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Rand Paul Has a Quick Fix For TSA: Pull the Plug
suraj.sun quotes from Politico:
"Rand Paul has a reform plan for the Transportation Security Administration: Scrap the whole thing. A personal message from Paul (R-Ky.) came atop emails this week from the Campaign for Liberty Vice President Matt Hawes, asking for readers to sign a petition in support of Paul's 'End the TSA' bill. A Paul spokeswoman said that legislation is being finalized next week. 'Every inch of our person has become fair game for government thugs posing as "security" as we travel around the country. Senator Rand Paul has a plan to do away with the TSA for good, but he needs our help,' reads the petition, which also asks signers to 'chip in a contribution to help C4L mobilize liberty activists across America to turn the heat up on Congress and end the TSA's abuse of our rights.' 'The American people shouldn't be subjected to harassment, groping, and other public humiliation simply to board an airplane. As you may have heard, I have some personal experience with this, and I've vowed to lead the charge to fight back,' Paul wrote at the top of a C4L fundraising pitch, according to blogs that received the email. 'Campaign for Liberty is leading the fight to pressure Congress to act now and restore our liberty. It's time to END the TSA and get the government's hands back to only stealing our wallets instead of groping toddlers and grandmothers.'"
Sign me up. This security theater has got to stop.
Since all the submitter could be bothered to do was pump up Politico page views, here's the link to the > petition> .
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I presume his bill will have a rider that ends the rest of the federal government also.
It's a sad day indeed when common sense is considered "extreme".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government only has the powers given to it by the People of this land. If I can not touch your breast or crotch, neither can the government.
BTW there's already a law that allows airports to remove TSA from their buildings. So far I've only heard of one airport that considered evicting them. (And the government responded by saying that airport would be removed as a travel destination, if it followed through.)
Government is not eloquence or reason: It is force and intimidation. See the medical marijuana users who, even though they followed California law, were arrested anyway by U.S. police violating the 9th and 10th amendments.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Rand Paul != Ron Paul
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Unfortunately, the political mainstream in America does not give two hoots about civil rights, except when it comes to protecting the rights of corporations and wealthy Americans. We have gotten the point where the bill of rights is "extremist."
Palm trees and 8
Bear in mind that the Campaign for Liberty is about a lot more than opposing the TSA, some of which some people may not find all that palatable (e.g. free market fundamentalism, scrapping the Federal Reserve, dismantling most of the federal government, withdrawing from most international organizations).
I think you missed the point.
If I set up an organization to grope people in libraries people have the option not to use the library, but that doesn't make my groping legal.
that air travel is a privilege, not a right
Oh, that is why we bailed out the airlines a few years back? You know, to ensure that people have the "privilege?"
The TSA has no jurisdiction over you in a private car
You do realize that the reason they cannot just demand that you open your car for an inspection is the same fourth amendment that should make nude scans and pat-downs unconstitutional, right? Your rights are not supposed to disappear just because you are in an airport.
Palm trees and 8
The Pauls have a quick fix for everything, and it's usually some form of "pull the plug".
Ron Paul 2012: because quick fixes haven't screwed up the world enough already.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/tsa-invades-roads-highways-with-vipr-checkpoints.html
timeo Danaos, et dona ferentis
Well... for politicians. The problem they have is that if another terrorist attack gets through they don't want to be held accountable for it. So the TSA was created and the security was made as annoying as possible without actually making it so annoying that the TSA is scrapped. It's a balancing act.
Anyway, if there is another attack they can point at the TSA and say " do you want it to be any more annoying then that?!" And if they've made it annoying enough everyone will agree it is almost unbearably annoying.
So they'll say "well, you chose not to make it any more annoying so that's on the American people and not your entirely blameless elected official."
And thus they can't be held accountable for anything that could go wrong.
If you scrap the TSA and there is another attack, they'll get blamed for it. That's not acceptable.
If they put in a better system that isn't annoying but is much more effective and there is an attack they could still get blamed even if they gave us a really good system. Why? Because unless it's really annoying someone somewhere will blame the system.
So here we are... and in a lot of ways it's all our faults.
I'm personally going through the pat down process every single time I travel. If more people were like me, the TSA would have disbanded about ten seconds after it stopped because logistically they can't pat everyone down.
