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Gyro-Copter Lands On West Lawn of US Capitol, Pilot Arrested
An anonymous reader writes that Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida was arrested for landing a gyro-copter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. "A 61-year-old Florida mailman was arrested Wednesday after he landed a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol west lawn. The gyrocopter was carrying the pilot and 535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws. Doug Hughes told the Tampa Bay Times ahead of the afternoon stunt that he notified authorities 'well over an hour in advance of getting to the no-fly zone, so they know who I am and what I'm doing.' Capitol police sent dogs and a bomb squad to the scene. Nothing hazardous was found. A city block from the Capitol had been cordoned off."
Cut the guy some slack. He simply wanted to fly to D.C.; he had his own gyrocopter, and he really didn't feel like having his nuts groped by the TSA.
Can you really blame him?
I mean, I do not advocate the death penalty for stupidity, but I am shocked he wasn't hit by a sniper before he even crossed the property line.
A 61-year-old Florida mailman was arrested Wednesday after he landed a gyrocopter on the U.S. Capitol west lawn. The gyrocopter was carrying the pilot and 535 stamped letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws.
So in other words, they arrested a Federal Employee on Federal Property for doing his job.
...is now the SECOND-craziest SOB ever to fly one of those things.
a drone
Campaign finance reform is a somewhat partisan issue. Some Republicans oppose limits on campaign spending. Money can buy many things in Washington, but it can't buy votes. Bloomberg found that out in Colorado involving gun control. I wonder if Hillary or Jeb will be able to buy the presidency in 2016.
So, this guy published the the fact that he was going to do this on his blog and in email before he did it. Here's the quote from "Thehill.com":
On the webpage thedemocracyclub.org, he wrote: ''My flight is not a secret. Before I took off, I sent an Email to info@barackobama.com. The letter is intended to persuade the guardians of the Capitol that I am not a threat and that shooting me down will be a bigger headache than letting me deliver these letters to Congress.''
Tell me again, what our incredible spying and surveillance program is supposed to be doing? Because, I'm pretty sure this is the definition of "intelligence failure" in all senses of the phrase.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
One representative per ~500,000 citizens is not democracy.
I would love to see an organized protest (of anything) that involved a fleet of hundreds of quad-copters converging on the capital...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Simulated call...
Suspect: I'm going to deliver some mail by Gyrocopter on the west lawn of the capitol buliding. Here's my ID and flight plan.
Spook: Uhm, that's a no-fly zone...
Suspect: Thanks for letting me do this.
Spook: We'll have plenty of capitol police around you when you get there.
The US Government doesn't accept mail at sites anymore... they download it from Earth Class Mail.
> "An anonymous reader writes that Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida"...
I'm tired, and managed to somehow read that as "a mailman from Russia". I was pretty impressed with the guy's dedication, flying a gyro-copter all the way to DC!
Well... He'd have to, wouldn't he. After all, with global warming the ice bridge to Alaska is gone.... (grin)
One of the first produced autogyros was for mail delivery and landed on the White House lawn. That one got a trophy from Pres Hoover.
What is the exact ratio between citizens and representatives which defines a democracy?
All of this, of course, ignores the fact that the US is not, and has never been, an actual democracy. It is a Federal Republic.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Here is the problem with the news and the comments above.
I went on to deliver letters for members of Congress urging 'real reform' to campaign finance laws but nobody will remember him for that.
He'll be remembered as the guy whom landed a gyro-copter on the Capitol's lawn. This is sad.
I hate to break it to you... but we aren't a democracy, we are a republic.
Lets say we changed that ratio a bit... maybe 1 rep per 50k citizens... that would perhaps bump the number of reps to 4,350... do you think that would be any more workable?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
You see, only Jeff Bezos has special permission to be delivering mail and packages via a small helicopter. I guess Amazon got beat to the punch this time.
What a man. Even if you disagree with his message (I can't think of anyone who would) the sheer courage to go ahead with this plan is astounding. What a man. Can we donate to his legal fund yet?
It's more of a democracy than zero representatives per 500 000 citizens.
I'd be in favor of creating a third branch of congress, made up solely of people chosen at random from their respective states.
Give them the right to veto legislation, maybe not create bills, and otherwise oversee congress.
