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Going to Yosemite? Get Your Passport Ready!
rev_media writes to tell us that CNN has a few updates to the Real ID act currently facing legislators. The Real ID acts mandates all states to begin issuing federal IDs to all citizens by 2008. Costs could be as much at $14 billion, but only 40 million are currently allocated. Several states have passed legislation expressly forbidding participation in the program, while others seem to be all for it. The IDs will be required for access to all federal areas including flights, state parks and federal buildings. People in states refusing to comply will need to show passports even for domestic flights.
Did America lose a war I didnt hear about?
Papers please!
The slow slide to fascism began some time ago, but has really accelerated over the past six years or so. We have fewer rights now than ever before in the USA and I fear for where we are going.
For instance:
1) We now torture as part of imprisonment along with imprison people without the protections that the Geneva Convention provides and appear to detain people without formally charging them or letting them know what they are being charged with.
2) We have a fear mongering national obsession with security that despite all the money and bureaucracy spent and created still leaves us wide open to security threats while taxing business and limiting travel. Threat levels are increased without justification to apparently further political goals.
3) We have politicized education and science for political gain while at the same time stifled scientists from telling the facts/truth/scientific findings.
4) We have completely conflated religion and government funneling money into religious groups with strong ties into the government.
5) Taxation is only low for corporate and the most wealthy, while at the same time we have suppressed labor power and limited funding for intellectual and artistic pursuits.
6) We have rampant government corruption and funneling of government "no-bid" contracts to companies with strong ties to government.
7...... How much more do we have to add to really start becoming scared?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Yes, actually it did. Just no one noticed.
It was the war to retain our prior way of life, which we obviously lost.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sir, your papers are not in order, please come with us..... No, this is not happening in 'Soviet Russia' this is happening in the United States of America One of the things that the US goverment kept on about during the cold war was that in the United States you did not need 'internal travel documents and passports' because it, the United States, was a free country..
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Borodin: Do you think they will let me live in Montana?
Capt. Ramius: I would think they'll let you live wherever you want.
Borodin: Good. Then I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman, and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pick-up truck, or umm... possibly even...a recreational vehicle, and drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Capt. Ramius: Oh yes.
Borodin: No papers?
Capt. Ramius: No papers. State-to-state.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I don't agree with all of his politics, especially his stances on abortion and public health care, but he may be the least authoritarian out there. If you think that most Democrate will be better, they're just as bad.
Oh how far we've come from: Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
But, Walsh said, "any state that's refusing to implement this key recommendation by the 9/11 Commission, and whose state driver's licenses are as a result used in another terrorist attack, should be held responsible." What a fucking fear-mongerer!
So, if the next terrorists have one of these internal passports, what are the consequences for the people promoting the Real-ID program? Will they be held responsible? Another 9/11 and will the people running DHS be convicted of manslaughter? Can't have it both ways Cheeseoff!
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
At least you were free-range sheep before... soon you'll be factory farmed.
A passport is a fallback document if you don't have one of these Federal ID's pretty much like today if you don't have a photo ID to get on a plane. Now I'm sure my state the Great State of Redneck-NorthCarolinastan will determine that getting one of these Federal ID's is even more expensive but I'm sure they'll accept a hunting license or a document from any Baptist Church in a pinch.
If he's a US citizen, he will, on April 15th, just like the rest of us.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Otherwise known as the War on Terror. The terrorists won; we have lost our freedoms. They have changed our way of life.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
wow. I really wish I had that last mod point still... just don't know how I would have modded you... we need a "sadly true" option.
Get a web developer
That's approx $46.26 per person (according to census.gov numbers). That's more than 6 hours of work (at my minimum wage).. nice to know that the next time I go to work I'll earn nothing that day so that people can be forced to register their movements within their own country.
I think you and I are the only persons to realize this.
Al Queda struck a magor blow to the American way of life. While not an instant knock down, it may in fact be a mortal blow. More like a bee sting to a person allergic to bee venom.
We Americans have enjoyed almost total security, in that our three neighbors consist of two good friends (Mexico and Canada), and a weak pseudo enemy (Cuba). This being our only injury since the Spanish American war (concluded 1846). December 7 1941 was actually smaller than September 11 2001. The response to the attack is the only thing we Americans could not withstand, a damage to our freedom.
