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Sen. Rand Paul Introduces TSA Reform Legislation
OverTheGeicoE writes "Over a month after Sen. Rand Paul announced his desire to pull the plug on TSA, he has finally released his legislation that he tweets will 'abolish the #TSA & establish a passengers "Bill of Rights."' Although the tweet sounds radical, the press release describing his proposed legislation is much less so. 'Abolition' really means privatization; one of Paul's proposals would simply force all screenings to be conducted by private screeners. The proposed changes in the 'passenger Bill of Rights' appear to involve slight modifications to existing screening methods at best. Many of his 'rights' are already guaranteed under current law, like the right to opt-out of body scanning. Others can only vaguely be described as rights, like 'expansion of canine screening.' Here's to the new boss..."
Back in the 90's we still had metal detectors and screeners would use the wand if it went off
That's the main problem here... the Federal government offered up "free" security services to airports, what else were they going to do? Now we seem to be stuck with the stellar service that is the TSA - government managed security theater.
Get rid of it. Problem solved.
'Nuff said.
What sickens me though is that there are a lot of people who fall for these shenanigans.
People are too stupid for a Democracy and for a Republic for that matter. But the alternatives are horrific.
Does introducing bill after bill with no plan to pass it count as populism?
Fun Fact: In some parts of the US, the pronunciations of "privatization" and "profitization" are nearly indistinguishable.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
If Libertarians can be said to have a base, the younger Paul has disappointed it. First he endorsed Romney, and now he's offering this bill that's just shuffling the deck chairs from the public to the private side of impositions on your rights.
Thos of us who are not "the base" of Libertarians yet find some sympathy with Libertarian ideas (especially when it comes to individual rights) can't take much solace in this either. The younger Paul is just transferring the right to grope from government cronies to private cronies. Same shit, different toilet.
Rand Paul, you rode your father's coat tails to the Senate, you sold out. Nothing left for him to do but go to Disney World (TM) (note, this post not sponsored by Disney, but I'll be happy to take their money if they offfer it. Why should big time corporate shills get all the scratch?).
I fly around the world on a regular basis. There is one thing that every single foreign airport I have ever flown out of shares in common: a lack of security theater.
From Mumbai to Istanbul, Narita to that tiny little airport on the island next to Toronto, I never have to:
1. Take my shoes off
2. Submit to a body scanner
3. Suffer a pat-down
4. Wait more than ten minutes to get through security
Flying within and out of the US is slower, more difficult, more humiliating, than flying through airports where terrorism is ACTUALLY a common threat. I am embarrassed every time a foreigner has to deal with my country's ridiculous soap opera of security, and simultaneously enraged when the outside world reminds me that, outside of the US, flying is a wonderfully pleasant experience from start to finish.
I don't really have a new or insightful point here other than to vent, to be honest. It's deeply frustrating to see the ludicrous amount of money we've spent on body scanners that are not only trivially fooled, but simultaneously don't catch anything actually dangerous a metal detector wouldn't have already caught and still require me to take my god damned mother fucking shoes off. Security is worse, yet somehow takes longer. I have to choose between a ridiculous body scan or an intrusive physical search in my own relatively safe country, but can travel in comfort everywhere else.
It's maddening. I avoid flying as much as possible literally because of the TSA. It's a sad state of affairs when a 12-hour train ride (which, mind you, costs MORE than a flight) is an attractive option to dealing with airport security.
It's maddening to the point that I supported Rand Paul's original initiative to ban/reform the TSA. Rand Paul is a lunatic, yet I dislike the TSA so much that he and I agreed on this one issue.
So now, it turns out, he doesn't want to do what he'd said at all. His proposal address NONE of the things that madden me so, and in many cases make them worse. Privatized security theater is no better than public security theater. The THEATER part is the problem, not the public or private part.
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He is saying "Yo big government, keep your hands off citizens". Getting groped by private screeners (punny) is totally more liberating than when done by TSA agents.
No more security.
Put the doors to the cockpit on the OUTSIDE of the plane.
Give all passengers a large knife.
The plane WILL be going to its destination. guaranteed. any terrorists pop up in flight.. well. we have garbage bags.
Problem solved. Dirt cheap. And we can even reuse the knives.
I fly around the world on a regular basis. There is one thing that every single foreign airport I have ever flown out of shares in common: a lack of security theater
It's amazing how easy it is to spot Americans in foreign airports. They're the ones who are taking their shoes off at the x-ray machines while everyone else is walking past them.
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Nothing speaks of liberty more than a shift from government agency to a private agency. Why waste taxpayers' money on TSA when we can spend double the tax money and get groped the same way by "private screeners"?
I'm shocked, shocked, I say, to learn that your planes around the world haven't been hijacked yet. I'm certain that the only reason they're not being hijacked left, right and center is that the US security screening system is also protecting the rest of the world. In fact, the service the TSA provides is so great that we should go all around the world and demand tribu...payment for our services.
