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'Nuclear Free' Maryland City Grants Waiver For HP
dcblogs writes "The City of Takoma Park, Md. this week granted a waiver to its public library to allow it to use some new HP hardware, whose products are otherwise banned under its 'nuclear free zone' ordinance. That law, adopted in 1983 one month after the Cold War-era movie 'The Day After' was aired, prohibits the city from buying equipment from any company connected to U.S. nuclear weapons production. The library bought new Linux-based, x86 systems from a Canadian vendor and didn't realize the vendor was using HP hardware. The hardware arrived in April and was unused until the Takoma Park city council granted it a waiver this week. The city's list of banned contractors was developed in 2004 by a now inactive group, Nuclear Free America, and hasn't been updated since."
Movies, not reason, dictates their city policy.
How much funding does the city have set aside to fight off 'illegal restraint of trade' lawsuits?
Maybe they should extend the ban to companies involved with biowarfare (agar, petri dishes, thermal control chambers), or to cyberwarfare (Microsoft, RedHat, and your son's best friend who became a script kiddy last night).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
"Nuclear free" is sooo 1980s. It's all about "greenness" now. You need to update your pc checklists monthly.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
PCs in Maryland function in much the same way their automobiles are driven.
Hordes of monkeys fighting for control of an abacus.
Really? Can not buy anything from a company that is related to US nuclear weapons production? Really? What a stupid do nothing make everybody feel good while accomplishing nothing lets all hold hands and sing Kumbaya crap law!
No, wrong problem. The REAL problem is that HP is involved in US nuclear weapons production. And now Microsoft is making their computer manufacturing partners very very angry, and one of those manufacturers is HP...
Stay away from the Redmond, WA area for the time being, is all I'm saying.
Takoma Park has long been a center for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and 7DAs tend to be pacifists.
When Pixar was still a hardware company making graphics accelerators, Steve sold one to a DOD contractor. He had to get a security clearance to do so. Someone got the clearance data using FOI and posted a couple weeks ago. Both this and Nuclear Free Zones is some extreme government bureaucracy.
ahhh, Takoma Park, MD! If you lived in that town, you'd be pretty pissed about the waiver, actually.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Because illegal aliens tend to be anti-nuke?
No, because they almost exclusively vote Democrat.
Regardless of any good reasons you might have to like the Democrats, it is they who stand to benefit from voter fraud and allowing illegal aliens to vote. That's why they raise such a huge stink whenever the requirement of photo ID to vote is mentioned. They use their old standby of how "racist" this would be, even though a photo ID is free in some states and very cheap in others. Not to mention it's racist of THEM to suggest that just because someone is Black or Hispanic they automatically can't afford a small fee.
Anyway when it comes to illegals voting or standard voter fraud (dead people voting, etc), I wouldn't want the Republicans to get votes this way. Why should the Democrats get a pass? I don't think enough people appreciate just how critically important it is that we have honest elections. Rigged elections are a threat to our very way of life in this country.
Many cities and other municipalities have ordinances like this. Why is this one instance news?
The real lesson has nothing to do with any particular city being "nuclear free" or "sanctuary" or anything else in particular. The lesson is that government passes laws and leaves them on the books ad infinitum without ever revisiting them to see if they need updating or outright repeal. In this case, the special interest group that pushed for the law's latest version of specifics no longer exists. I bet people in that community have bumper stickers saying "question authority" but won't ever think of bringing up statues from the 80's for review,
Plenty of Democrats are pro-nuke. So you're lacking a middle term for your syllogism. Even if it is true that most illegal immigrants that vote do so for Democrats, that doesn't explain why it's no surprise that the city council (and the voters at large in the city) are both anti-nuke and supportive of suffrage for non-citizens in local elections.
Moreover, this is not about voter fraud. This is about a city that lawfully has broader criteria for who gets to vote in local elections. It's not about state or federal elections which have their criteria set by the state and federal government. So there is no fraud at hand.
Do they refuse to accept tax payments from any residents who are employed by any company with ties to the nuclear industry? Because that would be blood money, yanno?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Takoma Park has long been a center for the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and 7DAs tend to be pacifists.
Just FYI, Takoma Park's liberalness (which includes a bead store, vegan restaurants and the rest) has little to do with the Adventists, who aren't really a force in town. Instead, Takoma Park has a long hippy tradition and is filled with aging boomers who moved to the community because of its reputation as a liberal enclave. It's often referred to as the "Berkely of the East" and other such monickers.
My favorite nuclear free story growing up was that the police department looked for a while like it was going to have to buy Volvo squad cars, because every other major manufacturer had some toe hold in nuclear weapons. Not sure how they managed to avoid that, but they did. Similarly, when the transit authority wanted to build a major highway right through the middle of Takoma Park (which at that point was a sleepy middle class suburb full of WWII bungallos), the local community rallied together and killed the massive highway plan on the Maryland side of Washington, DC. Those techies in Northern Virginia who enjoy the Mixed Bowl during their morning commute see what could have happened to Maryland. Of course, nothing's that simple -- but it's refreshing that there's still a place that combates global warming by banning gasoline-powered lawn mowers.....
Takoma Park was a great place to grow up. Crazy as they are, it's refreshing to have such a community of idealists. Even though it seems like the whole community has gentrified over the last few years, I still love it, even as I've transitioned to the Dark Side (business! Eeek!)
Say what? ANY company "involved"?
I suspect to make nuclear weapons, you need, like, EVERYTHING. Bricks, mortar, screwdrivers, voltmeters, paper, pencils, pens, pipes (lots of pipes), cars, gasoline, welding rods, drill presses, lathes, etc, etc, etc, etc..............
I think you'd be blocking the buying of almost everything, except maybe nail salon services.
How do they handle smoke detection, since the radioactive americium detectors in them are all manufactured by defense contractors that also work with other nuclear materials, including bombs?
This is why I like the idea of having ALL laws auto-sunset every 10 years(or so).
1. Keep legislatures busy re-approving old laws rather than passing new
2. Get a review of the old laws going.
I don't read AC A human right
You have no clue what it was like back in the early 80's; nuclear war was a horrifying possibility, and if a town wanted to make a statement against the idiotic proliferation of nuclear weapons then good for them.