We'd have a federal democratic republic then.
Once he radioed in to tell them he was with the USPS the secret service knew for sure he could not possibly be an armed maniac.
Nullius in verba
Dear ___________,
Consider the following statement by John Kerry in his farewell speech to the Senate —
"The unending chase for money I believe threatens to steal our democracy itself. They know it. They know we know it. And yet, Nothing Happens!" — John Kerry, 2-13
In a July 2012 Gallup poll, 87% tagged corruption in the federal government as extremely important or very important, placing this issue just barely behind job creation. According to Gallup, public faith in Congress is at a 41-year record low, 7%. (June 2014) Kerry is correct. The popular perception outside the DC beltway is that the federal government is corrupt and the US Congress is the major problem. As a voter, I'm a member of the only political body with authority over Congress. I'm demanding reform and declaring a voter's rebellion in a manner consistent with Jefferson's description of rights in the Declaration of Independence. As a member of Congress, you have three options.
1. You may pretend corruption does not exist.
2. You may pretend to oppose corruption while you sabotage reform.
3. You may actively participate in real reform.
If you're considering option 1, you may wonder if voters really know what the 'chase for money' is. Your dismal and declining popularity documented by Gallup suggests we know, but allow a few examples, by no means a complete list. That these practices are legal does not make them right! Obviously, it is Congress who writes the laws that make corruption legal.
1. Dozens of major and very profitable corporations pay nothing in taxes. Voters know how this is done. Corporations pay millions to lobbyists for special legislation. Many companies on the list of freeloaders are household names — GE, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Verizon, Citigroup, Dow
2. Almost half of the retiring members of Congress from 1998 to 2004 got jobs as lobbyists earning on average fourteen times their Congressional salary. (50% of the Senate, 42% of the House)
3. The new democratic freshmen to the US House in 2012 were 'advised' by the party to schedule 4 hours per day on the phones fund raising at party headquarters (because fund raising is illegal from gov't offices.) It is the donors with deep pockets who get the calls, but seldom do the priorities of the rich donor help the average citizen.
4. The relevant (rich) donors who command the attention of Congress are only .05% of the public (5 people in a thousand) but these aristocrats of both parties are who Congress really works for. As a member of the US Congress, you should work only for The People.
1. Not yourself.
2. Not your political party.
3. Not the richest donors to your campaign.
4. Not the lobbyist company who will hire you after your leave Congress.
There are several credible groups working to reform Congress. Their evaluations of the problem are remarkably in agreement though the leadership (and membership) may lean conservative or liberal. They see the corrupting effect of money — how the current rules empower special interests through lobbyists and PACs — robbing the average American of any representation on any issue where the connected have a stake. This is not democracy even if the ritual of elections is maintained.
The various mechanisms which funnel money to candidates and congress-persons are complex. It happens before they are elected, while they are in office and after they leave Congress. Fortunately, a solution to corruption is not complicated. All the proposals are built around either reform legislation or a Constitutional Amendment. Actually, we need both — a constitutional amendment and legislation.
There will be discussion about the structure and details of reform. As I see it, campaign finance reform is the cornerstone of building an honest Congress. Erect a wall of separation between our elected officials and big money. This you must do — or your replacement will do. A corporation is not 'people' and no individ
It would be much MORE workable.
Bribery and blackmail would have to hit 10 times as many targets to be as effective. Deadlocks would be more easily broken through. The sharp edge of partisan lines would become blurrier. People would have an actual chance of meeting and talking to their representatives outside of some lip service campaign event or writing a big fat check.
Your time would be better spent pushing for the repeal of the 17th amendment and ending direct election of senators.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
most americans agree with him
he could have chosen a better way to make his point. but he'll be prosecuted, and the corruption will continue
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It is neither a 'democracy' nor a republic. It is an oligarchy - in the technical sense: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
It is just a republic on paper. In practice it's an oligarchy: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-...
A fool and his hard drive are soon parted.
There is too much vested interest in maintaining the current power structure for any substantive legislative change to happen within my lifetime. At this point, short of open revolt, there will be nothing except for a dog and pony show, with a token reform here and there.
