I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
[My ad lib to Glenn Beck's "favorite" President ("Now, let's look at one of the early 20th century progressives — I hate this guy — Woodrow Wilson"): President Obama has borrowed ("invested") over $4T in "progressive brains" and all we have to show for it is today's economy.]
John Stossel, "Ten Years After": Thumbs UP!
Some Reflections on the TSA and Recent Developments
Stossel is one of my favorite reporters/commentators and a rare one with libertarian impulses. . He brings up Eisenhower's prescient critique of the military-industrial complex and pointed out its reality, that even as we note $1.3T budget deficits are not sustainable, National Defense Magazine ran a headline pointing out that relevant homeland security vendors were confident of their business prospects. In my own words here, security spending has itself become an American third rail of politics; even in an 111th Congress and a President whom ran against involvement in Iraq and talking about hundreds of billions (or even a few trillions) of dollars, we didn't see Draconian cuts in military spending.
John Stossel quotes Chris Hellman whom points out over the past decade the US has spent nearly $8T on defense: $5.9T baseline Pentagon, $1.36T Iraq/Afghanistan, $636B, homeland security. How does than compare to the 1990's? $4.2T baseline Pentagon. Just in terms of baselines, the budget went up 40%. Hellman describes the US military in these terms:
China just launched a refitted Ukrainian aircraft carrier from the 1990s on its first test run -- and that’s what the only projected "great power" enemy of the U.S. has to offer for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy has 11 aircraft carrier task forces to cruise the seven seas and plans to keep that many through 2045...In any normal sense, the United States stands alone in military terms. Its expenditures make up almost 50% of global military spending; it dominates the global arms market; and it has countless more bases, pilotless drones, military bands, [etc.] ...The Pentagon “cuts” presently being discussed in Washington are largely in projected future growth, not in real funds (which continue to rise).According to the 9/11 Commission Report: "The 9/11 attacks cost somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to execute", just over half of that spent in the US. Here's the point I'm trying to raise here: Whatever the costs just in terms of property, business operations and of course the priceless loss of life on 9/11, the US spent over $4.2T during the prior decade--and yet at the annual cost of a handful of generals or admirals, a small group of fanatics were able to deal the US an estimated $50-100B in economic damage, not to mention the unfathomable fact that the Pentagon itself, the heart of the military with the most advanced Air Force in the world, was successfully attacked.
The takeaway I want to stress here is how was it possible, with $4.2T in defense spending, for a small group of radicals able to do this, even without the resources or intelligence of a great world power? How many times have we heard about the development of very expensive, sophisticated weapon systems--which can be fooled with inexpensive decoys and the like? I've been simply pointing out that just as the US has thrown billions or trillions of dollars at social problems over the past 5 decades with little to show for it--and with President Obama at the helm, two years after the recession was declared over, we've just heard a Census report that indicates we are at the highest poverty rate in decades (so, as Dr. Phil might suggest to progressives, how's that (Obama) been working for you?), we've been largely been doing the same at defense.
I'm being consistent on spending: no more throwing money at whatever political objective. No expenditure is more worthy than others; all should be justified. In fact, I would say we have to go beyond the military-industrial complex and start talking about the government complex.
John Stossel points out that the knee-jerk response (my words) to 9/11 included the in-sourcing (with apparently some exemptions like San Francisco) of airport security in the TSA. The US Senate UNANIMOUSLY agreed to federalize airport security; now I do realize, as a political reality, being against "better" airport security was like coming out against Mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. The Democrats seemed to believe that the issues involved in airport security didn't deal with so much with, say, failures in the screening of foreign visitors, or defects in screening procedures, but in the "professionalism" of private-sector employees. So instead of, say, negotiating higher hiring standards for private-sector security personnel, it was felt only a federal employee (through the TSA) could provide reliable safety services. That, of course, is an unconscionable leap of logic. A consistent conservative/libertarian would have NEVER accepted that leap of logic.
