Presidential Chirping Omitted

There's nothing I could write here about the President that hasn't already been said.  So, I'll skip that.  If you need to hear it again, imagine about a 45 minute rant based on the liberal views of a U.S. Citizen who is a governmental employee with a spouse who also works for the government.  Make sure you add a healthy dose of 4-letter words.

That said, I'm a bit confused.  I recently read that Stephen King has been blocked by the President's twitter feed among other U.S. citizens.  Yes, that Stephen King.  The Shining.  The Mist.  Carrie.  Pet Cemetery.  It.  I follow Mr. King on Twitter, and he confirmed it.  My question is, is the President of the United States, a servant of the people in a public office, allowed to exclude U.S. Citizens from official statements made on social media platforms such as Twitter?

For the answer, let's go to the National Constitutional Center.  In their own words, "The National Constitution Center is the first and only institution in America established by Congress to 'disseminate information about the United States Constitution on a non-partisan basis in order to increase the awareness and understanding of the Constitution among the American people.'" 

Their analysis is unclear.  It seems that several organizations and representatives of U.S. Citizens have complained about being blocked by @realDonaldTrump, which is, arguably, the personal Twitter account of the man elected to office.  However, statements by Spicey-bear indicate that all Tweets from that account should be considered "Official White House statements."  If that strict definition holds, it stands to reason that by blocking citizens from receiving official public statements is, in fact, unconstitutional.  

But, not all constitutional scholars agree.  Eugene Volokh professor at the UCLA School of Law says it's not that simple: "...when the president is giving a public speech, he is understood at least in part as expressing his own views. Indeed, that is why even Supreme Court justices who believe that the government may not endorse religion think that it’s fine for government officials to express religious views in their speeches — here, for instance, is the view of Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Van Orden v. Perry:

Our leaders, when delivering public addresses, often express their blessings simultaneously in the service of God and their constituents. Thus, when public officials deliver public speeches, we recognize that their words are not exclusively a transmission from the government because those oratories have embedded within them the inherently personal views of the speaker as an individual member of the polity."

 Also, Mr. Volokh demonstrates that, while blocked users can't follow the President on that account, you can skip logging in, and search for @realDonaldTrump which will show you all relevant tweets, regardless of your account's relationship with the President's.

More serious than being "blocked" is the matter of the President deleting tweets.  If you use the rationale above, where a President is acting as a man and not attempting to use the twitter account as an official statement device of the office of the Presidency, a deletion is nothing.  As the President of the U.S., well that's far more serious.  Forbes has the story here from Carter Moore, Former Congressional Aide and Federal Employee, on Quora: "[on the question of legality for deletions] Very unlikely [to be legal].  But while I hate to be too lawyerly about it, it depends on the nature of the tweet and on how thoroughly he deletes it.  The only 'out' that the President would have in deleting a tweet would be if the tweet could be argued to be a record of 'purely private or nonpublic character which do[es] not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.'  Of course, a tweet being public immediately rules it out as being private or nonpublic in character, so that’s an unlikely defense."

A holdover from Obama is the policy that all official tweets be recorded and archived in perpetuity by the U.S. Archivist Office.  And we know that deleting something from the Internet doesn't necessarily mean it's gone.  

Where everyone agrees is that all shall be revealed when the lawsuits come.  My opinion?  I believe that the subject matter coming from the President's personal account is, generally, politically based.  And, that his seemingly "personal" flare-ups on Twitter are, in part, caused by his recent elevation to the office.  I doubt very much that the shenanigans between Morning Joe and the President would have happened if he wasn't so sensitive about his claim of #fakenews by liberal media outlets.  I believe that his name-calling is a direct result of the portrayal of his incompetence and impotence by the Left, and therefore, every idiotic word out of his mouth should be recorded and recognized for generations to come to study: this is how NOT to be President.

That said, let's see some lawsuits already, and enough about bleeding eyes, let's get back to blocking unethical healthcare bills and Russia, no?

Un-bear-able

I think you know that I am an advocate of the pristine natural lands preserved by the US Government, known as our National Parks.  To date, I've visited only 11 parks, some of them multiple times, but each time I discover something new in the park, and something new about myself.  Probably, the first park I visited was Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island in Maine.  And, like most National Parks, it's easy to see why it was designated to be preserved: there is no place like it anywhere on the face of the earth.  Sure, there are other coastal islands in New England which contain similar features, but, nowhere else can you be the first on the Eastern Seaboard of the US to see the sun rise.  Certain months you can pick blueberries as you hike.  There's always a threat of lobster for dinner.  And, even though the peak in the park, Cadillac Mountain, is only 1,529 feet of elevation, you can choose to start and end at sea-level...with your feet in the ocean.

