SHOCK - Solar energy kills jobs



Federal solar panel subsidies will kill California jobs.
Federal "green energy" money will effectively pay California farmers NOT to grow food on their land but to put up solar panels instead.  The results:  less food for Americans to eat and more unemployment in the agriculture industry.



Socialist Triple Whammy  -  Bye Bye American Jobs

• #1  -  Government subsidies to take farm land out of production to put up solar panels.
• #2  -  Government use of the Endangered Species Act to kill California farms & jobs.
• #3  -  BONUS  -  The solar panels will be made in China creating jobs there & not in America.

By Gary;

In the real estate boom a few years ago California agriculture was in danger from the constant pressure of development.

But no more.

Instead of houses, now it's armies of Federally subsidized solar panels that are threatening to crowd out farming and eliminate real jobs in the agriculture industry.

There appears to be no end to the insanity of Socialist Democrats with or without the leadership of Comrade Obama.  Because, make no mistake, their insanity is not limited to Obama.  Killing the American Dream of free enterprise, jobs and wealth is deep in the Democratic Party itself. 

The conflict has been building throughout the Central Valley over the last year, even sparking a lawsuit against the Fresno County Board of Supervisors by the California Farm Bureau Federation last month.

Closer to home, the issue came to a head at the Kern County Board of Supervisor's meeting, reports Lois Henry of the Bakersfield Californian.


The solar industry will kill jobs
in California.


A slew of tax incentives and federal stimulus dollars have made solar energy production both increasingly attractive and feasible in recent years, igniting what had been the sleepy cousin of renewable energy.

Even more recently, Pacific Gas & Electric worked a deal with the California Public Utilities Commission to fast track large scale solar energy facilities that could plug directly into utility substations throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

Hence, the great Central Valley solar rush is on.

Kern County planners suddenly found themselves with 32 proposals for solar power generation facilities encompassing 17,000 acres of solar panels.

About 9,000 of those acres are considered prime farmland.

Productive farm land can churn $3,000 to $4,000 per acre back into the local economy via permanent jobs, seed, fertilizer, vehicle purchase and repairs, etc., according to local farmers.

After all who needs local jobs and locally grown food?  That is crazy talk to want those.  Let's just keep using tax dollars to pave over our farm land and eliminate jobs.  What could possibly go wrong?

For more about the insanity of job killing Socialism see our article THE FEDERALIST - "The People's Republic of California."


Sean Hannity - "Federal made dust bowl" (2009)

Save a fish  -  Kill a farm
Would France rip out its storied vineyards? Would Juan Valdez scorch Colombia's coffee crop? Sri Lanka its black pepper harvest? China its tea?  But the Socialist Government of the US is using the Endangered Species Act to "save" a fish and kill our agriculture industry.



Joe Marchini of Marchini Farms stands in front a water cutbacks sign on the flanks of
his field and highway 99 near Chowchilla, Calif.  “Man-made drought,” the signs
draped across fences or cotton trailers at the edge of fields proclaim in large,
bold letters. (AP Photo/GosiaWozniacka)


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Rick Perry: "We need a part-time Congress"



On paper Governor Rick Perry was the perfect candidate.  Oh well.  Such is life.  But many of his ideas are good.


The Perry plan is great, but it is too little, too late to save his campaign


Rick Perry has challenged House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to debate him next week about his plan for a part-time Congress.

In a letter to Pelosi (D-Calif.) obtained by The Hill, the Texas governor wrote: "I am in Washington Monday and would love to engage you in a public debate about my Overhaul Washington plan versus the congressional status quo.

"I think it would be a tremendous service to the American people to see a public airing of these differences," he continued. "Let the people decide. If Monday doesn't work, perhaps we could find a time in Iowa over the course of the next month to discuss these issues in front of the people of America's heartland."


 It is funny how Congressmen get
richer while in office.

 Yes to a Part-Time Congress

Publicity stunt or not the Perry plan for a part-time Congress is exactly the reform that this nation needs.

These "full-time" political hacks get into Congress and will not leave.  They are full of self importance and grow a God complex.  After a couple of terms Washington D.C. becomes their new home and those simpleton morons back home who keep calling are just irritants to be avoided at all costs.