Nope, I'm looking more for future generations, and up and coming countries to learn from our mistakes and institute something new. We are not even a federal republic anymore, but an oligarchy, and as with all corrupted governments, a footnote on the way towards a better society.
Just as well there's State and Local government as well then isn't it?
Sorry if that sabotages your attempt to dumb things down to the point of uselessness.
It's gotta come from the right clearance to get there.
Come on, he had AT LEAST 100 feet of clearance. If that's not enough I don't know what is.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So instead of there being a helicopter in the air with a human at controls
What about an auto-gyro with 30 lbs or so of C4? Do you still want the "human at the controls"? You don't know what the intentions are, you just know it's very illegal to be there yet there he is.
At this point you'd have to be an idiot to be a terrorist and not try to pilot a small explosive laden gyro into some major target, since it's obviously so easy.
I can't believe the "no fly zone" over Washington is such a total sham with not even a monitoring aircraft on top of him. Just like the Pirate Code, the No Fly Zone appears to be more of what you would call guidelines than an actual rule...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Step 1) Call/email ahead and say you are totally harmless.
Step 2) Fly/Drive/Swim vehicle packed to the gill with explosives right into your target without bother.
Step 3) Prophet!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is as old as the Roman Era governments... a democracy requires everybody to vote on everything, a republic selects representatives/senators to vote as an assembly.
What source of randomness would you use for such a branch? In an era where there's too many rigged elections, how do you expect your randomness to be fair?
yeah baby!
Method could be as involved as, I forget the name, but the system was people chosen at random to then choose the next group of people to choose the next group of people, and seven iterations that group then finally choose the representatives. Or you could just select from the social security numbers in a state. Fairly anonymous then.
As other people have mentioned, increasing the numbers of representatives makes it cost prohibitive to buy legislation. If people are chosen randomly, you get a broad section of the population who don't have re-election campaigns to donate to. They serve three years and then they are gone, replaced by the next lot who have no allegiances to previous backroom deals. Downside is it also makes it near impossible to pass legislation, so you need clear delineations of authority, and even greater checks and balances. Citizen juries have already been used in lower government functions to good effect, so it's not like it is unprecedented.
Regarding fairness, it isn't absolute, as it will still have a strong element of majority rule, except for the occasional fluke, however, it is proven to be more effective:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
Why do we even need to elect our representatives? Consider this: if a rep gets 51% of the vote in the district, then nearly half the people are not represented. On top of this we have gerrymandering. If 80 out of 100 districts are 51% for party A and 49% for party B, and the other 20 districts are 100% for party B, you can easily see that despite having a real majority, party B has no actual power. Pretty sucky if you ask me.
No... I have a different answer:
Appointing our representation. In this system, each representative carries one vote for every person who appoints him or her. Taking the above scenario, if 51,000 people appointed rep A and 49,000 appoint rep B, then rep A gets 51,000 votes in congress and rep B gets 49,000 votes. But consider what that does to the 100 districts... now party A has 4,080,000 votes and party B has 5,920,000 votes on every issue... exactly what it should be.
Appointment-based representation is fair, and it removes the power of gerrymandering.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
And I am aware of a few kinks that would need to be resolved. If you keep the current districts, there would need to be more seats as now there are multiple representatives per district. And what if 20 people run for a district and get votes, should all 20 get seats? Probably not.
Some possibilities:
- Reduce the number of districts.
- Limit the number of representatives allowed per district.
- Perhaps, just get rid of districts. If someone from across my state represents me better than someone local, then perhaps my appointment should not be limited by borders drawn for an election system that would no longer be in place.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"And I will tell you completely honestly: I'd rather die in the flight than live to be 80 years old and see this country fall."
I'd think so....
What he is pointing out is the money corruption going on and making this whole political game a charade - just look at those faces... clowns?
It would be worth laughing about it if it wouldn'd be so sad.
Yes I am. I suggest you read beyond the first sentence to find out why.
I will donate $1000 to the first Super PAC willing to make federal gyrocopter subsidy a top priority. (Seriously those things are awesome, but we still don't have a good tipjet solution.)
Nowadays, when someone says "democracy", it's highly likely they're simply referring to the over-arching type of government in which power is vested in the citizenry. This happens to include republics like the US, as well as "pure democracies", in which every citizen takes part in the governing process, and many other variations as well, like the UK's constitutional monarchy.