This is probably why my family goes back every other year, and usually with friends, to share this amazing corner of the world with our children.  It's comforting to know that there are 58 other parks with their unique personas, that the American people will, hopefully, be able to enjoy in perpetuity.  This is why, under our current and former administrations, it is extremely distressing that protections for our National Parks are being chiseled away.  How?  By relaxing laws and speeding processes for the abuse of Federal lands in the name of energy independence (clean coal is a farce);  And, most recently, by lifting Federal protections of wildlife.

Let's start with the former.  It is thought that there are large, untapped, reserves for oil and gas under Federal lands adjacent to many of our Parks out west, specifically Arches NP, Dinosaur National Monument, Canyonlands NP, and Zion NP, all in Utah.  If you're watching Agent Orange in D.C., part of his campaign platform included pillaging these lands in the name of energy independence.  However, support has dwindled significantly.  In fact, recently, the Republican governor of Utah reversed his position on additional drilling near Zion indicating that studies show that the cost to the State (i.e. tourism dollars) would be too detrimental to the State's economy.  The concern: noise pollution to the surrounding communities, which only survive on tourism dollars.  Imagine listening to drilling as you walk through the pristine Virgin River Narrows.  (By the way, if you go to Zion, search out Oscar's Cafe for breakfast.  Ridiculous portions and massive cups of coffee.)  Don't be surprised of the Governor's sudden change of heart.  After all, he's just going with the increasingly popular opinion where the American people are less and less in favor of compromising our National trust.  In March of this year, a Gallop poll showed that 53% of Americans now oppose this type of drilling.  It's a start, but it echoes the outcry of the majority in the United States (7 out of 10 people) who would have urged our President to stay in the Paris Climate Accord.  The environment is important to the American people.

Why?  People are realizing that the environment brings sustainable jobs and supports local economies far better than if the same lands were used to feed national energy conglomerates.  It's clear to small business owners that keeping the money local is key to their survival, and that the throngs of people visiting the parks dwarfs the potential number of "permanent" employees who are pumping out oil or gas so that a large national firm reaps the fiscal benefits.  Local dollars stay local.

Which brings us to the recent removal of the Grizzly Bear from the Federal Endangered Species List: what the hell?  Ryan Zinke, U.S. Secretary of the Interior, babbled on recently about the health of the grizzly bear population in Yellowstone National Park (now around 700, up from fewer than 150).  The lifting of these protections now puts the States of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana in the driver's seat of the grizzly future.  Environmentalists are fuming.  This makes hunting of bears who wander out of the park more likely to be subjected to local hunting seasons.  The Feds say that when the census shows that bears drop to fewer than 600, they'll put in provisions that stop these "management" practices, but that's not reassuring.  We know from canine breeding that small populations of purebreds yields lack of genetic diversity which results in increased propensity for mutations, weakened immune systems, and increased sensitivity to environmental changes...such as global warming.  If you've been to Yellowstone, you know that the bears are a key feature and draw thousands of visitors annually.  You also know that Yellowstone is the lifeblood of the peripheral economies surrounding the park: the restaurants, the hotels/motels, the campsites, etc.  And, support for the service industries in these communities is akin to support for their schools, roads, etc., their way of life and the economy that drives it.

It's amazing right?  It's as if all of the environment and the health of our planet is somehow connected.  I'm being facetious, and I think it's quite plain to see that ignoring the facts and warnings on one environmental front will likely set off a chain-reaction on many, many others.  Eventually, it will have dire adverse economic effects in rural states which live and die by their tourism numbers.  Bigger than that, it threatens our public well being, it upsets the balance of nature, and ignorance of natural systems has the potential to pose some epic human health risks (see: Zika and West Nile).

Just as last week I suggested that legislation on common-sense gun laws needs to happen yesterday, we need to take a similar tack on environmental protections of our most valuable resources.  To fail to do so would be irresponsible and potentially catastrophic on many levels.

