David, I am grateful for your zealous enthusiasm for U.S. metrication. There are not enough of you. We are fighting an uphill battle in terms of public relations because of a dearth of national leadership on the subject and the stubborn anti-metric prejudice across the country, and we need all good voices to speak for our goal. We need YOU!
However, I cannot bring myself to write to my representatives here in Texas and urge them to support a plan similar to Hawaii's HB 36. It is certainly not because I do not support metrication, because I surely do. It is because metrication must be a national process, like issuing currency. That is why the authors of our Constitution sought to grant the power over measurement and money to the Congress, so it could be applied for all purposes within every part of the country, not only with each level of government, but also within each sector of the society. Our quest for one U.S. standard of measurement includes UNIFORMITY of measurement. If Hawaii and Oregon pretend to adopt their own systems of measurement, their laws may very easily be struck down on constitutional grounds, and from a practical standpoint, I say rightly so. I was exciting about the Hawaii bill because, it being an island state, metrication might succeed in some respects. Still, non-physical commerce still has to occur between Hawaii and the rest of the country, and And, how does Oregon go metric when California does not? Not only does a patchwork of metric and non-metric states disrupt the economy, but it would also add to the pre-existing public resentment over yet another half-hearted attempt to metricate. We experienced that on a small scale with the debacle over voluntary metrication of highway design in the 2000s. I don't think people would want to engage in that again, and on the even higher scale by the intrastate use of metric for all purposes. Yes, I know that we are all experiencing a lot of frustration, and our instinct is to do "something." State metrication may only be seen as a protest vote of sorts. I may be wrong--who knows what will transpire in life and politics---but I don't think we can metricate by local protest, but only by national action. It's just in the nature of measurement: everybody measures. Paul Trusten, Registered Pharmacist Vice President and Public Relations Director U.S. Metric Association, Inc. Midland, Texas, USA +1(432)528-7724 www.metric.org trus...@grandecom.net On Sep 16, 2013, at 14:42, cont...@metricpioneer.com wrote: > I met with Representative Kevin Cameron this morning who wrote a note > authorizing Oregon Legislative Counsel to introduce legislation to the Oregon > House in the 2015 Session. I spoke with Legislative Counsel Dexter A. Johnson > and handed him a copy of Hawaii HB 36. Dexter will write up this Oregon > legislation that I introduce today based on Hawaii HB 36 but modified for > Oregon with a 2020 date (instead of 2018 for Hawaii). I strongly urge every > recipient of this email to do the same thing in your state; just arrange a > meeting with your government representative and do what I did. It is not so > difficult. Let's try to complete our metrication state by state along with > all the other methods we have been trying for these so many years. Remember > that the United States just needs to complete metrication; we are not > starting from scratch here. If you think that you cannot do this, think again. > > David Pearl MetricPioneer.com 503-428-4917 > >