Note that historically, the term "democracy" has often been used to refer to "direct democracy". This was certainly true in the times and writings of the US founding fathers. Nowadays, the reverse is probably true. If you want to get stupidly technical or pedantic, the US could probably be considered a "hybrid", because while we clearly utilize a republic for most of our governing machinery, over half our states also have ballot initiatives, which are a form of direct democracy.
I think it's perfectly fine to call the US a "democracy", so long as we recognize that we're obviously using the umbrella term and not a "direct democracy".
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
you know, corruption destroying your country should be more important to you than hating unions
but it's exactly this shortsighted hate they use to keep us weak and divided
you're the problem. more than unions, more than the corruption really. because they can't keep us divided while they rob us, unless so many people like you care about hating your fellow americans than looking out for a government that actually represents you
go ahead: hate minorities. hat ethe poor. hate people with different social views
you hate. that's what is most important to you. more than looking out for yourself. they laugh and rob you. you, you're the problem
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
A country being a republic or not has absolutely nothing to do with being a democracy. And being federal also has nothing to do with being a democracy. These are orthogonal notions - a republic simply means a country without a hereditary or dynastic leader. It can be a democracy, or a dictatorship, or anything in between. A federal republic means simply a group of republics cooperating on common matters of interest while governing their own internal affairs - again, it has nothing to do with democracy. One could have a federal dictatorship, if one really wanted. Hell, there are non-republics which are democracies (Britain is a good example). Why do so many people have such difficulties with these words? The concepts are childishly easy to grasp. Why you got a +4 for telling everyone you don't know what those words means is beyond me :)
The phrase you are probably looking for is "representative democracy".
Well, you are forcing other countries into democracy. Why not try it for youselves?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Surely I'm not the only one who noticed the guard whose belly hung so far over his beltline that it jiggled as he trotted towards the scene. Surely there has to be some physical fitness requirements for his job.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
There is no democracy when corporations are allowed unlimited campaign donations, have the rights of 'people', and can direct their media/news to support their candidates..
If all the information most of the population get is from controlled sources, then theres no hope for "3rd party" and nothing will ever really change.. :(
Republican or democratic parties, Bush, Obama... Other than token issues theres no difference.
Remember folks the wealthiest 400(four hundred) people in the USA own more assets than the lower 150 million(150,000,000) people combined.
Like drop those same letters in a mailbox? Those were 100 to 1 against telecom immunity....D's and R's DGAF. This was a harmless stunt that got him worldwide press - doubt you could come up with something that would have got him more attention, as one man, peacefully.
So here we are with our mega-giga-buck super high tech defense system complete with a spy system that the gestapo would admire and we can't stop drones or gyro copters or even people from invading the White House. A couple of alert sentries with shot guns could have dealt with this before either the drone or the gyrocopter made it to the lawn. It reminds me of small people with black pajamas running the US out of Vietnam.
... as this man's actions were hardly a secret, and yet.
The truth is out there in plain sight, no need for super secret privacy invasion.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
The differences really aren't always that clear-cut. Was the Roman Republic a democracy ? Well it was called a Republic and it had senators acting as representatives... but it also had a form of direct democracy where all citizens were participants in the law-making process.
What about hybrids found around the world today where a government of elected representatives govern while any citizen is empowered to propose new legislation, which the population then votes on whether to pass or not (direct democracy) - California has such a system, as does Switzerland and Sweden just of the top of my head ?
Are they republics or democracies ? They are actually both.
The original definition of democracy is actually a better description today of modern anarchist philosophy - which is all about direct democracy limited only in a few specific ways to prevent a tyranny of the majority (an example would be the PartPoly proposal from Harvard).
Democracy and Republic are almost synonyms now. Republican and Democratic have another entirely different set of meanings attached due to the political parties bearing those names and what's worse, prior to the passage of the civil rights act those meanings were basically the exact OPPOSITES of what they are now, all of today's red states were blue and all the blue states were red and the Dixiecrats were a real thing ! Lincoln's party may have been called the Republicans at the time but they were voted in by the populations who voted for Obama the last two times and the groups who voted for Bush in the 2000s were people who voted Democrat in Lincoln's day.