The tradition of the early American Republic was for a local to serve a term or two in Congress and then return home and go to work for a living just like everyone else.  George Washington is the best example of this attitude of limited public service.

Today not only do they never leave the Beltway, but they enrich themselves by crooked deals with special interests.

REFORM  -  Slash Congressional pay by 75%.  No benefits.  No pension.

Have Congress meet for 90 days to update any laws and pass a budget.  That being done Congress should adjourn, the members return to their districts and go back to work for a living in their old professions.  Working for a living like ordinary people might give them a new look on America.

This can easily be done by a majority vote of either chamber.  In fact, if the Republicans really cared about small government they have the votes to do it to it today the House.

But short of a revolt and blood in the streets this will never happen.  Deep down Congressmen and Senators think you are an idiot and that only they are smart enough to rule over you.  Without massive public pressure for reform no action will ever be taken. 

Political hacks will never vote to eliminate their own jobs.


.

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Drug Gangs Active in Mexico Elections



Former Senator Luisa Maria Calderon responds to supporters at a rally this summer in Morelia, the state capital of Michoacan, where she was the conservative National Action Party (PAN) candidate for governor.

Drug Gangs told voters to support the PRI in Governor's race

• A PAN mayor was assassinated a week before the election.
• "This is very dangerous, and if we permit it, narco-politics will have begun in Michoacan."

After centuries of dictatorship Mexico was well on its way to building a multi-party democracy . . . until the insane Drug War came along.  Now the drug gangs are undermining the new democracy.  Only the decriminalization or legalization of drugs will end the violence and the power of the gangs.

President Felipe Calderon's sister appears to have lost her bid for governor of Michoacan during violent state elections, and she alleged Monday that drug traffickers helped tip the race in favor of one of her opponents.

Preliminary results gave the lead in the race for governor of the western state to Fausto Vallejo of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI.

"The intervention by organized crime during the entire election process and especially yesterday is alarming, not just for Michoacan but for the entire country," Luisa Maria Calderon said in a radio interview a day after Sunday's vote. "They threatened our candidates, our poll workers.... They seized ballot boxes, set up roadblocks … and ordered people to vote" for the PRI, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The PRI ruled Mexico for seven decades until losing the presidency in 2000.

The PRI itself was long the giant of Mexican politics, a system more than a party imposed by a Mexican president in 1929 to exercise his power at every level of authority throughout the nation. For the next 71 years, the PRI literally beat off some challengers while buying off voters with benefits that often depended on support for the party.

The PRI is staging a comeback, and victory in Michoacan is an important step in that effort. The PRI is hoping to win the presidential election in July.

.
The PRI's Fausto Vallejo Figueroa won a 35- to 33-point victory over his closest competitor, Luisa Maria Calderon, who is the sister of President Felipe Calderon. Finishing a distant third with 29 percent was the party that has dominated the state in recent years, the Democratic Revolution Party, or the PRD.

The head of the PRD, Jesus Zambrano, echoed Calderon, saying: "Organized crime worked yesterday on behalf of the PRI candidate.... This is very dangerous, and if we permit it, narco-politics will have begun in Michoacan, and next we will see it in 2012."

"It was a referendum on the PRD during the last 10 to 12 years. Violence has increased and economic issues that have led to migration have not changed," Shannon O'Neil, an expert on Mexican politics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Michoacan has long been dominated by drug cartels specializing in marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. It is President Calderon's home state, and he chose Michoacan to launch a military-led offensive against traffickers in December 2006. Yet violence has persisted.

A PAN mayor was assassinated a week before the election as he campaigned for Luisa Maria Calderon, and numerous candidates quit local races out of fear.

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Comrade Obama "rigged" 2010 election

Solyndra (at the urging of Obama's hacks) waited until one day after the midterm elections to announce the layoffs

• Socialists pour Billions into businesses that do not exist.
• Comrade Obama now stops a business that DOES exist  -  the Canada oil pipeline.

By Gary;

The Department of Energy pushed “very hard” for failed solar panel maker Solyndra LLC to delay announcing layoffs until after the Nov. 2, 2010, midterm elections, contradicting claims that politics played no role in the administration’s handling of the now-bankrupt company.

