Papers, please!

Jason wrote an interesting piece on Wednesday, discussing the Soviet Union of American States' airport security practices.

While I agree with one of his main points, "The problem with this whole system likely isn't (as some people suggest) that the TSA is some evil organization bent on destroying the freedoms of good law-abiding citizens.",  I personally suggest that the only problem with the system is that it's run by the government.

The TSA was created as a reaction to September 11, 2001, on November 19, 2001, to monopolize airport security screening under the wing of a government department.

Of course, remembering that with great power comes great responsibility, we can rest in comfort knowing that TSA employees sleep on the job, bypass security checks, mistreat passengers, sexually harass children, the elderly, and the rest of us, hold lavish parties at the taxpayers' expense, and steal passengers' belongings and sell them at a handsome profit (I originally had a link for 'mistreat passengers', but couldn't settle on just one; if you really want an example, just Google TSA pat down under the News tab).

In fact, Rapiscan Systems, one of the two manufacturers of those pesky airport full body scanners, is a client of Michael Chertoff's security firm, the Chertoff Group; if this doesn't immediately surprise you, you probably aren't aware that he was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security!

If it were up to me, when people board a plane, each of them would take a free loaded handgun from a barrel conveniently located by the jet-way, and upon arriving at their destination, they would return said handgun to an empty barrel, much like 3D glasses at a movie theater.  If you believe, as I do, that there are far more rational, sane individuals on this planet than terrorists hell-bent on killing us all, this is an extremely economic, workable solution.

Jason also says, "So we have a crappy system but it's all we have and if you want to fly without incident, you've got no choice to go through it.  The only thing I know is that the next time I go through a security checkpoint, I'll just keep my mouth shut and just get it all over with as fast as possible."

While I agree that his chosen solution is probably the only practical one available, one must remember that, as Bodie Thoene said, "Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand."  The one thing I am absolutely sure of, is that flying without incident will never be a result of the work of the TSA, only one of pure probability.  After all, these organizations are run by the same people who can't do something as simple as balance a national budget.

For now, if flying is something you can't choose not to do, as I try to, then you'll have to live with organizations like the TSA, and probably ones a whole lot worse as America continues its rapid decay.  It's only a matter of time until "Papers, please" becomes, once again, the most commonly used introductory sentence.

I suggest everyone watch the movie The Lives of Others, if they want hints of what the coming Utopian socialist future holds for the Western world.  Each day that passes has me thinking more and more about emigrating to Asia, the new land of opportunity.

A couple of other funny things happened this week:

Vancouver taxpayers on the hook for Olympic Village as Millennium Water goes into receivership

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/business/Vancouver+taxpayers+hook+Olympic+Village+Millennium+Water+goes+into+receivership/3845267/story.html#ixzz15xtRrCL1


B.C. government cancels Campbell's planned income tax cut

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/income+suspended/3845348/story.html#ixzz15xtgKIkI


And Gordon Campbell resigned.  He spent 26 years in the public service. Sometimes I wonder how it feels to know that your life has resulted in nothing but a net economic loss to society over the course of one's career.  I've never understood how we even allow career civil servants to exist.  They don't even pay taxes!

For everyone who is paid with the tax dollars of others, those deductions on your payroll statement don't mean anything.  Just because the government takes vast sums of private sector income and redistributes it to a select few of you, and then takes some of it back in line items like "income tax", doesn't change the fact that all of that money came from the employment of capital and labor in the private sector.  Therefore, no public sector employee ever pays taxes unless they work for the government for a shorter period of time than in the private sector, and even in this case it's usually not true because they tend to draw a public pension for the rest of their useless and unfulfilling existence.

Lol.  I knew I'd get to a true rant at some point.  Good night, everybody!