The problem with this is it makes it hard to acurately describe anything using simple terms since the meaning of those terms are so contextual and often downright lies (China and North Korea both claim to be Republics despite having absolutely no resemblance to a republic by any definition). A very large chunk of the people who vote Republican in the US today are actually Theocrats, and the politicians are an odd mixture of Fascists and Oligarchs (with perhaps the sole exception of Bernie Sanders, and maybe Ron Paul back in the day).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
A million republican voters just had a heart attack at the thought of any part of the government getting ten times bigger...
As usual though, knee-jerk responses and rational responses do not correlate. I think that would be a pretty good idea.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Gyrocopter FUCK YEAH!
coming to save the motherfucking day...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Doug Hughes, 61, a mailman from Ruskin, Florida was arrested for landing a gyro-copter on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
headline should read :
Floridaman lands GYRO-COPTER on US Capitol lawn to save the Republic
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
maybe April 15 wasn't a good day to pull a stunt like that, LEO could be nervous.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The downdraft of any reasonably large helicopter would have forced him down in short order.
*some dude flies a drone over D.C.* Wasn't this story in the Bible?
and most slashdotters, like most of the media, don't want to look.
However, tell me another way to get national attention to a protest if you're not Rupert Murdoch, or one of the Koch Bros. "Money equals free speech" means that if you ain''t a multimillionaire, and don' t have the right friends, your "free speech rights" are utterly meaningless.
Let me also note that the 22yr old who committed suicide on the Capitol steps was also protesting, asking Congress to tax the 1%.
Maybe these guys are doing it wrong. Maybe they needed to go to the Capitol steps, go into full lotus position, and burn themselves to death, and maybe *then* their protest would get attention. It certainly did during 'Nam, when the Buddhist monks did it....
mark
Video of autogyro landing on White House lawn. The President came out to greet the pilot.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
If only there were some meaning to that date which would explain why such stunts are more common on that date.
Learn to love Alaska
Perhaps, just get rid of districts. If someone from across my state represents me better than someone local, then perhaps my appointment should not be limited by borders drawn for an election system that would no longer be in place.
Why even restrict the choice of representative to someone in your state? I'd just let anyone interest in the job apply to serve as a representative, provided they could meet some minimum number of votes nation-wide—perhaps 0.1% of the eligible voting population, so there could be at most 1,000 representatives. In practice it would probably be much less than 1,000, with a few individuals representing the major factions but plenty of room for minority positions. Each eligible voter gets three votes, and thus up to three representatives, which they are given the opportunity to change at regular intervals (e.g. quarterly, or when one of their representatives steps down). The votes are persistent until changed, and can be concentrated or spread out according to the voter's preference. A representative's influence in the House is determined by how many votes he or she currently holds.
This would, of course, be separate from the states' representatives in the Senate, to be appointed by the state legislatures. Popular representation is all well and good, but someone has to look out for the long term. Under my system the House would be able to approve any short-term (discretionary) expenditures unilaterally out of existing savings, but a 2/3 super-majority in the Senate would be required for anything requiring new debt (to include any increase in the money supply), speculation on future revenues, or a commitment of more than a few years. Finally, all laws would be required to maintain the approval of a simple majority in both the House and the Senate or face immediate repeal following a call for a vote.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Why even restrict the choice of representative to someone in your state?
That might work. My concern would be, it might kill local representation altogether in the House. It could also lead to a very popular person, or a small group of 5 or 10, having so much voting power that the rest really don't matter.
I guess the same could happen in large states. Perhaps districts are still a good thing for this reason, but I think there might be merit in reducing the number of districts while increasing the number of representatives per district.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Of course we knew that. If he had nefarious intentions, he wouldn't have warned your beloved authorities in advance or flown a 200 lbs capacity gyrocopter.
It's time to put away the plastic sheets and stop wetting the bed on command for the national insecurity state, the greatest pork project in the history of the world. Your couch is more likely to kill you than a terrorist, so stop hiding under the bed and throwing your rights away anytime someone knocks on the door.
so... in order to bomb the white house all one has to do is call ahead, say it's a publicity stunt, then break their promise.