Newly released emails show staff at one of the major investors for Solyndra discussing how the Energy Department was being cooperative, but “they did push very hard for us to hold our announcement of the consolidation to employees and vendors to Nov. 3rd - oddly they didn’t give a reason for that date.”

However, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a memo released Tuesday, said emails produced by the major investor, Argonaut Private Equity, reference how the layoff announcement was postponed because of the Nov. 2 elections.


Oil?  Who on earth needs oil
and jobs?

 Solyndra was held up by the administration as a success story of the federal stimulus program after it won more than a half-billion dollars in federal loans in 2009, but the company filed for bankruptcy in September. Days later, the FBI raided the Solyndra's headquarters in California to search for information about customer contracts.

Solyndra waited until one day after the midterm elections to announce the layoffs and the closure of one of its facilities.

Green Marxism

Socialist Democrats have no interest in creating jobs or wealth.  I take part of that back.  Democrats are happy to "create wealth" by pumping tax dollars into the wallets of those who contribute to their party.

See our article on the Green Marxist allies of the Socialist Democrats who are shutting down the American economy.  THE FEDERALIST - "Beetles, Luddites and Environmentalists."

Now Comrade Obama is delaying the Canada oil pipeline until after the election.  If Obama is re-elected he will kill the project.

The Green Marxists and their Democrat allies use evey possible environmental law to prevent the creation of jobs.  What is amazing is private sector labor unions are still supporting Democrats when Democrats are killing union jobs.

As bad as Republicans are they at least believe private enterprise should exist.


The American Burying Beetle.
The latest "Poster Child" of Environmentalism to prevent the creation of jobs and wealth.  The "endangered" beetle is being used to destroy the Canada oil pipeline project.  So-called environmentalism is now a tool of Marxists to bring down the American economy.

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We need to destroy education in order to save it



Connections is a ten-episode documentary television series created, written and
presented by science historian James Burke that broke the mold of teaching.



How the Education Industry fails to teach children


In school we heard "In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and other such nonsense of learning silly names and dates.

Then in the 1970s and 1980s I was shocked to the core by two BBC series by Science Historian James Burke:  Connections  and later the great The Day the Universe Changed.

The genius of Burke was showing that events in history do not happen in isolation.  That the world then and now is a complex web of Connections and inter-connections.

Burke tracks through 12,000 years of history for the clues that lead us to eight great life changing inventions-the atom bomb, telecommunications, the computer, the production line, jet aircraft, plastics, rocketry and television. Burke postulates that such changes occur in response to factors he calls triggers, some of them seemingly unrelated. These have their own triggering effects, causing change in totally unrelated fields as well.  (Connections DVD)

Burke opened my mind to the way the world really works.

Now I have run across Sir Ken Robinson who also has radical ideas on education . . . or I might say, the way we mis-educated the young people in school.

VIDEO  -  The Failure of Education

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

Sir Ken Robinson, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in the development of education, creativity and innovation.  He is also one of the world’s leading speakers with a profound impact on audiences everywhere.  The videos of his famous 2006 and 2010 talks to the prestigious TED Conference have been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries.

He works with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations.  (Sir Ken Robinson)

China cracks down on the Press



The Chinese Communist Party is threatening reporters that their press credentials will be revoked for between five years and life if they recycled "untrue" information from the internet or phone texting.

Unrest and instability  -  China has banned journalists from getting their information from the internet because it might cause social unrest.

With more than 400 million Chinese now using social networks to spread information in real time, the Communist party has fretted over how to stay in control.

China's leaders, already spooked by the rapid spread of the Arab Spring pro-democracy movement, worry that rumors on the internet, and then picked up by journalists, could lead to unrest and instability.

In a statement posted on its website on Thursday, the General Administration of Press and Publications said reporters would have their press credentials revoked for between five years and life if they recycled untrue information from the internet or mobile phone messages, reports the UK Telegraph.

Reporters "must insist on doing their reporting in the field and not rely on unverified hearsay or other non-first-hand information in their reports", the regulations say.

Journalists will also be required to produce at least two sources for news reports and to personally conduct interviews when quoting people.

"False reports not only seriously hurt the interests of the parties involved, but also seriously undermine the credibility of the news media, or even seriously affect the social and economic order," the bureau told Xinhua, the state news agency.

Since 2010, the press administration said, more than one in five of its investigations of "illegal news publishing" involved false reports.