Many people have messaged me in the past on this very site to tell me that they shouldn't have to go through that process and so they go through the scanner instead. That's fine. You're making it easy for them and it is because of people like you that the TSA gets away with it.
If you don't like the TSA then get a pat down or stfu.
Ron Paul can't do anything about it. The man has no power. He has one isolated seat in congress. Who votes with him in a block? No one. He's all by himself out there. So whatever you think of his politics, he's not really an effective response to anything. He won't be president and he's isn't even a relevant force in the house.
If you care about the TSA's abuse of the common traveler... never walk through the scanner. Always take the pat down alternative. If enough of us do it. We win.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
If you don't like the TSA, you can travel a different way
Sure, as long as you also don't want to travel by car or train or subways or ferries
I guess that still leaves by foot (as long as you don't go in a subway tunnel) and maybe horse. I guess we really shouldn't complain.
Can we get a non-extremist pol who thinks TSA is a bad idea and has the power to do something about it?
No. Next question.
Seriously, the TSA is going to have to do something horrendous to get reformed. (I mean like killing babies horrendous, not their usual baseline horrendous) Otherwise any politician who tries to change it will be accused of coddling terrorists. Sad but that's the political reality we live in.
Nearly everybody thinks that at least some kind of security measures are necessary for airplanes.
Yes, and we had some kind of security measures for decades before 9/11. Let's go back to that. The only security measures we need to take to address the problems that lead to 9/11 are 1) locking the cockpit door, and 2) tell passengers to fight back against hijackers. That's it.
The TSA has already killed more people than Al Qaeda has, by encouraging them to drive instead of fly. Why shouldn't they be treated as anything other than terrorists?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Every inch of our person has become fair games for government thugs
"thugs" might be a little far, but there is at this point pretty much no point they are not allowed to inspect. Remember these guys are not even real law enforcement.
I would even argue that at this point "thugs" is not that far off the mark; I was made to wait at a security checkpoint as punishment for forgetting a water bottle held in plain sight on the outside of a laptop bag. Instead of them just saying "I have to throw this out" which I've had happen before and am OK with, they held my bag until they found some other winner in the "forgot I had water" sweepstakes, then we had to wait until an officer came over to snarkily ask us if we understood that we were not allowed to carry water through security, where merrily forgetting was not good enough an answer. Basically to him we were three year olds.
It's true that not ALL of them are thugs, I've met a lot of nice TSA people as well. But the structure in which they operate is one build to enable and protect true thuggery and that is why his statement is not as far off the mark as you would think.
It's much less vitriolic than it is accurate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Paul family has made the American public ponder deeper about certain topics than they normally would. I have to give them some kudos.
Ron's comment about foreign policy versus the golden rule during the GOP debates was a key moment in political history. It put the Neocons' philosophy up to the public X-ray machine.
I applaud them for making America think; something that is hard to do.
Table-ized A.I.
What is wrong with repealing it?
Plenty.
It wouldn't be overnight, but Jim Crow would come right back.
In before you claim that Jim Crow was *only* the government's doing. Without the backing of businesses and such, Jim Crow wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in hell of lasting as long as it did. There are places in the country which would drift right back were it not for federal legislation.
This is why Rand Paul's insistence that the Civil Rights act was bad is based on nonsense. He claims that a black person's dollar is the same as a white's and that businesses and such would see it that way in this "enlightened" era. To a lot of people, it's not. Even today.
But whatever, go back to Stormfront.
--
BMO
Which totally explains why he was against the TSA before that incident even happened!
Wait, no it doesn't...
No, he only has an issue with it because he finally got accosted like the rest of us.
Senator Paul has been complaining and fighting against TSA abuses for years along with his father. He did not just started having an issue with them.
Obviously you have no clue about his positions on personal freedoms. I personally don't agree with him on several issues, but he spoke against invasion of privacy on many occasions.
Well then get the shears because I'm in the herd ... for this.
I'm not sure how I can support this thing while giving him the absolute minimum power in the future, it's certainly not worth getting him re-elected unless it's practically certain he can pull it off, and probable it won't happen without him, but man he's right about this one, and any help I can give to this specific endeavor, I will. His views on abortion, civil rights, and other libertarian nuttiness are unconscionable, but if there's a way to work with an enemy toward a common goal without getting too fucked over by the cooperation ... well, the TSA is enough of a threat that it's worth working with an enemy to get rid of it. I'd say the same about the wiretap insanity and data sharing with other countries. I imagine Paul sees people like me the same way--an enemy, but with a common goal. Maybe we can use each other.
