Suggestions for the TSA

From Politizoid

Here are some suggestions:

1. Conduct strip searches. No health risks from x-rays, no need for pat downs, and no images not to be stored on computers and leaked to the internet. All you need is a flash light and a very observant set of eyes.

2. Designate official traveling garments. Easily removable slip-on shoes, gray skin-tight clothing with no pockets except for a special clear cover slot for your I.D. and boarding pass.

3. Require TSA agents to wear clown suits to keep everything light-hearted and to stop them from taking themselves so darn serious!

4. Once people are on the plane, handcuff them to their chairs to make sure no one can hijack the plane.

5. Install machine gun turrets near the cockpit. Just in case.

Okay, here are some serious suggestions:

1. Reject the notion that “random searches” translate into increased security.

2. Emulate the successes of Israel. Practice common sense profiling, hire behavior specialists to briefly question every passenger, and check passengers that do not pass initial screenings.

3. Be honest with the American people. Stop telling us that we have to give up privacy in order to ensure our security when the TSA’s own assessment tests consistently miss almost half of security breaches. Feeling safer does not make us safer.

4. Lose the attitude and stop treating passengers as if they are criminals. A little respect and common courtesy would go a long way.

5. Airports have the right to opt out of TSA screening in favor of private security after a two year period. Do it!

My suggestion: Let’s swap the duty assignments for the Border Patrol and the TSA. Maybe we could with all those TSA “agents” we could slow down and inconvenience persons actually breaking the law!

TSA Promotional Video

Best quote of the day from Mike at Cold Fury.

They damned sure ain’t fooling the Muslims who wish to kill us, and who are laughing their asses off at us over all this. The simple fact that we’re focused so completely on airport security — as Fernandez says, last-ditch point defense — while allowing wet-brained political correctness to cripple our efforts to even name the enemy, much less defeat him, makes clear that we’re losing this fight…and we’re doing so on purpose.

TSA Promotional Video, posted with vodpod

The Zucker Brothers were prophets. Full movie is available on Paramount DVD

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), Power of the Market. Pt 1

Finding examples in his visits to Hong Kong, the U.S. and Scotland, Dr. Friedman says that free markets are the fundamental engines of economic progress. In free markets, individuals can go into any business they want, trade with whomever they want, buy as cheap as they can, and sell at the highest price they can get. In truly free markets, governments do not interfere with any of these privileges. Individuals are free to enter the marketplace to do business, and they, and they alone, enjoy the fruits of their successes and the consequences of their failures.In free markets, producers of goods and services respond to signals they receive from buyers in the marketplace. They key production to their understanding of what people are buying and, apparently, wish to continue to buy. Using this information, they decide what to produce and in what quantity. Competitive forces in free markets promote efficiency. Because there is free entry of new producers into the market, individual producers must keep costs down in order to price their products at competitive levels. This means the resources they consume tend to be used efficiently. If they are not, costs of production rise, selling prices go up, and the producer may not be able to sell his product because it is not priced competitively.Free markets promote voluntary cooperation among a great diversity of people. As Milton Friedman points out, even making something as simple as a pencil requires the cooperation of thousands of people largely unknown to one another. Because the pencil manufacturer needs paint, graphite, wood, glue, and other components, widely separated groups of individuals have an incentive to produce these items and ship them to the pencil plant. This cooperation is not accomplished by any government. Individual freedom and economic freedom are tightly linked. It is difficult to conceive of personal freedom existing in isolation from economic freedom. Thus, the free market system not only promotes economic progress, but also buttresses our cherished individual freedoms.

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), Power…, posted with vodpod

Wait and See

Profits are back, cash flow is good, and Steve’s dance moves are better than ever?! But before Frank, his girlfriend Karen and the rest of the gang can expand, hire and invest at their small business, they’ll have to convince the Boss Lady. Watch this short comedy, and see what’s stopping the quirky employees of this small biz from living “a real American Dream.”Though this video is a joke, it’s message is not. Washington’s rhetoric and policies have been creating a damaging environment of uncertainty for businesses. When businesses lack clarity, they can’t plan ahead — choking expansion, investment and job creation.

Wait and See, posted with vodpod

Union Members: Where Do Your Dues Go?

If you’re a dues-paying union member, do you know where your money goes? One thing is influencing politics enough to get waivers from the healthcare monstrosity that the unions spent dues to get passed. From Michelle Malkin (read more):

The Service Employees Benefit Fund, which insures a total of 12,000 SEIU health care workers in upstate New York, secured its Obamacare exemption in October. The Local 25 SEIU Welfare Fund in Chicago also nabbed a waiver for 31,000 of its enrollees. SEIU, of course, was one of Obamacare’s loudest and biggest spending proponents. The waivers come on top of the massive sweetheart deal that SEIU and other unions cut with the Obama administration to exempt them from the health care mandate’s onerous “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health care plans until 2018.

Other unions who won protection from Obamacare:

– United Food and Commercial Workers Allied Trade Health and Welfare Trust Fund

– International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union No. 915

– Asbestos Workers Local 53 Welfare Fund

– Employees Security Fund

– Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 123 Welfare Fund

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 455 (Maximus)

– United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1262

– Musicians Health Fund Local 802

– Hospitality Benefit Fund Local 17

– Transport Workers Union

– United Federation of Teachers Welfare Fund

– International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (AFL-CIO)

– Plus two organizations that appear to be chapters of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA)

Union Members: Where Do Your Dues Go?, posted with vodpod