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INSIDER, CONT. The candidate is Chase Busch, 26, a self-described “fifth-generation” Arkansan. Normally it’s Republicans this election season touting their ancestors. Nobody has yet topped 2nd District congressional candidate French Hill’s claim of ninth-generation roots. Busch’s campaign announcement news release emphasizes jobs, education and infrastructure. It speaks unkindly of the politics of Washington in Arkansas, which may be a veiled reference to recent minority Republican opposition, from Bell and others, to the health insurance expansion passed by an overwhelming legislative majority last year. Busch, who is completing a degree in mechanical engineering at Arkansas Tech, stays positive, but remarks that he “wants to represent and lead with the same character, honor, and respect as the great men who served this area in the past.” Bell’s penchant for hurling insults at people with whom he disagrees has included comparing liberals with Nazis and setting the whole of Boston on fire against him after some ill-chosen remarks about the Boston Marathon slaughter.
Family Council
Q:
I got a drone for Christmas. Can I fly it anywhere I want? Will the government come get me? Is it true I can get my textbooks delivered by Amazon the way the kid did in the comic strip?
A:
Answer to question 1: You can fly your drone for “personal enjoyment,” says Lynn Lunsford, the Mid-State Public Affairs Manager for the Federal Aviation Administration. To question 2: If your drone can fly above 400 feet, which is regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, the government might come get you, so stay under 400 feet. If you are a newspaper, said Lunsford, using a drone with a camera attached so you can take photographs of, say, oil leaking into Lake Conway to put in the paper, then the answer to your first question is no, because the FAA does not permit any commercial use of private drones. Lunsford actually said such use was “not yet permitted,” which means that Amazon is not laboring in vain developing its drone delivery system, “Prime Air.” Amazon’s website cautions, however, that “putting Prime Air into commercial use will take some number of years as we advance the technology and wait for the
necessary FAA rules and regulations.” If you live in Australia, however, you can get your rental textbooks delivered by a startup company, Zookal. It will make deliveries in Sydney. The FAA announced in December that it has given permission to six public organizations to develop drones (unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS in govspeak) and test them to determine how they may be used safely in American airspace. The six test site operators are the University of Alaska, which will test drones in Hawaii and Oregon; the state of Nevada, which will focus on air traffic control questions; New York’s Griffis International Airport in Rome, N.Y.; which will work on testing and evaluation; the North Dakota Department of Commerce, which will test in varying airspace; Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, safety and airworthiness testing, and Virginia Tech, which will do “failure mode” testing. Read more at www.faa.gov under the News tab.
Hate never takes a holiday, not when a vote is pending on reauthorizing spending on the private option expansion of Medicaid. With a major vote scheduled this week, the Arkansas Family Council — a “Christian” group dedicated to discrimination against gay people and making abortion a crime — has written legislators to notify them that Arkansas Blue Cross is extending insurance coverage to same-sex couples legally married in other states. The Arkansas Family Council argues that, if the Blue Cross policy includes coverage to same-sex couples under the federally financed private option Medicaid expansion plan adopted by the state, it conflicts with the “spirit” of the Arkansas Constitution. A constitutional amendment pushed by the Family Council prohibits same-sex marriage and the providing of any benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. There’s no question of “if” the new Blue Cross policy extends to Arkansas’s private option. All private option plans are for individuals only. But the Family Council never misses an opportunity to promote bigotry. It’s cold comfort that the Family Councils of the world will eventually lose this battle. In Arkansas, meanness is all too abundantly available, not just against gay people, but the poor generally. www.arktimes.com
FEBRUARY 20, 2014
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