Like a bee sting, the root cause, is an over-active immune response to a relatively minor injury. This is driving a catastrophic systemic failure. The political body is consuming the peoples liberty due to an over reaction by the infotainment industry. Which in-fact creates a dangerous situation for the leadership.
The infotainment industry (facing a loss in power to alternative internet new sources) over-reacted to terrorist acts, causing the politicians to make drastic reductions in freedom in order to appear effective. This in turn provided a positive feedback to the infotainment industry. The infotainment industry in a downward spiral has lost it's past power and glory. With every minor terror threat the press over-reacts again seeking another spike in power. It's a run-away system.
All this over-reaction is causing a meltdown in the public confidence of congress (currently facing a 10% approval rating), the executive branch, and the press.
- High Tech workers, please say NO to Union Carpenters, their Union sees fit to control our compensation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
think on all of the crimes that would be easier to solve if you had DNA ot match to already in a database.
The thing is that the "tinfoil hats" are sometimes right, in that governments do tend to abuse power. What happens when 15 years after your national mandatory DNA database is opened to insurance companies and corporations (after successful lobbying) and you can no longer get a job and or health insurance because you're too much of a health risk?
You think this won't happen? Look what is happening to the national "Do Not Call" list for telemarketers. They (the corporations) are fighting like hell to get permission to call people on it... and this is just the off chance of maybe getting a few sales. Imagine how much they will want hardcore information like your genetic predispositions? Nope sorry you can't be an airline pilot because it shows here you have an increased risk of early heart disease. We're not willing to invest hundreds of thousands into training you if in all likelyhood you can only work for us for 10 years... Oh look, you have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, if you want health insurance you have to pay 10 times as much, and we'll only insure you until you're 40. Etc.
Sometimes some of the crap tinfoil hats say makes a lot of sense.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Every single 9/11 terrorists highjacker had a valid passport.
This is security theatre -- worse still, it removes freedoms from us non-terrorists.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Federal law denies passports to many people based on (for example) whether they owe a state money for child support. This is going to get real interesting when those people become locked out of the legal system entirely because they can't get a passport and live in a state not participating in this grand new fascism. The fascism that has denied them their civil right to come and go becomes the fascism that denies them their civil rights entirely on a federal level... just because of financial obligations. So much for the fourteenth amendment.
Just a couple of years and we get a whole new class of people... legal, official, "dissidents."
But our Siberia will be a whole, whole lot warmer...
The terrorists won; we have lost our freedoms. They have changed our way of life.
The only way this statement could possibly be true is if the terrorists you mention are actually elected U.S. officials. Otherwise, you are either fooled or trying to fool others.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Didn't the USSR lose the cold war?
What?
You don't think it's a problem because you think the ID proves who you are. It doesn't. It demonstrates that some authority went to some level of trouble verifying that you are who you say you are, to the extent that you can trust that the paper was not forged. In the case of many government papers, it is indeed a pretty reliable indicator, but it is still pretty easy for corrupt officials to create very authentic papers with false information on them, information that happens to appear in very official databases. REAL ID does little to address the fraudulent issue of official cards(and makes such a card that much more valuable).
The data access and homogenization provisions are at least disconcerting, especially in the face of the whole thing being rather unnecessary. If documented illegals were the problem(one of the main things it is supposed to address is illegal aliens 'stealing' jobs from Americans), it might help address the situation, but for the most part, it's the undocumented illegals that are the problem, and the willingness of employers to hire them, not the ones that are trying to get government identification and pay taxes.
If it is a huge, expensive, pain in the ass and doesn't accomplish anything much other than making life more irritating, Congress must have voted for it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If the goal of the terrorists were to change our way of life, and that has happened ( because of our reaction to their terror attacks ), then how haven't they won? In other words, didn't they accomplish what they set out to do with terrorism?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
The *only* way?
Only? Really?
The "papers, please" thing that we used to deride Russia about,
as in "you don't have real freedom, you are limited" is upon us.
The terrorists have won, in part. And we elected the people who
used that as a wedge issue to inspire fear in the "home of the brave".
