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Health & Fitness

Seattle, Does Boeing Decide if You Shall Have Drones?

Americans from all over the country are telling drone proponents at Boeing they can't take that secretary from accounting to a fancy restaurant on their dime.

 

Olympia caters to Boeing leaving locals, American taxpayers to foot the bill

It was pouring rain as we arrived at at a posh eatery featured frequently on the Food Network. We were seated comfortably and began our evening of expensive wining and dining. 

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Unfortunately, there was a hitch.  

To our immediate left a man from Boeing’s warcraft division made it loudly clear, by dropping as much anti-terrorism speech as possible, he was attempting woo an ageing blonde with feathered bangs. It was a non-stop stream of “aiding the enemy” “counterterrorism” and whatever else legally and technically validated his living. 

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This noise pollution meandered into our ears for nearly 45 minutes. The flattop/contractor from Boeing finally left, nearing dessert. However, my meal was nearly ruined due to the corrosive and entitled war speech blowing over it.  

Nothing solidified my viewpoint that Boeing has a serious corporatist entitlement problem than my dinner at Cafe Juanita. 

A short while later I read a headline Boeing had stalled a piece of State legislation that would limit the use of domestic drones on local publics.  While there wasn’t much stated from the article as to why it technically stalled, the reader gathered that Washington State would take Boeing’s federally funded drones because they needed the business.  

How nice for Boeing. They are emboldened enough to believe access to federal funding for drone builds actually trumps the local’s reluctance to accept this as practical reality in their backyard.  The effort of the drone bill would have been to restrict the use of drones to surveill constituents in Washington State.  There are similar bills cropping up around the nation. So many Americans believe Boeing’s “eye in the sky” is far more force than could ever actually be necessary.  They don’t want to pay for it either. 

Yesterday, Seattle’s City Council resumed talks of surveillance regulation; which included drones. Seattle was one of the first cities in the nation to sign up for police drones. The drones became a national embarassment to Seattle leading up to such an outcry, Mayor McGinn had to send them back to the vendor. 

Lawyers are now haggling over the language concerning camera use.  Federally funded drones for police are essentially roving live cameras. Local’s did say something about the priority of SPD getting their act together before they get new surveillance toys ahead of grant experiments.

“Council members said they didn’t want a repeat of having approved federal grants only to later discover the grants were for aerial-surveillance drones or 30 stationary cameras the Police Department plans to operate around the city as part of a port-security grant.” 

One can pretty much guarantee the Obama’s administration will pay for drones with federal, not state, tax dollars.  However, there is a limit to what locals can and will endure in terms of federal supremacy. The US Constitution does not guarantee taxation without representation just so Boeing has endless funding to build drones.   

Locals have expressed high resistance to the police institution of drones when it is in reach. It is high time both State and Federal bodies recognise the limits of their constituents tolerance for surveillance execess, like domestic drones or the National Counter Terrorism Centers used for mass dataveillance.

There is also a national movement going against the commission of drones towards domestic interests where there is virtually no evidence of any terror plots [except the ones the FBI invent themselves]. The Tenth Amendment Center has been tracking drone ban bills across America. 

Locals are past the legislative shock and awe campaigns to bring the War on Terror to their lives as the paid excuse for domestic drones. Americans from all over the country are telling flattops at Boeing they can’t take that secretary from accounting to a fancy restaurant on their dime.

Washington State, you can do the same any time you choose. 

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