Now, and this is the part that really grabbed my attention in reading Stossel's article, is remember how much due diligence (and expensive) effort is being spent patting down 6-year-olds, even probing babies, invasive searches of 80-year-old grandmas, etc.: there are MILLIONS OF SHEEP who are basically to throw any and all individual liberties of other people under the bus, with the same zeal Warren Buffett has in telling politicians they should pick the pockets of other billionaires as well, saying it's perfectly rational to consider a family making a long-awaited summer family trip to Disney World possible terror suspects. How many times has a simple belt buckle delayed my getting through security?
Somehow all of these SHEEP accept at face value EVERYONE should and must go through what new wrinkle a terrorist dreams up--e.g., female terrorists on a Russian flight hiding bombs inside their bras, one guy tries to make his shoe a bomb, another guy sews chemicals into his underwear, etc.
Here's the point I'm getting across here: we've been trying to do the same thing in terms of airport security, what the military has been doing for decades: building elaborate, very expensive systems, jets costing millions of dollars--but they were not prepared for a terrorist to do something analogous to what some Japanese pilots did during WWII. How could anyone possibly think of that? Go figure. But we remain ever confident that Big Government will come up with the right answers when it comes to airport security. After all, they are "professionals"... Not like those mere private-sector company "amateurs" whom designed and built military planes, ships and missiles.
Well, for the MILLIONS OF SHEEP, who are confident this time Big Government will get it right, John Stossel has an interesting fact for you to consider. Those Los Angeles federal employees, costing 5 times more than prior private-sector contractors, managed to find 1 of every 4 explosives planted by inspectors testing security. In contrast, the private-sector screeners in San Francisco found 4 out of every 5 planted explosives. Now don't you feel a lot better about babies, small kids and great-grandmothers being felt up while most test explosives somehow get past those federal professionals? They certainly know their priorities.
I myself have written several commentaries talking about risk-based security (e.g., practiced in Israel); we are slowly but surely seeing the TSA introducing masking technology for genitalia in full-body screeners. We are told children under 12 may soon not have to undergo physical patdowns or take off their shoes--not that they are off the hook, of course: the government plans to substitute other methods of explosive trace materials (just in case 8-year-old Cub Scout Bobby is secretly planting a bomb in his sneakers, of course), multiple passes through security, etc. Eventually HHS Secretary Napolitano tells us adults one day we may not have to take off our nefarious belt buckles or shoes--if and when, of course, we have new, improved technology to detect those belt buckle and shoe bombs of course. The fact that belts and shoes have not (to the best of my knowledge) resulted in even a single domestic airline fatality over the past several decades?
In my view, there is something inherently out of balance when we lose more men on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan in the decade following 9/11 that the number of civilians murdered on that day. We have entrusted our politicians with an obscenely large amount of blood and treasure; I certainly don't feel any safer just because I'm being protected from nefarious great-grandmothers and small children never having been responsible for a single lost commercial aircraft.
It's time to privatize the TSA.
Final thought. I realize I'm being controversial here. Over 30,000 people a year EVERY YEAR die from fatal auto accidents. Typically over 15,000 people a year die from homicide. I'm not belittling the sacrifice of 9/11--I wrote a lightly read post on that day; but if we're being honest, where do you think if we were going to spend money on public safety, we should get the biggest return on our investment?
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Fleetwood Mac, "Gold Dust Woman". The rather obscure song features Nicks' haunting, distinctive vocals and a strong arrangement. Nicks herself has given various explanations of lyrics over the years. My personal take? "Be careful of what you wish for--you just may get it." It starts with a young man and woman, once in a genuine loving relationship with each other, but also with dreams of fame and fortune as rock stars. They reach for and achieve the self-indulgent lifestyle, including sex and drugs, or does the lifestyle capture them? With more fame and fortune than they ever dreamed, they can afford to buy or build mansions, kingdoms; to their fans and groupies, they have become gods and goddesses, kings and queens, attracting "love" and "friends". In the stark, sobering morning light, she realizes these things are illusory, and she has been caught up in an unsustainable, self-destructive existence, rapidly escalating beyond her control. The relationships that come with the lifestyle are not authentic; she despises her old flame for failing to acknowledge the same, for letting the trappings come between them. They would be better off ditching the lifestyle and getting back to a more private, normal lifestyle before it's too late. However, you cannot put the fame genie back in the bottle.
Of course, in the unlikely event Stevie Nicks ever read this, she would probably think the real crap is my interpretation...