I submit to you that it is equally possible that you are fooled
or trying to fool others.
emt 377 emt 4
Even the Federal building access seems very questionable, it really doesn't matter who I am as long as I am not carrying an AK47 or some C4. If I get called for Jury Duty and need to show a passport to get to the court room... well that seems pretty stupid to me and I don't think I would comply even if I have a passport floating around.
If passports are going to be required universally for access to public spaces, then they should be given out for free along with citizenship like a social security card is.
Just because someone else paid more for the shackles and chains doesn't mean anyone should be grateful.
Oh, you actually thought this was supposed to stop terrorism? No, it's to make you think that the government gives a shit about fighting terrorism, while they're training the next Bin Laden, or the next Nicaraguan Contras.
Today, that generation is in decline; they have, for the most part, sold out the values they held as younger people, in favor of security for themselves, their lives, and their families.
There just aren't enough young people around -- not to mention actually voting -- to overcome the influence of the aging Boom generation. And many younger people realize this, and become more cynical about the entire system, less interested in doing anything to modify it -- which, perversely, actually gives the older people more power.
I don't think you're going to see a major change in the direction this country is going, until the demographics come back into balance, and that's not going to happen until a whole lot of people in their mid-60s die.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The government terrorizes YOU.
The sentiment comes partially from George W. Bush's public speeches following September 11. In a nutshell, since the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, we should go on living our lives as we have, otherwise the terrorists have won.
Well, we're not able to live our lives as we did before. Therefore, by historical record of our Commander-in-Chief's own words, the War on Terror has been lost. We live in fear, we allow the federal government to impose Constitutionally illegal directives, imposing will both on the rights of citizens and states. And yet, if you point this out to the radical Right, they'll shout you down, reminding you--as loudly as possible--to remember the people who jumped out of the World Trade Center on September 11th.
Check the statistics. Several times more Americans died due to drunk drivers than terrorist activities in 2001. Yet no one is suggesting that distilleries and car manufacturers be bugged, wiretapped, infiltrated, or bombed out of existence. What will it take for America to stop being ruled by the iron fist of Knee-Jerk Politics? Will it take the end of the Union, the Great Experiment that seems to be in such peril? Will it take seeing the young men and women in uniform marching the "diaper heads" into the ovens? What will it take?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Yep: The war against statism. The people have become sheeple who want the government to keep them safe, so they have willingly given up the right to keep and bear arms, the right to privacy, the right to be secure against unwarranted searches and seizures (see the "War on drugs"), and now the right to freedom of association (movement).
The biggest threat most Americans face is their own government, which imprisons a greater percentage of its population than even Stalinist Russia, and can knock down your door in the middle of the night with thugs armed with machine guns if they think you are engaged in non-state-approved recreation.
The parks/Federal Buildings thing is about leverage. When citizens of all those "holdout" states with non-federally-compliant state IDs go on vacation for 2 weeks to Jellystone National Park imagine what will happen. Dad drives up to the entrance in the family mini-van packed with the wife, 2.4 screaming kids, and a bunch of camping gear. The NPS Ranger at the booth takes a look at his NH driver's license and says "sorry sir, but you have to have a federally recognized ID to enter the park." So there they are, staying at the Best Western that night, looking at a long drive back to New Hampshire because their state doesn't want to comply with the federal standard. It's a load of crap, sure, but it's the way the feds do things.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I just don't get it. I mean sure, I bet some terrorist hate our freedom. And to those terrorists, they've won. But I figured those terrorists were just the ones made up by some sarcastic lefty or some misguided right-winger.
I think the real terrorists wouldn't give a shit about this. Iraq is the target rich environment. Its like having all the cows come to your home. So why go all the way to the supermarket for milk?
There are a lot of reasoning behind the recent terror attacks in both the US and Abroad. There's a lot to hate. Our support of Israel. Our foreign policy. Our position as a superpower. Our Culture. Ingrained hatred taught from childhood.
Tightening security measures changes none of these things. So from a "Win-Lose" perspective, no one wins.
We're becoming a huge jail, no one in or out without tons of hassle. The only ones that win from this is the Government.
"We Americans have enjoyed almost total security, in that our three neighbors consist of two good friends (Mexico and Canada)"
And I don't know how many of our "Comrads" here in the U.S. realize that Bush has been trying to piss off the Canadians ever since 9/11, big time. I live only four hours from the border, and work up there sometimes... and you cannot believe how he went out of the way to stab them in the back.
