Chertoff And Soros Profits From TSA Scanner Machines

Washington Examiner - Be sure and read Tim Carney’s Examiner column today on the politically-connected lobby for the controversial new TSA scanners that are upsetting airline employees and travelers everywhere. Carney notes that a company called Rapiscan got a $165 million contract for the new body image scanners four days after the underwear-bomber incident this past Christmas. Not surprisingly, Rapiscan is politically connected, observes Carney:

Rapiscan got the other naked-scanner contract from the TSA, worth $173 million. Rapiscan’s lobbyists include Susan Carr, a former senior legislative aide to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. When Defense Daily reported on Price’s appropriations bill last winter, the publication noted “Price likes the budget for its emphasis on filling gaps in aviation security, in particular the whole body imaging systems.”

Then this morning Carney also noted that former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff was flacking for Rapiscan. As for the company’s other political connections, it also appears that none other than George Soros, the billionaire funder of the country’s liberal political infrastructure, owns 11,300 shares of OSI Systems Inc., the company that owns Rapiscan. Not surprisingly, OSI’s stock has appreciated considerably over the course of the year. Soros certainly is a savvy investor.

Note that OSI Systems CEO is Deepak Chopra, but it appears to be a different Deepak Chopra than the more famous liberal new age guru.

Dems Dismisses Grion Searches As Love Touches

Fox Nation - Transportation Safety Administration chief John Pistole and several senators from both parties defended the new, enhanced airport security screening procedures as necessary in the face of a persistent and evolving terrorist threat in a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Pistole, calm and confident in the face of an increasing public outcry against the procedures, talked extensively about the repercussions of last year's attempted Christmas Day bombing being the impetus for the enhanced screenings before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, TSA's oversight committee.

"We know the terrorists' intent is still there," Pistole testified. "We are using technology and protocols to stay ahead of the threat and keep you safe. (Several near-misses by terrorists on airplane bombings) got through security because we were not being thorough enough in our pat-downs."

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri said prior to Pistole's testimony that she believed TSA was in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation, because people would be hopping mad at TSA if Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab had succeeded. She went on to say the new advanced imaging technology--which has caused uproar because of its leave-no-secrets imaging and potential health risks--is more of a blessing than a curse.

"I'm wildly excited that I can walk through a machine instead of getting my dose of love pats," Sen. McCaskill said.

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin: Bond Market Could Implode

EconomicPolicyJournal.com - l Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is laying it on the line. At a conference today at the Pierre Hotel in NYC he said, according to Arron Tusk, that the soaring federal budget deficit and the Fed’s quantitative easing are putting the U.S. in “terribly dangerous territory” and warned of a bond market “implosion.”

Get this. He said Congress’ vote on raising the deficit ceiling next spring could be the “trigger” for a rout in the Treasury market.

He also said the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion of Treasuries “has a lot of risk,” calling the international reaction “horrendous.”

New Jersey Legislators Takes On The TSA Naked Body Scanners

TRENTON— Senator Michael J. Doherty (R-Hunterdon, Warren) and Senator James Beach (D-Camden) today announced they will present resolutions to the Senate and Assembly calling on the U.S. Congress to end TSA screening procedures requiring full body scans and pat downs at U.S. airports Their action comes in response to widespread concerns over privacy and radiation, as well as reports of inappropriate conduct by TSA agents during the screening process.

“The pursuit of security should not force Americans to surrender their civil liberties or basic human dignity at a TSA checkpoint,” said Doherty. “Subjecting law-abiding American citizens to naked body scans and full body pat downs is intolerable, humiliating, vulnerable to abuse, and is fast becoming a disincentive to travel. Particularly concerning to us is the fact that physical searches result in children being touched in private areas of the body. Terrorists hate America because of the freedoms upon which this great nation was built. By implementing these screening measures, the TSA has already handed a victory to those who seek to destroy our freedoms.

Weak Dollar Seen as Unlikely to Cure Joblessness In America

CNBC - A weakening currency traditionally helps a country raise its exports and create more jobs for its workers. But the declining value of the dollar may not help the United States increase economic growth as much as it might have in the past.

Though a weakened dollar would help exports to some degree, business executives and economists said that because of the ways American multinational companies operated, it was uncertain whether it would cause much of an increase in hiring.

The issue is crucial for President Obama, who made economic growth and job creation the main themes of his recent 10-day trip to Asia. He has also held out the prospect that a surge in exports would reduce the nation’s stubborn unemployment rate, currently 9.6 percent.

Other world leaders have complained that American policies, especially the monetary easing the Federal Reserve announced this month, will depress the dollar and give American exporters an unfair advantage.

