'Smart Meters' Come to Hudson Valley

It seems there are drawbacks for every new convenience promised by a new technological device. Often too, it seems like we are going out of our way to reinvent the wheel. Personal computers are a familiar example. Do they really save us any time in the long run, after you spend hours and hours doing system maintenance or trying to dig out a virus? And how many of us have lost precious data, sometimes our entire system, because there was no actual tangible copy on paper? A tragedy on the order of having your house literally burn down in some cases. Not to mention too, that it makes information much more accessible for those with nefarious aims. These so called "smart meters" being rolled out by utility companies across the country are a perfect example of this double-edged sword.

When you use a common utility such as electricity, which we tend to take so much for granted in the modern era, that usage is monitored by a meter for each billed address. Often that meter is placed in the back of a residential home, or sometimes in a utility room of an apartment building or other large multi-unit structure. Once a month, or maybe once every two or three months depending on your utility company, a worker would come out and read the meter to see how much energy you had used, measured in kilowatt-hours, which of course would then determine your bill. This is pretty much how it has been done since the late 1800's. That is about to make a significant change now though, with these new smart-meters. 

RED HOOK — Karen Jerro runs One Less Thing, a business that provides personal assistance and professional organization services. Her job often demands sudden schedule changes and travel. So when Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. began a pilot program in the Red Hook area that allows residential and small business customers to monitor and control electricity use remotely, she signed up.

“I think it’s a great program,” she said.

The utility’s Home Energy Saver pilot program, in development for more than a year, is set to begin testing in July. The program offers free “smart” meters, thermostats and controllers to customers who have appliances that demand high energy use — central air conditioners, large pool pumps or electric water heaters. The devices allow customers to monitor and adjust their energy use, either at home or remotely via the Internet. And they allow Central Hudson to collect data and, when necessary, turn those devices off from the central office.

The system seeks to yield costs savings for customers, and gives Central Hudson the potential to control energy demands across the network during peak-usage events such as heat waves.

The utility also admits that if it can find ways to lower energy demands across its network, it can delay spending money on upgrades to that network’s infrastructure. Similar systems are in place elsewhere across the country.

In some places they have been met with controversy, particularly over the use of the smart meters. Some customers have expressed concerns over everything from the health impacts of the transmissions emanating from the meters, to worries about whether their data are being safeguarded.

Article continues at link: 

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20120605/NEWS04/306050031/Central-Hudson-begins-smart-meter-roll-out?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com|s

The fact that Central Hudson is giving away these meters for free is a sign that the real advantage is not to the consumer. New technology always has the allure of being trendy, and giving a person social status. We all want to be the first to have a new gadget, and come to believe we can't live without something our neighbors have. Customers here are being lured by the promise of convenience and lower bills, but there are some major pitfalls.

On the one hand, electronically micro-managing your electricity usage may shave pennies off your bill here and there, but you could do that yourself by installing timers on your appliances and devices rather than relying on the utility company's system. More to the point though, this will likely lead to Central Hudson charging different rates, to different customers, at different times of day and for different usage demands making bills a nightmare for the customer to interpret in order to explain why they are paying more than ever before. Imagine if the the clerk at the gas station could suddenly see your driving habits, and charge you more because you are a lead-foot, or because you take recreational drives rather than just driving when necessary. Now imagine he could sell that information to your insurance company, to the police. Now imagine too that the clerk could remotely shut down your car for a few hours today, because there is a lot of traffic out there on the road causing congestion and smog. The smart-meter technology puts that power in the hands of the electric company.

It gives the utility company direct access to and control over your appliances and systems, to turn them on or off at their own discretion, not yours. Sure, it may be a convenience to be able to turn down your heating thermostat from the office in order to save a few pennies when you unexpectedly work late, but you also give Central Hudson the power to turn off your air-conditioning in the middle of a hot summer afternoon. They say you can override their decision and turn the system back on, but doing so will probably lead to a premium rate being applied rather than the standard rate charged to regular customers. This also assumes that you are even home to override Central Hudson's decision to turn off your system. Imagine that you are at work, and decide to remotely turn on the air-conditioning in the middle of the afternoon to cool down the house because you are getting out of work early. You get home expecting to find your house cooled down, only to find instead that Central Hudson turned off the air-conditioning right after you had turned it on. Or worse yet, you come home to find a dead pet because Central Hudson turned off the air-conditioning without you knowing. Imagine too, you are away for a week in the middle of winter, and the heat in your home is accidentally turned off, perhaps due to some glitch in the system or error by a utility worker manning the switchboard. Again you come home to find dead pets, and burst plumbing pipes.

Now imagine what sort of mischief could be done by an angry ex who still has your account password, or a criminal who has hacked into the system. The smart meter makes a wireless burst transmission of your data over Verizon's 4G cellular network, for 60 seconds every single day. That is plenty of time for a computer hacker to snatch the information right out of the air. And these are only just a few of the problems with this new technology.

Based on these considerations alone, there are so many plausible scenarios of how these smart-meters could cost you a whole heap of money and aggravation. It's also curious that these are being rolled out just as the utility company shifts from being a local business, to one that was bought out by a foreign company. In a standard risk-versus-reward analysis, these smart-meters don't seem like a very smart choice at all.