If he handles it well, pulls it off, and doesn't turn it into a power-grab, I'd probably be ... less ... skeptical of him in the future. I think there's about a 2% chance he does any one of those things, let alone all three, but I wholeheartedly agree with simply scrapping the TSA and I'm willing to hear him out on this.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
So lets have two lines at the airport: one going to planes where nobody has to pass through security. And one going to planes where there is security screening? I can tell you which line I am going into. Pat me down and ask me to stand on my head. Its not bothering me in the least to feel a little delayed if it keeps an explosive off my plane. I hope all you people complaining wind up in the plane with no security and six bombers on the same plane with you.
I doubt anyone wants 'no' security. More like bring back the old security (metal detectors, dog sniffing, etc).
Even if it was 'no' security, I'd still pick that line. If the plane goes down, at least I can say I died without getting felt up by a bunch of thugs.
The TSA employs about 58,000 employees.
The number one thing by far that voters in the US care about is jobs.
This will never happen.
Or, when you stand for principle, and not some abstract premise like "helping the middle class" like most politicians do, even people that are opposed to you will eventually find things to agree with you on.
In your case you want Liberty in certain instances. Where you think liberty should be doled out and that liberty doesn't offend your sensibilities. Rand Paul stands for liberty for all. Even if that liberty hurts. So you'll agree with Rand when the rights gained are your own, but when someone else gains liberty at the your financial, social, or ideological expense, you call him a fool. True Liberty is painful and ugly. But it is the only way. If you let the government impinge on the rights of others, no matter how despicable their beliefs are to you... eventually the government will use that power to restrict your own rights. The truth has been born out in history in nearly every society that's ever existed. Now it's happening here.
Example: I used to receive emails from them (via "Paramount Communications"). One day I started getting anti-gay-marriage emails (also via Paramount Communications) which I had never signed up for. I clicked the link and unsubscribed from those. Mysteriously, that seems to mean I unsubscribed from the C4L list. I fail to see how stopping gay marriage is a liberty-enhancing goal.
But the root of the Pauls' objection to the TSA isn't because of nude scans or genital gropes, but because they think the Federal Government should be shrunken to levels that would likely have shocked late 19th century Americans. Yes, I'm sure they're appalled by the nonsense that goes on, but even if the TSA was an effective and reasonable security agency, the Pauls would still want it gone.
Er, what makes you think that the levels they'd like to shrink the Leviathan down to would shock 19th century Americans? I suspect they'd be far far more shocked by the run away fed.gov than they would by any attempt to shrink it.
"You mean there are entire federal agencies devoted to nothing but saying what you can and cannot eat/drink/smoke?!"
"What the hell do you mean you can't build a house on land you own because some bureaucrat in Washington has declared it a wetland?!"
"The Federal government largely dictate what is taught in schools?! Where is that in the Constitution?!"
I suspect the average 19th Century American would be shaking their head at us wondering how we let the boot get so heavy and just where all these powers fed.gov has came from.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Any place there is a security screening line is an effective site to set off a bomb. Lots of people standing around and no one has been screened yet. Why bother going through all the trouble to get a device on a plane? Wherever there is a chance that you might be discovered, set it off. You might take out a multi-million dollar scanner! I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet (or has it?).
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Well, the main reason to go to the trouble of getting a device on a plane is so that you can repurpose the plane into a big missile filled with flammable material, and do a LOT more damage and kill a lot more people than you could with a bomb in a security line. However, the days of that happening are over now, and indeed were over on 9/11 as soon as the passengers on the fourth plane learned what happened on the other three, and now that planes have locked cabin doors, and passengers willing to fight to the death (as has been demonstrated several times, not only on 9/11 but in a couple other incidents when passengers beat the snot out of people with bombs, which of course made it right through the oh-so-effective TSA screening), it's all moot.
