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Robert M. Brown | The Grumpy Pundit | Page 7

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Have We Lost?

Posted by on November 21, 2010 No comments

The TSA’s latest crazy scheme to find and remove any shred of human dignity from American air travelers has gotten a lot of attention lately. (I’ve collected a number of stories at IWillFlyNoMoreForever.com.) Everyone wants to be safe, but no one wants the TSA’s hand up their ass. How to reconcile those positions?

First, we must look at a basic assumption of how the TSA works; that they can make us safe. They can’t. I have yet to see anything at an airport that would stop me from carrying out a major terrorist act, and I haven’t put any real effort into thinking about it. You can bet that the people who want to carry out such attacks have given it a great deal of thought.

So, we must concede that if the terrorists get to the airport, some of us are going to die. There is nothing we can do about that.

Let me repeat that:

If terrorists are determined to kill some of us, they will succeed, and there is nothing at all that we can do to prevent that.

The TSA’s efforts have been increasingly frantic and intrusive because they are tasked with preventing something that cannot be prevented. Imagine if you were given the job of eliminating darkness from your home town. You might run around setting up floodlights, checking people’s houses to make sure that every closet had a light on inside, begging for a bigger budget for more streetlights…and you would fail. For all of your efforts, for all the laws passed to make people keep their lights on, there would still be darkness.

If a bad-guy wants to badly enough, he can find a way to kill Americans. Accept that.

Once we have accepted that there is no 100% foolproof way to prevent every terrorist attack, we can start looking at serious answers. The most obvious is to catch the terrorists before they carry out their attack. Stop them before they get to the airport. That’s what happened with the liquid-explosives bombers. We still have to dump out kids’ sippy-cups, but it doesn’t matter what kind of explosives they had because they never made it to the airport.

We need better intelligence gathering, and better sharing of that information between agencies. The real failure in the recent ‘underwear bomber’ incident wasn’t that the explosives in his underwear weren’t detected by airport security. The real failure is that all of the information saying ‘this is a bad guy who you should do something about’ (including a tip saying exactly that from the man’s own father) was completely ignored.

If we get information saying, “This man right here is going to try and carry out a terrorist attack” and let him on the plane anyway, does it matter how thoroughly we search everyone else?

The other thing we need to do is control our responses. The way to fight terror is not to strip-search six-year-olds; the way to fight terror is to not be afraid. If a terrorist attack does take down a plane, or a train, or a line full of people waiting patiently for some underpaid high school dropout in a TSA uniform to grab their balls, the thing to do is NOT PANIC. Treat it as we would any other plane crash or accident; investigate what happened to see if there are any lessons to be learned, and go on about our lives.

The way to fight terror is to not be terrified.

The point of a terrorist attack is to make people afraid, and to make them overreact. Since 9/11/01 we have done exactly what the terrorists wanted, at every step of the way. How smart is that?

Some of us may die in a future terrorist attack, but that would be true no matter what the TSA’s policies are. People are dying now because of those policies. ‘What?’ you say. ‘How can that be?’

Because of increased, and increasingly humiliating and intrusive, security at the airports, more people are driving instead of flying. Driving is more dangerous than flying. An estimated 40 people a month die on the roads who would have lived if they’d flown. (Full story here.) That’s at least 4,000 people since the TSA was created.

The 9/11 attacks killed about 3,000 people.

Our airport security has killed more Americans than the terrorists have. How smart is that?

If the TSA backs down on their current ‘scan and grope’ regimen, and some future terrorist takes down a plane (and one will, whether the TSA is scanning and groping or not), there will be people who say, “See! We told you that this would happen if we stopped grabbing your balls!”

Ignore them. Do not panic. Do not overreact. Yes, if we force the TSA to let us retain our dignity when we fly some of us will die. It might be you; it might be me. But some of us will die anyway, without their dignity, and some of us our dying already.

The terrorists cannot destroy our way of life. Only we can do that. And we are.

TSA: Broken From The Start

Posted by on November 24, 2010 No comments

The real problem with the TSA isn’t that they have stupid rules and arbitrary rules that don’t do anything to protect us. The real problem is that that’s the only way they can work.