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Fascist Food and Nutrition Nazis

In the article "Let Them Eat Cake!" Or the Tale of American Nutricide we took a long hard look at the vast complexities of what is happening to our food, and our health. Who knew that eating and keeping healthy could be so difficult and fraught with so many pitfalls? In Fat Tax: The Socio-Economics of Obesity we delved into the government's favorite answer to the public health crisis we are facing today. To tax us into submission, or tax us to thinner waistlines. But it is by no means the government's only answer. Answers which are often counter-productive to the stated goal, answers which are contrary to the ideals of Constitutional liberty, or answers which are simply a waste of time and money. 

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made a crusade of interfering in private business and personal choices over the years. He banned virtually all smoking outdoors in the city filled with the stink of urine and exhaust smog, and has made several assaults on how New Yorker's eat. When trans-fats were made illegal the initiative was not without controversy, but in the end Nanny Bloomberg had his way. Of course, no one is saying that trans-fats are good for you, or that restaurants should not be encouraged to use more healthy alternatives, but it seems rather overbearing of a city's mayor to intervene in such a way.

At the same time that the city was in a fiscal pinch and some researchers were recommending an 18% tax on pizza and soda, the Mayor reversed his earlier position on such a proposal and jumped on board saying that a soda tax "just makes sense." That initiative stalled, but now the Mayor has made a new assault on soda-pop, pushing to ban anything larger than a 16-ounce container. While espousing the virtues of a smaller cup, he conveniently ignores everything else. For one, it will drive up consumer costs of course, while not actually stopping the offender from drinking more, or having to get up and get another cup-full of soda three or four times during a movie while chowing down on a tub of greased and sodium-laced popcorn. But maybe that is the real goal here for the beverage company stockholder, to drive up consumer costs and company profits. This initiative suddenly becomes more reminiscent of his move to ban soda from NYC schools, while awarding an exclusive contract to Snapple to provide beverages which are actually higher in calories than soda. Diet soda, fortified with chemicals and cancer-causing aspartame would be exempt under this latest push by the Mayor, but so would fruit juices which have a comparable caloric count to regular soda. Also exempt, milk products, so that you could still opt for a thousand-calorie milkshake at McDonald's, or the gut-busting 1,790-calorie Gotta-Have-It-sized Lotta Caramel Latte from Cold Stone Creamery, instead of a 242-calorie 20-ounce Coke. Speaking in an interview, beverage-bully Bloomberg actually had the audacity to say  "We're Simply Forcing You To Understand"  as if the government or any Mayor should be forcing people to do anything in a free country. More and more government and officials act like they have the right to play Big Brother over our lives, to dictate what is best for us, when in fact they are actively doing things to make us fatter.

On the Federal level, we have seen agents go after Amish farmers as if they were cocaine kingpins for daring to sell raw organic milk to people, who see it as a much healthier option than factory processed milk.

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

The product in question: unpasteurized milk.

It’s a battle that’s been going on behind the scenes for years, with natural foods advocates arguing that raw milk, as it’s also known, is healthier than the pasteurized product, while the Food and Drug Administration says raw milk can carry harmful bacteria such as salmonella, E. coli and listeria.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/28/feds-sting-amish-farmer-selling-raw-milk-locally/

But who are the FDA really protecting? The consumer, or the corporations? Considering that the vast majority of E.Coli outbreaks come from products and facilities which are heavily regulated by the FDA, it seems that the FDA are the real threat. Raw milk is actually safer from infection, and of course much healthier and nutritious in general. Nevertheless, there have been a number of cases like this where the Feds swarm over a farm in the dark hours of the morning, as if raw milk was enriched uranium. It doesn't end there either.

It seems there really is a war on to prevent you from eating natural and healthy foods. While milk products may be exempt from serving-size caps in New York City, out in Los Angeles and San Diego folks who legally purchase raw milk are now being harassed and threatened by Department of Health agents who demand that they turn over the offending product to them.

 "I received a phone call yesterday morning from a wonderful young gal, a 36-year-old mom out of LA County. She's one of our UPS customers that we deliver overnight raw milk to her house. When the CDFA was in here the other day on our recall, they demanded to have all our delivery addresses for overnight UPS delivery. We screwed up and [inadvertently] gave it to them, they got it from one of our secretaries here. The LA County health department started calling her, six or seven times, demanding that she give up her raw milk from her own home to the health department.

She refused, then they showed up at her house and demanded that she give her raw milk to them. She was getting ready to call 911 for the Sheriff's department and have them removed from her front doorstep, and she was threatening to use her camera to take a picture of them and post it on Facebook for harassing her over her raw milk... The investigators left after she told them she was not going to give them the raw milk and to get the Hell off her property.

This is what's going on, it's like food Nazis, it's incredible what these people are doing, trying to collect food from people's houses, that have not made them ill!