The Chinese media is censored retrospectively, and journalists are expected to toe the line or face punishment. The latest warning appears to be another shot across the bows to urge journalists to double check their information, and to avoid contentious issues.


Proper thinking will be rewarded.  Unapproved thinking will be punished.

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Democracy is a Bitch



Democracy is a Bitch.

The pro-Russian candidate for President of Kyrzgyzstan won 63% of the vote.  Rumors swirling around the capital Bishkek said that Russia supported Atambayev's election campaign  (Photo: REUTERS)


Election winner to USA:  'Pack up your military and get the Hell out of my country.'


Almazbek Atambayev, Kyrzgyzstan's new president-elect, in virtually his first act since being elected, has told the US it will have to give up its airbase in Central Asia by 2014.  The action seriously impacts the ability of the United States to supply the war in Afghanistan.

The news will heighten concern in the West that Almazbek Atambayev's election victory means Kyrgyzstan will drift further under the Kremlin's patronage.

Although the fee that the US pays Kyrgyzstan for the lease of the airbase is one of the former Soviet state's main incomes, Atambayev said that the chance of a revenge attack by one of the US's enemies was a risk he did not want to take, reports the UK Telegraph.

"We know that the United States is often engaged in conflict. First in Iraq, then in Afghanistan, and now relations are tense with Iran," he said.

"I would not want for one of these countries to launch a retaliatory strike on the military base."

The US airbase in Kyrgyzstan has always been controversial. Locals have complained about alleged environmental damage and politicians have said in the past that it should close but Atambayev's statement is the most explicit.

America Loses Central Asia Base
Afghanistan is very isolated.  Unlike bureaucrats in Washington, many Americans with common sense knew there were huge dangers in supply lines thousands of miles long going deep in a hostile Central Asia. 



To the irritation of Russia, the US has leased the airbase for a decade to support Nato operations in Afghanistan. The Kremlin considers Central Asia part of its special sphere of influence.

Most Kyrgyz consider Russia a key ally and Mr Atambayev was careful to stress his pro-Russia credentials during the recent election campaign. This tactic appears to have paid off as he won 63 per cent in the election on Sunday, a far bigger proportion of the vote than analysts had expected.

Loss of Manas impacts US war effort in Afghanistan

Manas airfield is a key transit hub for the Afghanistan war. But given the weakness of other supply routes, the loss would deal a major blow.

Manas became more crucial after Uzbekistan closed a similar base to the US military in 2005. NATO shifted the operations from Uzbekistan – refueling, moving troops and ammunition – to the Afghan airbase at Bagram.

A Manas shutdown would further strain the re-supplying of troops in Afghanistan. Security is also more of an issue at Bagram than at a base located outside the warzone.

Few other air bases in the region can handle the massive, long-haul planes that the former Soviet base of Manas can accommodate

The closure of Manas would be a big blow. That is why Gen. Petraeus and Gen. McChrystal and others have invested a lot in trying to persuade Bakiyev the former president not to close the base.  (Christian Science Monitor)

US military aircraft line up at the Manas US military base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to supply
the US war effort in Afghanistan.

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US Marines going to Australia to counter China

The U.S. Marines are going to Australia to counter Chinese power in the Pacific. 

From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Darwin, Australia

Barack Obama is expected to reveal plans to station about 500 to 1000 Marines at a barracks in Darwin and to expand the US navy's use of bases at the Northern Territory capital and in Perth in Western Australia.

Eventually it will build up to a 2,500-person Marine Air Ground Task Force.

He will make the announcement in Australia during a visit that includes Hawaii and Indonesia designed to assert America's commitment to the Asia Pacific region, reports the UK Telegraph.

The bases would be beyond the expanding range of new Chinese missiles, which can reach the main US Pacific bases on Okinawa island in Japan and the small island territory of Guam, east of the Philippines.

The US Marines are reportedly due to be positioned at the Robertson barracks in Darwin, effectively the nearest mainland Australian military base to China. But the fresh US presence would also involve additional use of aircraft of air bases in the north west of the country and further access to training ranges.


The US Marines and other units will deploy to Darwin, Australia in a move to counted China/

The move comes amid a realignment of US forces across the Asia-Pacific and growing pressure to lighten its presence on Okinawa, where local politicians have called for a troop reduction as part of a planned relocation of a controversial US base.