It's just common sense

So, I've written about gun violence a number of times on this blog, here, here, and here.  It seems that our understanding of what motivates these terrorists is no better than it was before.  Right, terrorists.  A term that is immediately identified in the press when a brown person does it, but is extremely muted when a white person does it.  That's a problem for many reasons.  But, most importantly, it furthers deeply embedded racist stereotypes unnecessarily, all the way to the highest office in the land.  Note, when it was London and Manchester, the Prez was lightning fast to denounce Islamic Extremism.  When it was San Francisco and Washington D. C., the Prez is strangely silent.

Because of these biases, gun violence isn't being addressed in this country.  At all.  Literally, legally, nothing has changed.  Not only that, but politicians bringing up the Capital's recent incident as a possible catalyst for gun safety legislation have been dismissed by the far right as trying to politically capitalize on the tragedy.

Me?  I say, if not now, when?

Have you been to www.gunviolencearchive.org?  They're a nonprofit that tracks all firearm related incidents in the US, plots them on a map, and separates them by "type."  Take a look at what has happened in the first half of 2017.  It's sickening.  Just taking into account "Mass Shootings" there were 154 incidents across the United States resulting in 189 deaths and 589 injuries.  That's in 6 months.  The total number of children (ages between 0-11) dead because of gun violence (unintentional and intentional) is 301...so far this year.  The most ridiculous number is that there are clear over 27,900 separate incidents, both intentional and accidental between January 1 and June 15, 2017, resulting 6,900 deaths and 13,558 injuries.  Now, if we round that up, and estimate that, in 2017, 55,800 gun incidents will be tallied before the year is out, that's comparable with the number of new pancreatic cancer patients or new thyroid cancer patients, or new liver cancer patients according to the National Cancer Institute.

You've heard of those, right?

I would suggest that, our government, by dragging their political feet, is essentially providing a death sentence to Americans akin to pulling all treatments for the aforementioned cancers.  Unthinkable, right?  Could you imagine being diagnosed with a disease and then your congressmen, because they get a crap-load of money from the "pro-cancer lobby," decide to turn a blind eye on making legal changes so that you can't get the treatment you need to get better?

I know it's a ridiculous hypothetical, although, with the current ACA vs. ACHA tug-of-war going on, it's not that far fetched.  Still, we have a national epidemic that, because of political lack of will, will go on and on unaddressed because of money and lobbying.

And, we're getting numb to these types of events.  Media coverage on these types of even focus on the wrong things, misleading the public and allowing general apathy to fog the seriousness of each event.  This article by the non-profit Century Foundation gets it right: we spend so much energy on big profile mass shootings that the balance of gun-related incidents go uncovered, or, at best, underreported.

What do we do?  We make this our thing again.  Put it on the list about why we need to have a political sea-change in our Federal, State and local governments.  We need to treat this disease, and the only way to do that is by putting like-minded individuals in office.  Gun Violence, especially here in the Northeast, should not be a way of life.  I'm not saying to take away people's right to bear arms, but common-sense gun legislation is long overdue.  The problem is not going away, and it's time to start putting in politicians who will make this their issue so that this disease can be cured.

Hey hey hey

A short blog entry: a thought.

So, in addition to the hijinx in Washington D.C., I've been sorta following what's been happening in the trial of Bill Cosby, in Philadelphia.  As you know, he's been accused of sexual assault.  The method? His accusers, and there are many, have said that he drugs his victims, and then, while they're unresponsive, assaults them.  I won't get into the details that have come to light by his accusers, but it's heinous and seems to have happened many, many times.

My initial reaction to the accusations was disappointment...which is wrong.  Upon hearing what he was being charged of, my brain went to "gee, he was so good for so long.  It's really sad, now that he's not what we originally thought of him."  This is the wrong attitude.  Should the accusations stand, and I believe they will, this man was sick and disturbed, even way back when we were introduced to him and his television family in 1984.  And, for those of an older generation, he's been mistreating women since his days at I Spy in 1965.  My reaction should have been revulsion that we, as a public, were duped into supporting a serial rapist.