This is why you don't piss off a Senator if you're a government agency.
http://www.homeescapade.com/senator-rand-paul-in-body-scan-mishap-with-tsa-in-nashville/
No. Libertarians object to the government doing anything because it's necessarily based on initiating force. Non-initiation of force is the ideology, no government is the logical conclusion.
By advocating for a government run X, you are saying that you are willing to throw me in jail for not agreeing to fund X. Do you really expect anything positive to result from this paradigm? Should not all social interactions be voluntary?
"But how will we manage the roads without the government!?" - without the initiation force; that's how. Can't be done without force you say? well that's just a limitation of your imagination, not objective truth.
Nothing radical about privatizing stuff which should remain in the government, though run much better than it currently is, it's typical of the right side of the aisle.
What I worry about is when our safety is a matter of profit for someone, perhaps eyeing a new house or boat or something.
Sad how disfunctional goverhment has become since 1999. It's all about posturing and then getting as much for your campaign donors as you can get. Hard to believe we once had a pretty effective government, split between parties, in Washington DC in the mid to late nineties. Even with their faults considered they did a pretty darn good job. Recovering from the innattention of the one-party dominated government of the early to late 2000's decade is taking a back seat to playing more divisive politices than ever. Opportunity lost.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wow. Replaced. Try it again.
http://ronpaulflix.com/2012/04/john-stossel-on-the-tsa/
It was also legal for pilots to have guns with them.
B-b-b-but... his last name is Paul, and his first name starts with an 'r', so it must be good for the country right? RIGHT!?
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
Why reform the TSA instead of just disbanding it?
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The TSA employs about 60,000 people. The number one thing that voters care about in the US is jobs.
The TSA will not be curtailed anytime soon.
they have a problem with the power the government has, and want to remove it
they don't understand this power vacuum merely gets filled by corporations
at least with the government, there is the pretense that they are ultimately accountable to you
a corporation does away with that pretense, they have to answer to nothing except the need to make more cash, however possible, without any concern for rights whatsoever
if the tea party gets its way, every abuse they complain about will be magnified, in the name of making more cash, and now there will be no recourse whatsoever, the tea party dismantled all the means of recourse
morons
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
>>> I'm certain that the only reason they're not being hijacked left, right and center is that the US security screening system is also protecting the rest of the world.
Is this like that "communal vaccination" theory? Unprotected planes/persons don't get blownup/sick because of the protection provided by the TSA/DHHS?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Doesn't this prove the point then that it's not security theater and it works?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Of course! How could he possibly be informed AND disagree with your point of view? Must be a piece of shit socialist.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
So what is wrong with current situation. It is that the TSA is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is Homeland Security, a department, which this year is adding $3billion in deficient spending over what it has been adding all the years since Bush decided that bigger government was the way to go. If we want smaller government, Paul should be giving us legislation to get rid of the DHS, putting the duties into other departments. He should get rid of medicare part D. He should stop the department of education from doing anything but reference curriculum and grants for innovative local teaching ideas. This would be smaller government and real savings. But instead he will continue to attack workers and pretend to care about the people.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It would, if there were successful terrorist attacks at those airports. As there isn't, it proves that it is just (bad) theatre.
You clearly don't understand a word about what you think you do.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Just ask any blacksm...
Oh.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You actually expect these people to do the right thing while they have a gun to their heads.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Private security weren't dicks usually because they were answerable to the airport authority for that airport, and they are want happy customers. So they'd keep the security people accountable.
That's the real problem with the TSA, other than their ineffectiveness, is they have no accountability. It is set up very well so that nobody is ever accountable for what they do. It doesn't have to be that way, not all government agencies are, but it is and that is a big problem.
Well and easy fix would just be to privatize it again. The accountability will be restored.
This privatization of the TSA will only serve to hand tax dollars to private companies with zero return.
In all cases, when government does a task themselves, you don't have to worry about waste corporations' demand for profit. Waste is only introduced when private for-profit corporations are brought in. Corporations just can't compete against government.
This is why sending mail via government costs pennies, while sending mail via UPS or FedEx costs $10 or more. Privatization only makes things wasteful and inefficient because companies can't compete when they have to make a profit.
We need to make sure people understand that socialism is a better solution than private corporations when solving societal problems, and we need to make sure to give more power to government in solving social problems, since private industry simply cannot solve social problems.
You're a moron.
Not only is what you typed just incredibly wrong, the point to privatizing the TSA is two fold:
One: When you add choice, better, saner solutions will prevail over time (hopefully).
Two: Private entities are vulnerable to getting their asses sued. Private entities can't lock you up without cause.
"The THEATER part is the problem, not the public or private part."
Unfortunately, the THEATER part is the whole reason for its existence. They never cared about your security. It was all about getting Americans used to taking orders from government.
I fly a lot too; I've had to wait a LOT longer than ten minutes at Healthrowe and Frankfurt.
At various times I have also had a pat-down and had to take shoes off overseas as well (though not always). I'm pretty sure I had to at least take shoes off flying out of Amsterdam (could be mistaken).