Kevin Rudd, the Australian foreign minister, said: "From the Australian perspective, here we are with a vast coastline, a population of just 23 million. It has always made national security sense to have a strong security alliance with America."

But there are also heightened concerns across the region about China's strengthening military capability and its apparent growing willingness to assert its presence across the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Western Pacific. In June, China was accused of harassing Vietnamese and Filipino vessels in the South China Sea, while the arrest by Japan of a Chinese trawler last year led to a diplomatic standoff between Beijing and Tokyo.

No US troops are stationed in Australia – though forces have visited since 1907 - and analysts say the move is likely to be badged as a "rotation" rather than a permanent deployment.

"The US could build their forces up quickly in places like Australia out of missile range from China," a professor of international security at Sydney University, Alan Dupont, told the Telegraph.

"A lot of Japanese facilities in Okinawa are quite vulnerable to the new generation of Chinese missile capabilities. It is arguably one of the most important shifts in both US and Australian strategic policy in the past 20 years."

Australia's defense minister, Stephen Smith, said Australia would seek to expand "practical cooperation" with the US but would not agree to a Marine base in the country. At present, the main US military presence in Australia is limited to a joint satellite tracking station at Pine Gap, in the Northern Territory, and a naval communication station in Western Australia.


"The US could build their forces up quickly in places like Australia out of missile range from China," a professor of international security at Sydney University, Alan Dupont, told the Telegraph.

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American Concentration Camps



As a 17 year old boy Eb Fuhr was arrested by the FBI at his Ohio high school and sent to the Crystal City, Texas Concentration Camp.  No right to a trial.  No right to an attorney.



Bill of Rights?  What Bill of Rights?
During World War II German-Americans were also rounded up by the Federal Government and placed in Concentration Camps.



Every day a little more freedom is taken away from Americans in violation of the Bill of Rights.  Often the loss of freedom is declared "legal" by our corrupt court system.  Almost always the freedom is taken away in the name of either local or national security.

Words to fear:  "We are the government and we are here to help you."

Here is a story of a little known part of World War II where German and Italian Americans were rounded up for our protection.  No right to a trial.  No right to an attorney.

It should be noted that the Axis Powers had many allies:  Finland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and so on.  But immigrants from those nations were not rounded up and placed in camps.  I suspect the camps were more for public relations than real security.  Imprison some 41,000 Japanese, Germans and Italians and the public will think they are safe and will ignore the fact that millions of immigrants from Fascist nations were in the U.S.

Eberhard Fuhr's Story

82-year old Eberhard Fuhr says he has lived the American dream. Growing up in Cincinnati, Fuhr was called "Eb" by his friends and spent much of his time playing sports, including high school football.

"We had a rotten team. We lost every game," he reminisces.

While Fuhr described his childhood as idyllic, a dark shadow was cast on his own personal history.

One day in March of 1943, 17-year-old Fuhr was arrested. He was just six weeks shy of graduating.

"I was in my classroom at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The principal came in and asked me to step into the hallway. I was arrested by two FBI agents," he said.

Internee men at lunch at the Crystal City camp.

As he was being led away, Fuhr was aware that he might never see his friends at school again.

"They didn’t cuff me inside the school, but the minute we left the front door I was cuffed," he said.

Fuhr was charged with being an enemy alien for the German government and put in detention.

He came to the United States with his parents when he was 3-years-old and was still a nationalized German. His parents had already been arrested and put in a internment camp 8 months earlier. Now Eb and his U.S. born little brother were joining them in Crystal City, Texas.

Fuhr would spend the next four and half years in government custody, most of it at Crystal City, which was the site of the largest German internment camp in the nation. Click here for a drawing of the internment camp.

The Department of Justice made what some call a propaganda film about the Crystal City camp.

The film opens with a shot of the American flag and a woman with a deep Texas twang reads in a harsh school teacher tone the government’s view of life in the camp.

WWII German American Internment Camps

While the Japanese who were detained were organized, vocal and able to receive an apology from the United States government, the Germans seem almost embarrassed.

"Karen Ebel's father Max Ebel was a German citizen interned in the United States during World War II.  She said her father kept his experiences secret for most of his life."