His defense to the counts of sexual assault is that his relationship with the victim was consensual.  But, that's not the only strategy that may come to light.  Mr. Cosby's lawyers may insist that he's being racially discriminated against as a black man. Certainly, his professional life has been to erase black stereotypes and promote positivity in the black community.  Hell, I Spy was the first American drama to feature a black man in a lead role.  Fat Albert was focused on inner-city black school children doing the right thing.  And, the Cosby Show demonstrated (rightly) that professional and familial success comes in all shapes, races, creeds and colors.  It's only natural that Mr. Cosby believe that his actions as a younger man are being discriminated against.  And, I kind of believe it.  I'm not saying he's innocent.  Sixty women coming forward, and all with the same allegations is a damning indictment.  Still, what happens when it's found out that you're a white sexual predator who has used his wealth and influence to commit serial rape/sexual assault?  Do you go to jail?

Nope, you're elected President.

It's not easy being green.

Unless you live under a rock, you've heard that the President has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement.  My thoughts?  This is marvelously short-sighted by our President and his team of cronies, AND, this largely is symbolic and nothing else.  That's right, I don't believe that, beyond international political dick-swinging, this does anything to massively impact actual climate change or economics in the United States.

Now, that's a pretty bold statement from someone who believes that he's fairly environmentally minded.  But hear me out: I believe that once again, it's our responsibility to pick up the slack left by our extremely incapable Federal government.

Firstly, according to Article 28 of the accord, "parties [can] withdraw from the agreement after sending withdrawal notifications to the depositary three years after the agreement goes into force in that country, and the withdrawal is effective one year after the depositary is notified."  Simple maths indicates that we'll be officially out of the Paris Agreement in 2020 or 2021 the earliest.  Simple maths also dictates that we'll be in the throws of an election.  Based on the the first 5 months of his Presidency, I don't see his popularity growing.  And, as he lost the popular vote last time, I expect that he won't be elected again...or anyone like him.  That leaves the door open for our next president to re-join the rest of the planet (except Syria and Nicaragua...but they too may have political epiphanies).

Granted, I didn't think Agent Orange was electable this time.

That said, I am super encouraged that, despite the lack of foresight by this White House, business leaders, major metropolitan areas and states are standing up against the idiocy of a President who backed out of a non-binding global agreement.  The truth is that, he's right, jobs related to fossil fuel are in a decline...mostly because they're expensive and complicated to maintain.  Logic would dictate that it's far easier to be exposed to wind and sun than it is to excavate and drill.  Tell my four-year-old to get warmed by the sun or cooled by the breeze and she could do it.  Tell her to mine for and then burn a lode of coal...frankly, I don't want to think about the results.

Also, President Agent Orange is dead wrong about the economic impacts related to cost-sharing and lending to developing countries.  The Paris accord dictates that those initiatives wouldn't happen until 2020 either...those same non-binding initiatives which will be reevaluated by every nation as 2020 approaches.  Hopefully, that'll be the job of a new president as well.


Look, here's my hope.  I'm going to continue to work hard to do my part for reduction of landfill waste and production of greenhouse gasses.  I'm in the process of exchanging un-recyclable CFL bulbs with more efficient LEDs in my house.  Our family buys organic produce in an effort to keep some of the more toxic insecticides and fertilizers out of our diets...which in turn reduces the need for crop-dusting and airplane/helicopter exhaust.  Our electricity, through PSE&G, is provided partially through sustainable energy initiatives.  We pay a slightly higher premium for our energy, but we are supporting a more sustainable infrastructure.  And, we have a small garden.  I know that sounds silly, but in August, we won't be driving to get our tomatoes...or buying them from a vendor who had them shipped on a truck.  Oh, and we walk to our local farmer's market.  Think global, eat local.

All of the things I mentioned take effort on our part to be (slightly) better global citizens.  And, maybe that's the issue with this President.  Time and time again, his decisions play out like a chess player who only thinks one move ahead.  That's a gross misunderstanding of the game, and those players lose, more often than not.  

It's my mission to help make this man and his agenda lose.  A way to do that is to start loading the local political deck with science-minded politicians who are able to see the bigger picture.  Fortunately, in New Jersey, a gubernatorial election will happen on June 6, next Tuesday, where Jersey-ites will get to start the process of replacing one of the most corrupt and ineffectual governors in State history.  If you've been moaning about our broken political system, it's time you put your political money where your mouth is.  Make it a point to vote in the primary election.  This is your chance to be heard.  And, it's my hope that the new governor will take into account the benefits of investing in a sustainable future for both me and my children.  While it may not be the cheapest, most direct way to grow the economy, choosing to enact climate-smart policies and laws is in everyone's best interest, and should help preserve our planet for my children and my children's children.  Hell, it's the only one we got.