The TSA is focused on stuff. They have a list of stuff that they’re not supposed to allow on the plane. That seems like an easy way to keep air travelers safe, right? Keep dangerous things off the plane, then there won’t be any danger.

The problem is that dangerous stuff isn’t the problem. A person could get on an airplane with a box full of hand grenades, an M-60 machine gun, a knife, a sword, and even the most dangerous thing of all, a pair of nail clippers, and that flight would not be in any slightest danger at all if that person doesn’t intend any harm.

But a person with evil intent could wreak havoc with a pencil and piece of string.

There is an old saying that there are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people. That is absolutely the case when you are talking about things like airplane security. Taking things away from people who don’t intend to do any harm does absolutely nothing for passenger security. (In fact, it may do harm, by reducing the passengers’ ability to protect themselves from the people of evil intent. Imagine if the non-terrorist passengers on 9/11 had all been carrying pistols.)

I’ll say that again: Taking ‘dangerous’ stuff away from good people is totally useless.

Taking dangerous stuff away from bad people isn’t all that useful either, because practically anything can be dangerous. The trick isn’t to try and stop dangerous stuff; the trick is to stop dangerous people.

The TSA is completely hopeless at that. They don’t even try.

People say that the Israeli method of doing airport security wouldn’t work here because of the volume of air travel, and that’s true enough. The lesson to be learned from how the Israelis do security isn’t to copy everything they do, but look at where their emphasis is. The Israelis do some scanning for bombs and the like, but most of their passenger screening efforts are on looking at the people, not the stuff.

That is what we don’t do, but what we should. There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous people. The TSA isn’t interested in dangerous people, only in looking at their list of dangerous stuff and making sure nothing on that list gets past them. (Though they’re not even very good at that.)

That is why the TSA must go. It is a broken organization; no matter how good they get at doing what they do, it won’t make us safer because they do the wrong thing. And they aren’t even any good at that.

Thinking Point #6

Posted by on December 7, 2010 No comments

Do the citizens of a democracy have the right to know what their government is doing in their name (and with their money)?

Thinking Point #7: What You Pay For Is What You Get

Posted by on December 19, 2010 No comments

What we, as a society, want from our domestic security apparatus (the TSA, Homeland Security, the armed forces, etc) is for them to keep us safe, to let us feel secure.

The security apparatus, however, is rewarded when we feel unsafe and insecure. When danger is around every corner, they need bigger budgets and more power to keep us safe.

What we, as a society, want from our healthcare system is for it to keep us healthy.

The healthcare providers, however, are rewarded when we are sick. If you are healthy and never have to go to the doctor, your doctor doesn’t make any money.

See the problem? Imagine if firefighters got paid only when buildings caught on fire.

When there is a disconnect between what society at large wants from an organization, and what actually benefits the organization and its members, society is going to be poorly served by that organization.

Occupy This

Posted by on October 24, 2011 No comments

Some people have claimed that the rich financiers on Wall Street are the wrong target for protesters; that those people haven’t done anything wrong. They’re not out to hurt anyone, they’re just really good at getting rich. Should we punish them for that?

The problem is, that’s not true. The super-rich Wall Street bankers didn’t simply get rich by playing the game better than everyone else; they changed the rules to favor them. Those government agency that don’t oversee the banks like they’re supposed to? That’s because the agencies are run by investment bankers. (It’s actually quite common to have an agency that is supposed to regulate an industry staffed by representatives of that industry. They’re the ones who have a sustained interest in what the regulating industry does.) They bribe our elected officials to get their taxes cut, and laws passed to loosen the regulation of their business. They get taxpayer bailouts to cover their losses when their wild gambling spree finally collapses.

The competitive economy isn’t a matter of sitting down at a table with a poker player who is more skilled than you. It’s a matter of sitting down at a poker table with a player who may or may not be more skilled than you, but who can–and will–unilaterally change the rules to favor himself as the game goes on. It’s tough for anyone else to win that game.

