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The Grumpy Pundit | Pursuing Happiness And Cursing The Darkness. | Page 12

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.

He Would Be Ashamed

Posted by on November 20, 2010 No comments

“We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep into our own history and our doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.” — Edward R. Murrow

Thinking Point #5

Posted by on November 11, 2010 No comments

Coward: A person who shrinks from or avoids danger, pain, or difficulty

Remember that word. It defines 21st Century America. All of our politics, the security state that we are in the process of welcoming, are all based on fear, and cowardice.

The next time you see some story on the news talking about how we must give up not only our freedom, but our dignity as well, so that we can be safer, remember this: A coward is someone who shrinks from danger, pain or difficulty. A coward is ruled by fear.

Are we now a nation of cowards?

What The Hell is Wrong With Us?

Posted by on November 1, 2010 No comments

Seriously, America, what the fuck are you thinking? Here, go read this:

Meet the Resistance

Got it? The TSA is insisting that they either grope you or get to see you naked before you get on a plane. Least you have any illusions about what those scanners show, here’s a picture:

That’s low resolution, like you’d get with a bad cell phone camera. The actual scanner image is much more detailed, but that’s about what a TSA employee would get if he snapped a picture of the scanner image with his cheap cell phone, to enjoy later.

Now, do you really think this is a good idea? You’re okay with the the government mandating that you be either exposed or sexually assaulted before getting on a plane? Okay, maybe you are. But are you okay with your KIDS being exposed or sexually assaulted just to get on a god-damned airplane?

Are we not only to prostitute ourselves to any government employee who insists that access to our bodies is his right, but we must pimp out our children too? Are we, as a people, really THAT pathetic?

“Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” – Frederick Douglass

What the fuck does it take before we get our fat asses up off the couch and say, “Enough!”

Winners and Losers

Posted by on September 11, 2010 No comments

A child who was in 2nd Grade when the 9/11 attacks took place would now be old enough to go fight in Afghanistan. A whole generation of young adults can barely remember a time when America was not at war. We have undermined the traditional values of American society, creating a culture of fear and obedience, and destroyed our economy, all in pursuit of an unattainable objective.

Every war has winners and losers, and the common people of both sides are usually among the losers. We aren’t just losing the War on Terror; we have lost.

The Leaky Economy

Posted by on July 25, 2010 No comments

It’s a pretty standard course of action these days that when the US economy gets in trouble, the government starts ladling out ‘stimulus’ money. This ‘stimulus’ (whether in the form of direct payments, tax breaks, or low interest rates) is supposed to jump-start the economy and create jobs. The idea is that creating demand for products (either from consumers or other businesses) will encourage companies to hire people to meet that demand. Increase demand, increase production, create jobs. Seems straightforward. Unfortunately, the borders of the US economy are porous.

That was not always the case. Between WWII and 1990, it took about eight months for the jobs lost in a recession to be recovered. Job recovery from the 1990 recession took 23 months. Job recovery from the 2001 recession took 36 months. We’re still waiting on the current recession.

The reason behind these ‘jobless recoveries,’ I think, is that in our globalized economy the demand created by stimulus spending no longer has to be met by workers in the US. The stimulus money basically leaks out of the US and stimulates economies all over the world. Imagine a colander in a sink. You keep pouring water into the colander, but it never gets full. Not until the entire sink is full enough of water to raise the level in the colander.

That is the situation we have when the government tries to ‘stimulate’ the US economy. The money pours out into the global economy as fast as they can pour it in. They’re not really stimulating the US economy; they’re stimulating the entire planet’s economy, which takes a lot longer and a whole lot more money.

And so we get ‘jobless’ recoveries. As the global economy grows, these recoveries are going to take even longer, unless we drastically re-think how we go about managing our financial crises.

There seems to be three different ways the problem could be approached. (Well, four if you count “Don’t do anything,” which is the likeliest course of action.)

The social safety net could be strengthened so that there isn’t as much urgency to stimulate the economy. The downside of this is that increasing unemployment payments, and extending low-cost health care to the unemployed, would be expensive. The upside it that it would probably be less expensive than what we’re doing now.

The stimulus could be made more direct, to focus it on the US economy. That would require more direct government involvement, not just writing checks to consumers and businesses and hoping they do the right thing with the money. The government would have to directly put people to work, require that companies create their new jobs here in the US, that sort of thing. The downside is that government job programs are generally inefficient, and any government involvement in the economy causes some people to begin bleating, “Socialism!” The upside is that it would keep some of the money in the US economy.