Then the San Diego health department called me up and said oh we want a list of all your buyer's club members, and I said no... and they said we want all their addresses and their names, because we want to go to their homes. I said it ain't happening, we aren't going to give it to you."

http://www.naturalnews.com/035895_food_police_raw_milk_confiscation.html

Armed raids by the police at the behest of health officials are likely not far off. Especially if children are involved in any way. The government has a particular affinity for using the "it's for the children" excuse time and time again in order to dictate how we run our lives, even when they are totally clueless about what is actually best for a person. In this case, it didn't take a raid from Federal agents or an overbearing big-city mayor to impose their will. This time the authority was left in the hands of an anonymous cafeteria monitor to know better than you what is best for your children.

RAEFORD — A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.

http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8762

So even when they are wrong, is the government always right? It would seem so when we take a look at this next story. If you make a public spectacle of yourself, sharing information that contradicts the so called experts who are licensed by the government, you might very well wind up in jail.

CHARLOTTE — The North Carolina Board of Dietetics/Nutrition is threatening to send a blogger to jail for recounting publicly his battle against diabetes and encouraging others to follow his lifestyle.

Chapter 90, Article 25 of the North Carolina General Statutes makes it a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling.”

Steve Cooksey has learned that the definition, at least in the eyes of the state board, is expansive.

When he was hospitalized with diabetes in February 2009, he decided to avoid the fate of his grandmother, who eventually died of the disease. He embraced the low-carb, high-protein Paleo diet, also known as the “caveman” or “hunter-gatherer” diet. The diet, he said, made him drug- and insulin-free within 30 days. By May of that year, he had lost 45 pounds and decided to start a blog about his success.

But this past January the state diatetics and nutrition board decided Cooksey’s blog — Diabetes-Warrior.net — violated state law. The nutritional advice Cooksey provides on the site amounts to “practicing nutrition,” the board’s director says, and in North Carolina that’s something you need a license to do.

Unless Cooksey completely rewrites his 3-year-old blog, he could be sued by the licensing board. If he loses the lawsuit and refuses to take down the blog, he could face up to 120 days in jail.


http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8992

Homeopathic or natural remedies are the bane of corporate medicine and the government which protects those interests. While they insist that this guy needs a license, they certainly aren't about to issue him one. If they did, then he would be bound not give the advice he is offering there in his blog, and instead would be obligated to spread the accepted doctrine. A convenient catch-22 that keeps power in the hands of those already in control, right or wrong.

So that is where we find ourselves. With alternatives outlawed, and our food choices made through fascist measures rather than instinct, personal choice, or independent thought.



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Obama Aims to Assassinate Teen Girl

In case you missed it, the President of the United States now claims the authority to assassinate anyone he chooses, for any reason, at any time, anywhere on the planet. This power is not checked or balanced in any way by any sort of due-process, warrant, judicial review, or even a national security finding. This arbitrary jurisdiction actually came into law under the Bush administration, but it does not appear to have been exercised by him. Instead, President Obama was the first to take this prerogative, and became the first President in history to assassinate a natural-born American citizen.

Protecting State Secrets: Obama Builds on Bush Doctrine

Despite the glaring contradiction with the Constitution and any sense of civilized justice, there will be those who justify Executive murder as "necessary" to fight Al-Qaeda. There are several key points that those folks ignore though, as apologists for despotism.

To begin with, we must first accept that assassination is even an effective tool in combating enemies of the United States. All moral questions aside, we must assume that a target would be better off dead, rather than captured. Assassination has, of course, been employed for as long men have practiced the art of war, but in this day and age it is much more complex than simply a matter of eliminating a famous enemy. In the case of Osama bin-Laden for example, taking him alive would have been preferable for a number of reasons, including intelligence extraction. There is much more to be considered aside from tactical doctrine too.

Now that the precedent has been set, there is no guarantee of any kind that the President will use this power exclusively against Al-Qaeda. After all, without so much as a hearing before a judge, we have no way of knowing if in fact these people he is ordering assassinated are even terrorists at all, of any kind. He could just as easily use this power to silence political opponents, business competitors, personal enemies, or even as a tool to keep secrets from being made public.

Even when considering assassination against targets said to be affiliated with terrorism, we have to understand how very loosely that can be defined.

To avoid counting civilian deaths, Obama re-defined "militant" to mean "all military-age males in a strike zone"

With drone strikes the preferred method of the President's assassination program, it is clear that all it takes now to be a terrorist is simply being in the wrong place at the right time. Meanwhile, the United States has actually armed and supported Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya, and now in Syria. That is, if one even accepts that there is any such thing as Al-Qaeda in the first place.

So understanding these few points, we see that the justifications do not actually stand the test of applied logic. Even if assassinations were to be a matter of some necessity, against any enemy, there is still no reason why the President alone must be the sole arbiter of that necessity. Nevertheless, that is what we have come to. In a nation founded on principles of limited government, distribution of power through checks-and-balances, liberty, and due-process, we now have a President who keeps a secret "kill list" of people he thinks should die. People who are not even accused of any crime, by any court of law. This list includes Americans, and even teenaged girls.

Be sure to read the in-depth expose on the subject by the New York Times:

Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will

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