Mr. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner have repeatedly defended the central bank’s action as a move designed to encourage American businesses to borrow, invest and hire rather than one specifically aimed at lowering the value of the dollar.

But even if the Fed’s action does end up weakening the dollar, American workers may not benefit much. For one, many big American manufacturers, from General Motors to General Electric, often make goods in the countries where they are sold rather than shipping the products abroad. This effectively takes exchange rates out of the equation, since they are using only one currency.

What is more, companies that do send goods to other countries often buy components from abroad, so the advantage of a weaker dollar in selling is offset by the higher cost of buying.

“There are very few corporations that would see this just in one way,” said Martin Regalia, chief economist at the United States Chamber of Commerce. “It cuts across a whole bunch of lines.”

Even when a company enjoys a relative surge in foreign sales, it won’t necessarily lead to a hiring spree. That is because the largest proportion of American exports are still manufactured goods, which are no longer so labor-intensive.

And many of the companies that still manufacture in this country are businesses that have not gone offshore because they are too small to justify setting up overseas operations. A weak dollar can help their businesses, but it may not prompt a wave of hiring.

“The net export effect is going to be positive, but it won’t be the driver of jobs,” said Daniel J. Meckstroth, chief economist of the Manufacturers Alliance, a trade group. “You can replace people with machines.”

According to Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, the dollar fell by 31 percent against a basket of major currencies since 2001, as American exports increased by 45 percent. But manufacturing employment dropped by nearly a third in that time, to 11.7 million workers from 16.4 million.

The dollar has already fallen by about 10 percent against a range of currencies since the beginning of June, and government figures show that American exports rose in September by $500 million, or 0.3 percent, to their highest level in two years.

Despite the outcry from other world leaders after the Federal Reserve’s decision to inject $600 billion into the economy, the dollar strengthened slightly last week. But even if it does start drifting down again, most economists do not expect the devaluation to be steep. Some argue that most of the weakening has already happened because traders have anticipated the Fed’s action for some time.

Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said he expected the dollar to fall another 10 percent in coming months, based on a basket of currencies from countries that trade with the United States.

He estimates that such a decline would lead to about a $100 billion increase in American exports over the next two years, which he believes could translate into about 500,000 jobs. Although Mr. Hufbauer said that number was “not bad,” he noted that it would not put much of a dent in the nearly 15 million people who are still out of work.

Another reason increased sales abroad might not translate into American jobs is that American companies have moved steadily overseas in recent decades. The number of workers employed by American companies abroad more than doubled from 1989 to 2008, to 10.5 million, according to the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis. Companies mostly wanted to open up foreign markets, and in some cases take advantage of cheaper labor, studies show, but less vulnerability to currency movements was an important fringe benefit.

With more companies building local factories, exchange rates matter less. General Motors and Volkswagen compete fiercely for business in China, a crucial market where both automakers build almost all their cars locally rather than ship units in from their home countries.

Because the Chinese renminbi tracks the dollar — meaning that products from the United States should be cheaper than imports from Europe — G.M. would seem to be at an advantage.

Statism, The Greatest Threat To America

Campaign For Liberty - Pervasive confusion over the nature of government and freedom has opened the gates to perhaps the greatest, most widespread increase in political power in history. If we are to regain and safeguard our liberty, we must reject the tenets of modern political thinking. We must repudiate the moral presumptions and prerogatives that allow some people to vastly expand their power over other people.

The state has been by far the largest recipient of intellectual charity during the past hundred years. The issue of government coercion has been taken off the radar screen of politically correct thought. The more government power has grown, the more unfashionable it becomes to discuss or recognize government abuses — as if it were bad form to count the dead brought about by government interventions. There seems to be a gentleman’s agreement among some contemporary political philosophers to pretend that government is something loftier than it actually is — to practice noblesse oblige and to wear white gloves when discussing the nature of the state.

The great political issue of our time is not liberalism versus conservatism, or capitalism versus socialism, but statism — the belief that government is inherently superior to the citizenry, that progress consists of extending the realm of compulsion, that vesting arbitrary power in government officials will make the people happy — eventually.

What type of entity is the state? Is it a highly efficient, purring engine, like a hovercraft sailing deftly above the lives of ordinary citizens? Or is it a lumbering giant bulldozer that rips open the soil and ends up clear-cutting the lives of people it was created to protect?