If the Occupy Wall Street protesters sometimes sound as if they don’t know what they want, or if their goals sound foolish, that’s because of the nature of the problem. It’s impossible to reform the system because only the people benefiting from the system as it is now can do the reforming; the interlocking marriage of government and big business/finance can’t be broken from within the system, because they control the whole system. Any suggestion for reform sounds absurd when reform is impossible.

My own absurd idea (which couldn’t possibly be implemented, but which is no less absurd than any other attempt at reform) would be to fill offices by lot. Pick people at random from the pool of registered voters. Sure, some of the people you get will be corrupt, or crazy, or stupid, but some won’t be. The system we have now practically guarantees that _only_ the corrupt, crazy, or stupid get in. Adding 12 randomly chosen Tribunes of the Plebs, with laws making it high treason to give any Tribune or member of their family a bribe or ‘valuable gift’ would be a nice bonus. Corporations would still find a way to buy them, but having to buy all 12, and a different set every year, would get expensive.

(Tribunes of the Plebs are another Roman institution, one our Founding Fathers didn’t want to touch. We got a House of Representatives instead. In American terms, all 12 Tribunes would have the same Veto power as the President, plus the power to bypass Congress and bring legislation before the American people directly. Awesome, huh?)

Crazy? Of course. But what isn’t?

What’s In Your Wallet?

Posted by on October 26, 2011 No comments

Eddie Smith over at Practically Efficient has a nice post about slimming down your unnecessarily large wallet.

I dumped most of my wallet years ago myself, so I’m pretty much with Eddie here, except for one thing. Scans of your auto insurance card? You’re going to hand your iPhone to the mechanics who need to see your insurance before doing the annual state inspection? You’re going to hand your iPhone to a cop who’s pulled you over? You know that that gives him access to everything on your iPhone, right?

I’ll carry a copy of my insurance card, and if I lose it, it only takes a minute to print out a new copy. It’s a small price to pay for keeping everything else safe.

Hobby Lobby

Posted by on November 11, 2011 No comments

Is politics a hobby?

Yes, James. Of course it is. I’m just waiting for each party to pick a sports team to identify with, though that may not be necessary. We already have the Blues and the Reds.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution

Posted by on November 16, 2011 No comments

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

That is what was written a couple of centuries ago. Now, we live in a country where bribing politicians is Constitutionally protected free speech, but peaceably assembling to petition the government for a redress of grievances will get you swarmed with riot police.

Have a nice day.

James Shelley on Citizenship

Posted by on December 6, 2011 No comments

James Shelley, interesting as always, has a piece up today on citizenship in the digital age. He is quite right in practically everything he says there, but I think there’s a point he’s missing.

Things may be different in whatever European Socialist country James lives in (that’s a joke; he lives in Canada), but here in the good old US of A we don’t go in for that ‘democracy’ stuff.

“Democracy is not simply about elections: it is about collectively exerting our collective influence for our collective good.”

Yes, yes; all true. The problem is that in the US (and, all joking aside, it may be different in other western democracies, but I don’t think it’s much different), the great mass of citizens have no collective influence. Not only do we have no say in government policy, as likely as not we are not even told what government policy is, or the reasons for it. (All in the name of ‘security’ of course. Whose security they don’t say.)

Democracy is reduced to ticking boxes on an election ballot because that is all we have, and even that is a farce. Like a Roman citizen of the 3rd century, we can dutifully elect our Praetors and celebrate our Consuls, and pretend that those things matter, but the real power is in the hands of a handful of people who pay no attention to the needs or voice of the masses, and they are not going to give it up willingly.

Before we can exercise our collective influence, we must take it back. That process took about 1800 years after the fall of the Roman Republic. I hope we can move a little more quickly this time.

What Everybody Knows

Posted by on December 9, 2011 No comments

There’s a good article over on the Washington Post about what happens when a successful adult tries to take a 10th grade standardized test. He concludes:

“It makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a student’s entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning.

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

Well, of course. The public education system isn’t about preparing kids academically to be successful adults. It is about keeping them out of the house for 13 years so their parents can work, conditioning them to accept performing dull, pointless work under conditions where rigid conformity is required, and churning out adults who are ready to do pointless scut-work for low pay in the service of their corporate overlords.

Everyone knows that.