Hummer vs Helicopter

Below I post 2 videos I took today. Both have soundtracks too. Both show hovering contraptions - the first a hummingbird silently flitting from flower to flower (mostly red Salvia greggii), the other a helicopter pounding laboriously from Manhattan to East Hampton (these are only 1 percenters but nevertheless there seem to an awful lot of them). 

Which brings me to the following interesting and amusing document I just received from the Quiet Skies Coalition, a wonderful organization dedicated to returning control of the East Hampton Airport to East Hampton, with the aim of reducing aircraft noise pollution over Long Island. This Declaration was submitted to the East Hampton Town Board.

THE QUIET SKIES COALITION

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

FROM THE 

FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION

PUBLISHED THIS DAY, JULY 4, 2012

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for the people of a Town to dissolve the bands which have connected them to a government institution, a decent respect for the opinions of others requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

The history of the FAA is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having in direct object the establishment of a Tyranny over our Town, our skies, and our good people.

In every stage of these Oppressions, we the People have petitioned this Board for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  We have appealed to your sense of justice and magnanimity and we have approached you by the ties of our common bond to disavow the FAA, which institution will inevitably bring ruin to the value and peaceful enjoyment of all East End homes, property and recreational areas. The FAA and this Town Board have been deaf to the voice of justice and of conscience.

We therefore, as representatives of the noise-affected community do publish and declare that the Town of East Hampton ought to be Free and Independent, absolved of all allegiance to the FAA, and that all financial connection between the Town and the FAA is and ought to be totally dissolved. As a free and independent Township, we have the power to limit access to our airport, levy taxes on those who use it, preserve and protect our precious natural environments from this outrageous form of noise pollution, and to do all that an independent municipality may, of right, do.

We hold that a body of government:

Is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, quality of life, and security of ALL WHO RESIDE IN THAT COMMUNITY AND NOT A SELECT FEW.

That it cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest the People of the enjoyment of an environment free of excessive aircraft noise. 

That it must protect the property values of the taxpayers. 

That it must act as a proper steward of the land that it has preserved at high cost to the taxpayer by limiting the negative impacts of airport noise on those properties. 

We hereby call for a moratorium on accepting funding from the Federal Aviation Administration that IN ANY WAY restricts the ability of the Town of East Hampton to:

Limit the Number of Excessively Noisy Aircraft

Limit the Arrival and Departure Times of Excessively Noisy Aircraft

Set Altitude Limits for Excessively Noisy Aircraft

Ban Excessively Noisy Aircraft from Using East Hampton's Airport

"THIS IS OUR TOWN, THESE ARE OUR SKIES."