The Graber family in 1943 on their way
to the Crystal City "Family" Camp.

 "He actually didn’t ever talk about it until he was in his eighties, and I was rather shocked to learn that he was in an internment camp during World War Two," she said.
 Ebel founded the German American Internee Coalition, which is pushing the government to take a new look at the internment program and ask some questions.

"What happened with the German-Americans and the Italian-Americans and the German and the Latin Americans who were brought up here? There were many Latin Americans who were brought up here from nineteen different Latin American countries," she said.

Ebel says the Department of Justice program was massive at a time when the government was scrambling for resources to fight WWII. But did the program make the United States any safer?

None of the German-Americans were found to have been spies or saboteurs for the Nazis.

Ebel says the legal process that put people in detention camps was not concerned with questions of innocence, just being a suspect made you guilty. And something as simple as subscribing to a German newspaper was enough to make you a suspect.

"They had no right to counsel. They couldn’t question the proceedings. They couldn’t question their accusers. It was pretty much a slam dunk process."

Crystal City, Texas Internment Camp 1945
A Department of Justice film 

Even legal challenges of habeas corpus failed in the courts. Historian Michael Luick-Thrams is an expert on the U.S. internment camps. He has created a special traveling exhibit about the German-American internment experience.

"The system wasn’t very practical. It wasn’t very effective. There were many more cost-effective and human resource-effective ways to have done this, but, in effect, we put fifteen thousand German-Americans, about six thousand Italian-Americans and one hundred and twenty thousand Japanese-Americans in camps. That’s a lot of people," said Luick-Thrams.

"In this country do we really round people up in the middle of the night, put them behind twelve foot tall barbed wire fences with searchlights and guards, and then give them no lawyers to get themselves out? Don’t we give people the opportunity to explain themselves? How do we want to live in this country? So those histories are much more relevant to how we live today than calico bonnets and log cabins," he said.   (Texas Public Radio)

Also read our article THE FEDERALIST - "Justice Department lied to the Supreme Court so Japanese-Americans could be shipped to internment camps."

1945 Texas Historical Commission photo of the Crystal City Concentration Camp.

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BIG BROTHER now has an eye in the sky



"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed--would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper--the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 1



Big Brother  -  A California City will record your every movement from the sky and then transmit those images to the Sheriff's Department in order to "protect" you.



Big Brother is totally bi-partisan.  Each party for reasons of their own wants to watch and control people 24-7.  Now we have the Republican city of Lancaster, California putting a Big Brother eye-in-the-sky to watch us and "protect" us.

Bull Shit.

The aerial surveillance program, slated to begin by May, will involve a piloted Cessna 172 fixed-wing aircraft with high-tech optical equipment that will record the movements of people on the ground. The plane will circle the Antelope Valley city at altitudes of 1,000 to 3,000 feet some 10 hours a day.

The technology, developed by the Lancaster-based Spiral Technology, Inc., includes the use of infrared imaging. It will record video footage that will be transmitted to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, reports the Los Angeles Times.


Lancaster, California is in the high desert
of northern Los Angeles County.

 The program is expected to cost $1.3 million to launch. Financing will come from existing funds in the fiscal year budget, city officials said. The charge for surveillance is expected to run around $300 an hour, or about $90,000 a month. The aircraft will be fueled and maintained at a Lancaster airfield.


"People who have done nothing wrong shouldn't have anything they do in their yards or homes subject to video surveillance from the sky," said Peter Bibring, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "To the extent that it involves observing things which a typical pilot overhead might not be able to see, it raises serious constitutional questions."

The ACLU has filed a California public records request to get further details about the program. The group wants specific information such as the capability of the cameras, how long the video will be kept and whether images gathered by the Sheriff's Department will be public record, Bibring said.

"I think we have a privacy problem, and I think the city is going to have a lot of lawsuits," longtime Lancaster resident Ed Galinda told the City Council.

Residents Danelda Robbins and Lyndey Williams expressed concern that sheriff's officials harboring personal vendettas might direct the plane's pilot to focus on specific neighborhoods and target particular people.

"It's our goal to become the safest city in America," Republican Mayor R. Rex Parris said in an interview.

A $90,000 a month spy plane uses infrared imaging.  It will record video footage that will be transmitted to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

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