Finally, we could make the borders of the US economy less porous. This would involve a small tariff, say about 5%; just enough to impose some friction on the money leaving the country. The downside is that it would annoy many of our foreign trade partners, who are used to having unfettered access to markets in the US, and many US companies which are used to being able to move parts of their operations overseas without restriction. The upside is that it would restore some of the competitive imbalance that US companies currently operate under, and keep many jobs here in the US.

I favor a mixed approach; strengthen the safety net for workers, and impose a small tariff on all imports. The tariff would go a long way towards paying for the safety net.

This would raise the cost of some goods, either directly in the case of imports, or indirectly in the case of companies having to maintain more expensive operations here in the States (as opposed to hiring people in China or Indonesia and importing their products), but with more jobs and money kept in the country people would be better able to afford the more expensive goods. NOT doing it will mean increased taxes to pay for all that stimulus money that is pouring out of our country, to benefit workers all around the world. We simply can’t afford that any longer (though that is exactly what the powers-that-be want to keep doing).

In either case we pay. This plan at least lets us pay each other.

The Little Engines That Wouldn’t

Posted by on July 22, 2010 No comments

Once upon a time, some people were asked to assemble toy trains.

This was an experiment to see how much work people would do before giving up. The participants were paid for each toy they assembled, but each successive toy paid less than the one before. (That is, if they were paid $x for the first toy, the second paid $x-1, the third, $x-2, etc.)

To make it more interesting, the participants were broken into two groups. In one group, the assembled trains were left in the test area, where the assembler could see the product of their work. In the other group, the toys were disassembled by the test monitor and put back in the box to be reassembled.

The first group built more trains before giving up; about ten to the other group’s seven. This is usually interpreted to mean that people will work harder and longer if they can see what they have made; if their work has a visible, tangible, result. I think that that is only part of the answer. I with the test had had a third group; their trains would be removed from the testing area after completion. I am pretty sure that they would have built eight or nine trains before giving up.

As motivational and satisfying as it is to see a tangible product that you have built, it is even more demotivational and depressing to see your work undone as fast as you can do it. I think the second group suffered not only from not having a visible result from their work, but from having a visible non-result.

No one likes for their work to go completely to waste, much less to have their nose rubbed in it.

Both of those things, unfortunately, are common in the workplace.

Ancient Wisdom #2

Posted by on May 31, 2010 No comments

“The consequences of anger are often more harmful than the causes of it.” — Marcus Aurelius

Money and Motivation

Posted by on May 30, 2010 No comments

This is a very interesting illustrated discussion of how people aren’t motivated by what most employers (and even many employees) think that they’re motivated by.


From my own experience, I see a great deal of truth in this. I could make more money in my business if I wanted to, but at this point in my life I begrudge every day not spent with my son. I work enough to meet our financial needs, and that usually leaves some time for more important things, like playing catch with my son. Not as much time as we’d like, and he always gets upset when I leave for work and tries to stop me, but as I tell him, “Daddy has to go work to support you and mommy in your luxurious mommy and little boy lifestyle.” It doesn’t really help.

And on a good week, though, we’ll have a couple of days to go to on Daddy and Nathaniel Adventures, a couple of days that most dads don’t get to spend with their kids because they’re working, chasing one more handful of dollars.

I can always make more money, but a life only holds so much time.

Free Speech Day

Posted by on May 20, 2010 No comments

Today is Everyone Draw Muhammad Day. Some people consider this an attack on Islam. I consider it a counter-attack against the idea that, “You can’t do that because it’s against my religion,” is a valid position.

Muslims have freedom of religion, and can certainly practice their beliefs in any way that doesn’t harm other people. Their freedom of religion, though, only extends to the point where it butts up against other people’s freedom from religion. No group has a right to impose its religious beliefs on any other group. Images of Muhammad may seem like a minor issue (though a recent one; there have been many artists’ renderings of Muhammad over the centuries, many of them by Muslim artists), but it is only the tip of a much larger issue. Seeing a woman’s naked face offends many Muslims too. Should all women wear veils, to avoid giving offense? Women getting an education or, really, being treated like human beings at all is offensive to many Muslims. What do we do to avoid giving offense there? Are all of us subject to Islamic law?

I lack any artistic skills, but felt obligated to take up the task, for freedom of, and from, religion. My humble effort.

Ask Muhammad