The effort to find a political mechanism to force government to serve the people is the modern search for the Holy Grail. No such mechanism has been found, and government power has been relentlessly expanded. Yet, to base political philosophy on the assumption that government is inherently benevolent makes as much sense as basing geography on the assumption that the Earth is flat. Too many political thinkers treat government like some Wizard of Oz, ordaining great things, enunciating high ideals, and symbolizing all that is good in society. However, for political philosophy to have any value, it must begin by pulling back the curtain to bare the nature of the state.

Trusting contemporary governments means dividing humanity into two classes: those who can be trusted with power to run other people’s lives, and those who cannot even be trusted to run their own lives. Modern Leviathans give some people the power to play God with other people’s lives, property, and domestic tranquility. Modern political thinking presumes that restraints are bad for the government but good for the people. The first duty of the citizen is to assume the best of the government, while government officials assume the worst of him.

The history of the rise of the idealistic conception of the state is inevitably also the history of the decline of liberty. We cannot put the state on a pedestal without putting the people under the heel of the politician and bureaucrat. To glorify the state is to glorify coercion — the subjugation of some people to other people’s will and dictates.

Welfare-state freedom is based on the illusion that government can financially strip-mine the citizens’ lives without undermining their ability to stand on their own two feet. Citizens are assured that dependence on government is the same as self-reliance, only better. Today’s citizen is obliged to find his freedom only in the narrow ruts pre-approved by his bureaucratic overlords. In the name of freedom, the citizen is obliged to lower the drawbridges around his own life to any government employee who thinks he knows better.

The Supreme Court declared in a 1988 decision, “Servitude means ‘a condition in which a person lacks liberty especially to determine one’s course of action or way of life.’” Yet, despite the vast increase in the number of government decrees restricting people’s “course of action or way of life,” there is little recognition of the growing servitude of the American people to the federal government. Lives are made up of choices. Insofar as govern- ment nullifies or demolishes the choices that people can make, it effectively confiscates part of their lives.

Modern democracy

Nowadays, “democracy” serves mainly as a sheepskin for Leviathan, as a label to delude people into thinking that government’s big teeth will never bite them. Voting has changed from a process by which the citizen controls the government to a process that consecrates the gov-ernment’s control of the people. Elections have become largely futile exercises to reveal comparative popular contempt for competing professional politicians. The question of who nominally holds the leash has become far more important than whether government is actually leashed.

The ability to push a lever and register a protest once every few years is supposedly all the protection citizens’ liberties need — or deserve. Americans are implicitly taught in government schools that they will be able to control their government, regardless of how large it becomes. But the bigger government grows, the more irrelevant the individual voter becomes. The current theory of democracy is a relic of an era when government was a tiny fraction of its current size. The illusion of majority rule is now the great sanctifier of government abuses — and perhaps the single greatest barrier to people’s understanding the nature of government. No amount of patriotic appeals can hide the growing imbalance between the citizen’s power to bind the government and the government’s power to bind the citizen.

Modern democracy is now largely an over-glorified choice of caretakers and cage-keepers. Are citizens still free after they vote to make themselves wards of the state? Supposedly, as long as citizens are permitted to push the first domino, they are still self-governing — regardless of how many other government dominos subsequently fall on their heads. Democracy is further corrupted by a demagogy that portrays a right to vote as a license to steal.

Faith in the redemptive powers of government permeates contemporary political thinking. “Fairness” has become a bewitching word to lull people to sleep before politicians attach the lat-est “shackle of the month.” The more activities government crim-inalizes, the fairer society supposedly becomes. The tighter the regulatory thumbscrews are twisted, the higher citizens’ souls presumably rise.

Private citizens have become the moral underclass in the modern state. The values of politicians and bureaucrats are presumably so inherently superior that they have a right to coercively impose them on others, the same way that imperialists in the 1800s forcibly “saved” the backward natives in Africa and Asia. But now, instead of the “white man’s burden,” we have the “bureaucrat’s burden” — consisting of endless Federal Register notices, entrapment schemes, and abusive prosecutions. In practice, justice has become whatever serves the political or bureaucratic needs of the government. Every new definition of fairness becomes another trump card that politicians and bureaucrats play against private citizens. Public- policy disputes routinely degenerate into morality plays in which the government is almost always the “good guy.”

In the 19th century, socialists openly ridiculed the notion of a night-watchman state — a government limited to protecting the rights and safety of citizens. The night-watchman state has long since been junk-heaped, replaced by governments zealous to re-engineer society, control the econ-omy, and save persons from themselves. Unfortunately, rather than a triumph of idealism, we now have highway-robber states — gov-ernments in which no asset, no contract, no domain is safe from the fleeting whim of a bevy of politicians. Public policy today is a vast maze of payoffs and kickbacks, tangling everything that the state touches in political intrigue and bureaucratic dependence. Modern societies are increasingly dominated by political money laundering — by politicians commandeering scores of billions of dollars from one group to foist on another group, from one generation to another, or from the general populace to specific occupational groups (such as farmers). And when government defaults on its promises to the citizenry, it is not robbery, but merely sovereign immunity.

