Posted on 12/17/2010 4:07:58 AM PST by Gomer1066
Some months ago I related to you how I stood in the parking lot of one of the Big Box stores and counted 22 cameras observing everything going on around me. Those were just the cameras I could see from my vantage point. There were more. Please note: That was OUTSIDE the store. Upon entering the store there were uncountable cameras peering at shoppers -- some obvious and others strategically located and camouflaged, I expect.
Some years ago, in a nearby city, my wife and I had been shopping in a large grocery store in route home from attending church. As we prepared to pay for our purchases by check, the cashier informed me that I must have my photo taken. I completely lost it.
(Excerpt) Read more at csadispatch.blogspot.com ...
Would I be correct to think that you are the author of this blog?
While I share some of the authors distrust of Government abuse of tracking and surveillance, more so with the current crop of fascist clowns are in charge, I must take exception to his complaints about store surveillance cameras. There is a huge portion of “citizens” that have no moral reservations about stealing anything and everything they see. We all pay the price for their criminal enterprises both through higher prices and through closer scrutiny of our activities.
If it makes you feel better, you can call them PATRIOT Cameras.
Our military continues to fight for this country and for everything it stands for.
Surveillance cameras have solved many crimes.
While I certainly value the idea of individual privacy, those that commit crimes must come to the realization that when they commit crimes no matter how big or small, felony or misdemeanor, they have given up their right to privacy.
With the current level of “shrinkage” (read shoplifting, i.e. stealing) of a store’s inventory, I have no problem with a business having security cameras within their stores. With the current level of muggings and car break-ins, I have no problem with the store placing cameras in their parking lots. This is NOT loss of freedom. On the contrary, it helps the store sell to me at a lower price. Guess who pays for all that “shrinkage”. You & me.
After a mugging in a Walmart parking lot (unheard of around here) our local police placed a trailer mounted, mobile tower observation post in the lot. I have no problem with that. The only difference between the mobile tower and a police car cruising the lot is that the tower has better visability, both in the SEE aspect and the BE SEEN aspect.
What I do have a problem with is the sometimes lack of accountability and openness in governmental organizations of authority, the police & legislatures. Our founding fathers wisely put the military under the control of the civilian side of government. However, in some cases, we have lost open oversight of police departments at various levels, including the ATF and IRS. Also, there is often lack of accountability on the legislative & judicial side. This I do have a problem with.
Its out here in the sticks.
It has been replaced with “The land of the Lazy and home of the Stupid.” Or that maybe just California.
Many of these cameras in dept stores are FAKE in order to discourage shoplifting.
Stores often keep the real cameras hidden in high priced areas like a jewelry dept or an electronic dept.
from Robert A. Heinlein’s “To Sail Beyond the Sunset” (1987):
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a “warm body” democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction…. [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome.”
I wish I could write that well!
Mr. Longstreet is a very popular SOUTHERN writer whose articles appear all over the Internet, whereas, I’m an undiscovered Montana writer living in Missoula (where the temperature is 4 degrees Fahrenheit this morning and snow covers the mountains.)
As long as people who should know better continue to call us a democracy the problem will grow worse. Of course the plan to encourage voters to think that how they vote actually affects how the country is run. Wrong! That might be so in a democracy, but it’s completely wrong when it comes to a republic.
The best proof of the failure our system is the huge lack of trust poll after poll reveals citizens have in Congress. Right now it’s approval rating is bumping along at 14% or 15%. If it weren’t the sad truth then the approval rating would be something nearer the percentage of voters who voted for those in office.
I have one for the Free Republic -
Theme song of the Second American Revolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L0AO7XqXEI&feature=player_embedded#!
....unless a revolution restores the Republic.
We are working of that...
In Nevil Shute’s novel, “In the Wet”, he describes a fictional multiple vote system enacted in Australia at a future date.
Here is a description of that system from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Wet
“Perhaps the most interesting, and enduring, feature of the book is the “multiple vote”, seen as a necessary reform of democracy. A person can have up to seven votes. Everyone gets a basic vote. Other votes can be earned for education (including a commission in the armed forces), earning one’s living overseas for two years, raising two children to the age of 14 without divorcing, being an official of a Christian church, or having a high earned income [actually, IIRC, it was for starting a profitable business that employed others]. The seventh vote, which in the book is awarded to Nigger [note: this is the nickname proudly worn by the lead character, a Quadroon {1/4 Aboriginal, 3/4 white}] for his heroism, is only given at the Queen’s discretion by Royal Charter.
Interesting concept!
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