However, I think terrorists could do a lot more damage copying the terrorists in Mumbai than bombing security lines. Imagine if terrorists came to shopping malls during the Christmas shopping season with AK47s; this scenario has been discussed many times before. The fact is, there's only so much security precautions will do for you; for all these other things, you just have to take the risk. Besides, it's much riskier driving your car to the mall, than the tiny risk of being shot by terrorists when you're there. Auto accidents kill 50,000 Americans every year (and 250,000 people worldwide). That's far more than have ever been killed by terrorists, but we do absolutely nothing about that.
The problem is we as a culture already treat universal healthcare as a universal right. If you walk into almost any hospital in the country without insurance or money with a critical health problem, you will be treated. Media circuses have gone crazy when this occasionally doesn't happen. In the end, most of the cost of your treatment will be paid for by taxpayers at public hospitals, or by writing off the bad debt and rolling it into everyone else's bills at private hospitals. Most of those critcal health problems could have been drastically reduced in severity and cost by half-decent early intervention and care.
I think it is time to explicitly accept this fact, develop a universal health care program with decent basic preventative and interventional care and cost controls, and allow the private insurance market to provide coverage for the cadillac care that wealthy people want and can afford.
Not that you will have a choice, as the debt is on a course for total government collapse and replacement with God knows what horrible dystopian system.
I disagree. Things will be better after a total collapse. We won't get a "horrible dystopian system", but the country will simply break apart, as happens with all empires when they grow too large and unworkable. No, things won't be great everywhere afterwords; some regions might indeed become "horrible dystopian" places to live, but other regions will prosper by not being weighed down by all the other screwed-up states and the resultant infighting. The People will have a lot more control over their government, since they won't be fighting against 300+ million other people in the polls, but instead will be voting along with a much smaller population of more like-minded people.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120405/04390118385/tsa-security-theater-described-one-simple-infographic.shtml
The probability of death from an air travel based terrorist attack is 1 in 30 million. I think the airline insurance carriers are going to be just fine with the risks.
Rand Paul has proposed legislation to ban abortions and end birthright citizenship. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/blogs/the-gaggle/2011/01/28/rand-paul-wants-to-ban-abortions-and-end-birthright-citizenship.html
I'm fine with a senator having either of those positions. I don't really aggree with either one, but they both come from a rational place (just IMO wrong ones). We're in serious need of immigration reform, we need to as a country reach some sort of compromise on when "personhood" begins. I'm cool with politicians starting off with the ideologically pure positions on issues like these - that's where each side should start, so that we compromise to something practical.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Posting anonymously because of previous mods. THIS POST IS RIGHT ON!!! Do you want to know why we have all this security theater in place? Do you want to know why the government continues with it even though the TSA doesn't work? It's because insurance rates for airports and airlines would go through the roof if we didn't have this in place. After 9/11, insurers said that security measures had to be put in place or else they would refuse to insure airplanes and airports. It's the GAWDDAMN insurance companies who insure the flight industry who demand all this security theater. Our lives are governed by actuarial tables.
Of course we do a lot about car safety. Are you kidding me? Traffic laws, speed limits, mandatory seatbelts laws, airbags, crumple zones, government mandated safety ratings, harsh DWI penalties, etc. But there's only so much you can reasonably do to protect people while still leaving that mode of transportation viable and cost-effective.
Please tell me what we've done to improve driver training in this country.
Well, the main reason to go to the trouble of getting a device on a plane is so that you can repurpose the plane into a big missile filled with flammable material, and do a LOT more damage and kill a lot more people than you could with a bomb in a security line.
You're living in a dream world. The objective of terrorism isn't material damage, it's psychological/economic damage.
No sig today...
The part of the analysis that is incorrect is the part where it assumes that the government will force people to provide the service rather than raising the amount that it will pay. Sure, the government does create such mandates for corporations (more precisely, that they must provide X service for Y cost or else they won't be able to provide any service for the government at all), but A. corporations are not people, and B. they always have the right to refuse to provide the service, so long as they are willing to give up all of their other government-paid-for patients.
That second point is the most important one. Rights are, by definition, balanced against other rights. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, "The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." I have the right to free speech. That does not mean that you do not have the right to walk away and not listen to it. And so on. No right exists in a vacuum. The problem with the libertarian philosophy in general is that it tries to treat rights as though they did, which is a fundamentally flawed understanding of rights. Any argument starting from such a flawed premise is prima facie flawed.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.