On 9/11 we would not allow any international flights to land in our country... they were too dangerous. So what does canada do, they take them, even in Toronto. Now any of those planes could have been compromised for all they knew, they could have lost many lives, but they did it anyway. Well, when I was working up there after 9/11, Bush thanked all sorts of nations for helping, and left out Canada. Don't worry, they are not too dumb to notice.
Bush does not want Canada for a friend, it is much easier for him to close off the borders if they become an adversary.
Fair enough. Here's the deal: let's change places. I don't and have never paid a dime in federal income tax.
Have fun making about $25,000/yr and having a personal equity of -$88,000. I'll be happy to pay $75,000 in federal taxes because that would mean that I'm making something near 7 figures.
If you think paying taxes is bad, try being below the poverty line (not that I am, but many are).
Let's not get too over the top here. No, I'm not a fan of Real ID either. I think it's expensive, kind of draconian, and largely unnecessary. But I am an American who has lived for recent multiyear segments in Canada and France, and let me put it this way: you can't escape totally from surveillance or ID cards, or any of those other little baddies that come from governments of various stripes. Governments are people, and people aren't perfect.
The French are proud of their democracy and consider themselves one of its founders and leading lights. (Frankly, with Rousseau and Montesquieu in the bag, they've got as much of a claim to democracy as the USA does.) And let me note that in France, ID is nationally issued and you're required to carry it everywhere. As an alien resident for a year, I was required to carry my passport and laminated visa (i.e. my French ID card) around wherever I went. (I did, sometimes.) Had I ever changed apartments, I would have been required by EU law to report my change of residence to the police. Yet I don't ever see the French complaining that their democracy is under threat because of IDs, and I've never seen any mention of the issue while glossing through either of the two big national political newspapers: Le Monde (leftist) or Le Figaro (rightist). If you wanted, you could make the conspiratorial claim that it's because they're in with the government; but I'd hazard just to guess that it's not perceived as a threat.
Do I like surveillance? God no! But please, let's just be sure to step outside the hyperbole and remind ourselves that a national ID card does not a police state make. And let's not talk in terms of who is or isn't the "greatest state," because quite frankly, all of us big rich Western democratic states have got our own problems. Sure, elements in the US are currently screaming "security! security!" as the executive branch grabs for power, but let's check out some of our friends: France has high unemployment as immigration spirals upward, Britain's got video cameras going up in every nook and cranny, Italy is trying to hold back an ex-prime minister who was making strides toward authoritarianism, and for God's sake, Canada is just trying to hold itself together. The way I see it, the best you can do is trade one set of problems for another.
So I've made my choice. This fall it's back to the frozen North with me. And national ID cards had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The terrorists have won, in part.
Still untrue. We may be losing, but it isn't because some abstract concept is winning. It just isn't that simple.
That's a matter of semantics. There is no denying that 9/11 was a wildly successful attack, more successful than anyone dreamed even in 2002. The losses from the attacks themselves were largely confined to 3000 innocent lives, two skyscrapers, and four downed airliners. People even across the Middle East were lighting candles for us.
Our overreaction got us a new ineffective federal agency, an endless quagmire of a long bitter war that has killed more Americans than died on 9/11 and many times as many Iraqi civilians, new torture policies allowing "extraordinary rendition" and "enhanced interrogation" that have made the U.S. into a pariah across the world, a suspension of habeas corpus, and an undermining of the protections behind Amendments I, IV, V, VI, and VIII as well as numerous statutory protections in the federal realm relating to privacy, wiretapping, and individual rights to a fair trial- but we did get a nice rainbow color chart out of the whole thing. Maybe some "abstract concept" isn't "winning" but by any standard the 19 hijackers couldn't have asked for a reaction from the United States that would be more damaging to the United States.
I think it's "trusting people" vs "trusting systems."
This is obviously going to be making a lot of broad generalizations, but I think that conservatives tend to be suspicious of systems (e.g. "the Government" as an entity, or its bureaucracy) but trust individual people that they agree with or find agreeable, ignoring that even a seemingly decent person might be warped by power.