Paternalism and happiness

It was a common saying before the Civil War: “That government is best which governs least.” Nowadays, the rule appears to be “that government is best that penalizes most.” Salvation through increased state power means maximizing the number of swords of Damocles hanging over each citizen’s head — maximizing the number of individual lives that can be destroyed by political edicts and the number of people who can be locked away for possessing prohibited substances — people whose homes and cars and wallets can be seized without proof of wrongdoing, whose children can be taken away from them, who can be barred from using their own land, and whom the government devises pretexts to forcibly disarm.

The welfare state offers an “under my thumb” recipe for happiness. Paternalism presumes that the path to the citizen’s happiness consists in increasing the number of government restrictions imposed on him and the number of government employees above him. The more power government acquires, the more a symbol of the superiority of some people over others the state becomes. Every expansion of government budgets and statute books is another step towards the nationalization of the pursuit of happiness. While earlier types of government coerced people to keep them in their place, the welfare state uses coercion to make them happy — in their place. But the success of the welfare state cannot be measured by the number of citizens who rattle their tin cups when politicians pass by.

The issue is not whether government should or can be abolished; instead, the issue is whether the use of force should be minimized and limited. In the American colonies from the early 1700s onwards, fierce disputes raged between prerogative parties and anti-prerogative parties — between those that favored an expansive interpretation of the king of England’s power and those that sought to restrain or roll back the monarch’s power over colonists. In the future, the grand division in American politics will be between those who champion increased government power and those who demand that government power be slashed.

The notion that governments are inherently entitled to obedience is the most costly entitle-ment program of them all. Seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke, who inspired the Founding Fathers, declared, “Tyranny is the exercise of Power beyond Right.” Locke recognized that governments that oppress citizens destroy their own legitimacy. Yet there now seems to be an irrefutable presumption of legitimacy for any exercise of government power not involving genocide or racial discrimination.

Modern political philosophy largely consists of glorifying poorly functioning political machinery — the threats, bribes, and legislative cattle prods by which some people are made to submit to other people. It is a delusion to think of the state as something loftier than all the edicts, penalties, prison sentences, and taxes that it imposes.

Have we transferred to government the rights that we previously condemned in slaveown-ers? If not, then we must radically reduce the power that some people have captured over everyone else.

TSA Outrage Against Porno Scanners "Gradual Degradation Of Americans"

Sibel Edmonds - Every single day millions of us are being subjected to the shameful processes of being searched, screened and viewed naked, patted, groped, fondled, poked and stroked by badge-wearing strangers- police under a different name. Every single day. Millions of us, Americans. Being violated. Being degraded. You know exactly what I am talking about. I am taking about me, you, your mother, her brother, his brother’s wife and toddler son, their grandmothers. I am talking about the systematic degradation of our people. I am talking about being raped of our dignity, privacy, and decency. I am talking about a daily systematic rape we actually pay to be subjected to. I am talking about severe violations we elect people to bring upon us. Yes, I am talking about traveling, TSA police, and being reduced to naked and helpless subjects of government police practices.

Considering its short tenure, the motherland police force, aka Department of Homeland Security, has had a one of a kind success. In less than a decade it is now the third largest cabinet police department. It has around 200,000 employees, and that’s without counting contract employees – which exceed this number. Now remember, we still have the FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA…plus all the other state and local police forces from before. TSA makes up over 60,000 of DHS employees. This 60,000 federal police force oversees 450 airports, so that makes it around 133 police per airport. And that’s in addition to local airport police.

What do I mean by not so gradual and systematic degradation? I mean in less than ten years, they went from this:

Last week TSA announced that airline passengers should expect to see and feel additional pat-down procedures at U.S. airports over the coming weeks to provide another layer of security. They said passengers should continue to expect “an unpredictable mix of security layers that include explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, among others.”

The following blurb comes from CNN, thanks to one of its employees who chose to speak up a little, only a little (all emphasis in bold are mine):

Rosemary Fitzpatrick, a CNN employee, said she was subjected to a pat-down at the Orlando, Florida, airport on Wednesday night after her underwire bra set off a magnetometer. She said she was taken to a private area and searched, with transportation screening officers telling her the pat-down was a new procedure.

According to Fitzpatrick, a female screener ran her hands around her breasts, over her stomach, buttocks and her inner thighs, and briefly touched her crotch.”I felt helpless, I felt violated, and I felt humiliated,” Fitzpatrick said, adding that she was reduced to tears at the checkpoint. She particularly objected to the fact that travelers were not warned about the new procedures.

Okay, up to this point I was pleasantly surprised to see this piece being run by a mainstream outlet, and the fact that this woman didn’t take the rape in silence and go away the way most do when it comes to these government sanctioned and implemented systematic rapes, but then I reached the following:

“I am appalled and disgusted at the new search procedures and the fact that passengers have not been made aware of the new invasive steps prior to entering the security area,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “It appears once you enter the security area, passengers forfeit their rights. There were no signs, video information, etc. at the entrance of the security area at the airport. Why?”

She added: “As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!”

First, let me give her due credit for saying out loud that she objected and felt: helpless, violated, humiliated, appalled and disgusted. But after that, it is my turn to be appalled. Is the process supposed to get less humiliating, appalling, traumatic, and disgusting if the violators give prior notice about the violations, the rapes, to come??!!! Please walk with me through the following reasoning:

Two rapists are brought before a judge. One had caught his victim by surprise through a blitz attack, then violently raped her. The other had stalked his victim for a while, sent her some disturbing warning notes, and then violently raped her. Victim one turns around and tells victim two: Why do you feel violated?! Your rapist gave you the courtesy of warning notes – and that makes his rape much less of an offense than my rapist!!

My question to CNN’s Fitzpatrick is this: Next time, when these people squeeze your breast, poke your buttocks and stomach, and grab your crotch, will you feel okay? Far less violated? All because now you know what to expect?!

After reading the piece I quickly scanned other news sites, both mainstream and alternative. Almost all of them picked up the story and reported it per the original, and the strongest cursory comment at one site was that the story and Fitzpatrick’s experience was ‘unsettling.’ Wow! How hard-hitting! But that was not what I found, and find, so very ‘unsettling.’ Not at all.

What I find truly unsettling is that we only have a handful like Fitzpatrick who come forward screaming about the horrifying, humiliating, violating, traumatic …nature of these federal police practices (abuses) in all our airports. Now that is truly unsettling, shocking, and appalling as far as I am concerned. Millions are going through these routine rape processes (Yes, RAPE: raping you of your dignity, privacy, humanity, and more. Ok?!) without a peep. What is going on here? Have ‘their’ systematic humiliation and degradation practices been so successful that millions take it regularly without any protest, objection, action, counteraction?!

I am talking about the hard-core ACLU following liberals. Where the he … are you?! I can’t hear or see you. Where is the protest? Give me a holler, and let me know where and when and I’ll be there to join. Here I’m hollering on the record. And no, don’t go file a couple of lawsuits and say that you’ve done your share; that lazy move hasn’t worked for at least a decade!!

I am talking about those on the extreme right of those mentioned above. What happened to your slogan of small government and keeping a tight rein on federal government practices? Isn’t this as close and personal it gets, when your feds are squeezing your testicles while breathing inches from your face, and while you are fully paying for these squeezing and probing services?! I thought you’d attributed these practices to those commies, shouldn’t you be barking when it is in your own backyard?

I am talking about old fashion patriarchal guys. Where are you macho and good ole cowboy mentality testosterone walking bags when your wives and daughters are being fondled, squeezed, and intimately probed? Shouldn’t you be roaring like lions and throwing punches like John Wayne when it comes to those who violate your ‘women’? Don’t you feel your manliness under attack when they make you stand in front of them, with your legs apart, arms up to each side, while their hands wrap around measuring your buttocks?

I am talking about us Americans, those to the right, the ones on the left, the upper class- lower class, and those in the middle…Here we are, the entire nation, being violated and raped on a daily basis by our servants whom we pay for dearly. Last time I checked we were paying them over $7 Billion – here it is with all the zeroes: $7,000,000,000. Please, don’t even try to bring up that ‘security’ punch line so overused and abused, because last time I checked they were not providing much in terms of ‘security.’ In fact they couldn’t even secure their own personnel files and records.

Soon they will be bending us over to give us a thorough cavity search. After that it will be all cavities… And after that…There will be one or two who may stand up and scream. And for ‘them,’ one or two, even ten will be very easy to quash and ‘eliminate.’ Yet, I am still here, still hoping; hoping that somehow I’ll get to see that number in the tens of thousands and beyond, and that’s the only hope I see to stop our expedited degradation process. They say it always starts with one. Well, here I am, willing to be one. How about you?