocation and blanket distribution of economic wealth.

Read More

http://www.augustreview.com/issues/technocracy/carbon_currency:_a_new_beginning_for_technocracy?_20100125155/