Many liberals seem to take the opposite view; they distrust individuals and emphasize the inherent corrupting nature of power, but seem to trust (sometimes a little more blindly than I find comfortable) complex systems that lack a particular face or human qualities.
I think you see the same dichotomy in the liberal and conservative readings of history: conservatives seem to favor "great man" theories that emphasize individual leadership and the influence of small numbers of people on historical outcomes, while many liberal scholars seem to downplay the role of the individual and instead look at the progression of abstract systems (the progress of 'society', etc.).
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Same in the UK, 32% above $10K, 41% above $75K, 17.5% on purchases, 310% tax on petrol (yes, over 3 fold, works out to be about 20/mile for a small car).
In the UK public transport is great on commuter routes in and out of london (aside from the cost -- 35/mile), however long distance (>150 miles) costs a fortune, over $1/mile in some cases, and takes forever aside from city to city). Hospitals are collapsing, Education is a free-for-all, average house prices are 8x average earnings.
However we don't have Bush as a leader, so we're better off than America anyway.
A few nutjobs may want this. Most people recruited by the terrorist/insurgent/resistance groups just want the U.S. out of the Middle East. Bin Laden's original beef was the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. (Yes, we're pretty much out of there now, but we're in so deep in Iraq and Afghanistan it doesn't much matter.) Plus the whole Israel/Palestine debacle, of course.
Um., you don't see the irony here? Let me help.
Freedom of speech is at the root of "western ideas of democracy and freedom". Therefore, anyone working against freedom of speech is campaigning for the introduction of a system that overthrows western ideas of democracy and freedom.
Ergo, you are arguing that you should be considered guilty of treason.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Maybe some "abstract concept" isn't "winning" but by any standard the 19 hijackers couldn't have asked for a reaction from the United States that would be more damaging to the United States.
Like I've been saying for a while, often you can take a Bush policy, look at it, and realize it is, literally, the Most Harmful Policy they could have done. They often walk the fine line of doing the most damage, while carefully being short of something that people would have risen up and stopped. It's a very fine line, and it's possible they've accidentally wandered over it too often for a Democratic Congress, but there are things that are very hard to explain.
For example, the response to Katrina. No, Bush doesn't dislike black people that much, and, as others have pointed out, that was known-in-advance disaster (At least, a known minor disaster, and, remember, people thought the hurricane itself would hit New Orleans until right at the end, so everyone thought there would be a different disaster, a leveled city instead of a flooded one.), and a great photo op. He could have ridden in mere hours after the hurricane, with food and water for everyone, yammered about God sparing the city, and then, when the flooding started and everyone realize what was going, been taken pictures of while handing babies up into helicopters and all sorts of shit, even giving people rides in Air Force One.
For someone whose ratings were starting to slip, it would have been very helpful and not the least bit dangerous to him. Hell, just a normal response would have been non-harmful. Instead he 'completely fucked it up' in ways that are near incomprehensible.
Other people attribute this sort of stuff to greed, or stupidity, or incompetence, or lunacy, or pettiness. An entire industry has sprung up to attempt to explain the policy decisions of this Administration, and people trying to explain each tree need to take a step back and look at the forest: George W. Bush, or at least his administration, is attempting to destroy this county. It's not a side-effect of anything, it is the actual goal.
There's even some fairly interesting circumstantial evidence of this: The right, for as long as I can remember, has projected their behaviors on the left. (The list is too long to go into, here, I have to run, but people know what I'm talking about. Think Foley, think K Street, think current obstructionism in the Senate, think Whitewater investigations into land deal vs. Sen. Steven's and others very real corrupt 'deals'. Things the right often does, the left mainly doesn't, and the right accuses the left of all the time.)
Well, how long as the right been accusing the left of hating America and attempting to destroy it? Did that little concept finally just click into place for you?
I don't know why they're doing this and I don't know what the end result is supposed to be. I suspect they think they can take and hold control once all faith in the current Republic is lost.
Next probable step in this process: Invade Iran. We're not losing Iraq fast enough, we need to get drawn into an even bigger war.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Don't forget the inflation tax. Everyone pays that one, but the poor get screwed by it the most. Your home, your car, your savings, your retirement... it all gets eaten away by the Fed and their inflation. The poor get screwed the most because most of the time their wages don't keep up with inflation, and that keeps them poor.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty