United Liberty
Where Environmentalism Officially Becomes Eco-Mentalism
Thu, 02/28/2013 - 4:07pm | posted by Jeremy Kolassa
It appears environmentalism has officially gone insane. In Florida, a man released several heart shaped balloons into the air as an expression of love to his girlfriend. And for that, the guy was arrested:
Anthony Brasfield saw romance when he released a dozen heart-shaped balloons into the sky over Dania Beach with his sweetie. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw a felony.
Brasfield, 40, and his girlfriend, Shaquina Baxter, were in the parking lot of the Motel 6 on Dania Beach Boulevard when he released the shiny red and silver mylar balloons and watched them float away Sunday morning.
Also watching the romantic gesture: an FHP trooper, who instead noted probable cause for an environmental crime.
Brasfield was charged with polluting to harm humans, animals, plants, etc. under the Florida Air and Water Pollution Control Act.
Seriously? We’re going to arrest people now because they released balloons into the air? What sort of joyless soul-sucking Dementors are the people who push for this kind of legislation?
The story notes at the end that Brasfield, if convicted, faces up to five years in prison. Five years for releasing balloons into the air to show his love to his significant other. If that’s not liberty-trampeling, un-American, and just plain immoral, I don’t know what it is.
Like most Americans, I too care about the environment, but in any conflict between individual liberty and said environment, I’m going with individual liberty. For without that liberty, how would anyone actually enjoy the environment? Or, you know, live? Because we’re living for human beings here, you know. Not Bambie. Who isn’t even real.
New World Order requires draconian control and we are laying down and taking it.
We put people in prison for the wrong “crimes”. We have legal loopholes that allow sexual predators on line to get away with child pornography crimes due to “technicalities” in the wording of legislation; we have “programs” that were put in place to protect assailants from being prosecuted when they assault their spouses because our prisons are overcrowded and so we practice “selective incapacitation” in our legal system - and we are going to JAIL someone for something so trivial? And we have half of America that truly believes nothing is wrong? Wake up America, please. Enough Said.
I think they will have a problem with proving intent. I’m sure he didn’t intend to harm anyone. 5 years is stoopid anyway. I do think people should think things through and make amends if they do something even unintentionally. They could maybe have the couple go clean up a beach nearby. I think they do need to crack down on littering, Your Liberty ends when it encroaches on someone else’s. I would like to see people that litter sentenced to road and beach cleanup maybe then their brain would poke them the next time they carelessly litter
How does littering encroach on someone else’s liberty?
Property rights.
Well sure, if you drop litter on someone’s private property. But it isn’t clear what property rights, if any, are on, say, a public beach. And that’s what the ecomentalists care about, not someone’s private backyard.
Classic “privatized profit, socialized cost” argument. Guess who’s going to pay for cleaning up that public beach after everyone trashes it? That’s right, taxpayers.
To illustrate the stupidity of hauling this guy in for releasing A FRICKIN’ BALLOON, you have to take a look at the the wind speed and direction aloft as well as the longevity of a helium-filled mylar balloon. Without looking at any of the data and knowing that Florida is a peninsula, odds are that that balloon will come down in international waters where it MIGHT float back to shore somewhere along the east coast in 10 years.
I hope his lawyer presents the data as well as the projected travel path of the “offending pollutant” in court to illustrate the state’s stupidity.
Why aren’t the true polluters in jail, starting with the Koch brothers. Google them to find out what crimes they have commited against the environment and how many children have died from them dumping toxins behind an elementary scchool school.
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