However I generally agree with your rant, security here is humiliating and awful and pointless.
BUT that does not mean privatizing it cannot make it better.
For one thing, let's say a TSA agent is abusive to you right now. I mostly have good interactions with the TSA, but once coming back into the US I had to go through security for my connecting flight and the TSA people were utter pricks about my having forgot I still had a bottle of water left over from my flight.
Well what could I do? Who would I complain to? Their boss is untouchable, entrenched deep within government.
With security managed by the airports again, if I had a few hours to kill I would have demanded to see their supervisor and given him a good scolding for being so rude to people who had just been on a plane for ten hours.
Or if they go too far and there are misadventures with the scanners (which should be abolished, but lets pretend they remain in a world where the airport has to pay for them) then individuals can properly sue.
Basically the TSA *can* be a bunch of goons because they are untouchable. Take away that untouchability and people gets lots more reasonable, very quickly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Airports in Isreal has no such security theater (body scanners, taking shoes off, 4 oz restrictions, etc.). How many Israeli flights do you hear about flying into buildings? Being hijacked at all?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The opposite has happened in the private prison industry. Private actors with state power is the worst of both worlds.
Whatever private company gets the contract from the airport becomes an effective monopoly
The point is the airport could choose. Right now they get what they get, and if there are complaints well too bad.
Your comparison with trains sounds pretty idiotic too; did those different companies all run trains to the same destinations?
Yes, actually, they do. Have you ever BEEN to Europe?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
suing as the source of rights preservation
really?!
so rather than "evil" government regulations, it's far better to:
1. get abused
2. go through the litany of trying to get a lawyer to take your case, wait a long time to start a trial
3. wait a long time during a trial, because you don't have anything better to do with your time and money
4. maybe not get any satisfaction at all in the end, and now an expensive legal bill on top of your now public mockery of your misery, because you are outgunned in the courtroom by the corporation's legal goon squad
really?
the court of law is better than government regulation?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
they need to share the same tracks
Let us introduce you "can't compete using trains" morons to a little concept we like to call - the Switch
Magically, you can in fact support multiple trains on a track. Do you think there is only one rail shipping company or what?
It's only passengers who don't get to choose.
You must also think only one brand of car can travel on a one-lane road.
Never mind that the government can be inefficient, at least it is not trying to harass you for money
Well now that you have firmly established your stupidity you decide to cement it; the government very much harasses you for money if you object to giving whatever it decides to take. Read up on the IRS courts someday...
Sorry to be so brutally blunt with you but these days I have little patience for ignorance on any scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The number one thing that voters care about in the US is jobs.
Individually yes, but en-masse you'd find millions made happier having the TSA lose jobs and then locals having a shot at private security work.
There is scant love for government workers these days.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
thank you
there are plenty of things that should NEVER be privatized
healthcare insurance, for instance
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I also fly around the world on a regular basis. Perhaps not as regular as you, but security theater is alive and well around the ENTIRE world: Flew from US - Prague through Paris. Had to throw away the bottle of water given to me on the US plane when I landed in Paris. Flew from Brazil to Dallas to Home. Was carrying a suitcase of electronic gear ( a timing system) The security theatre in Brazil was worried I might use the blunt end of the small tripod as a weapon (but the rest of the electronic gear was ok) Not a peep was said when I went through Dallas. Leaving Ukraine? Had to prove my laptop worked. My large skateboard was ok to take on, but a fellow passengers 2 inch pocket knife went into the trash. Heathrow doesn't seem to require shoes off any more, but it did. Also they only allow ONE bag through security. Not one carryon and one personal item. But ONE bag. I've waited more then 10 minutes to get through security in a lot of countries.
I agree that paranoid US is worse than other countries. I don't know how many times I've been told to place my "liquids" into a ziplog bag AFTER I've been through security. But the US doesn't have a monopoly on security theatre
they don't understand this power vacuum merely gets filled by corporations
Absolutely we do. That is greatly preferred because...
at least with the government, there is the pretense that they are ultimately accountable to you
BULLSHIT.
UTTER BULLSHIT.
In what way are they accountable? If you don't like a TSA officer, what can you do? NOTHING.
You can un-elect a politician you do not like, in theory. Your statement would be correct for a politician. But government AGENCIES, your statement is totally false. You cannot touch them. Politicians generally cannot touch them without a HUGE movement to do so. In practice they are utterly untouchable.
Any company that takes over is VERY much more accountable. I can go to the bosses and complain. They could actually fire someone who is too rude with passengers, something nearly impossible to do with unionized government workers.
Also generally companies filling this void are much smaller in scope, there are fewer layers to go to. And you can sue them. In practice it is VERY difficult to sue the government.
I'm not sure in what fantasy you think government workers are less touchable but I hope I at least disabused any readers from believing you.
P.S. Therefore of course, anyone of reason would support the Tea Parties singular mission to reduce the size and responsibilities of federal government to a far more reasonable level.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even this eviscerated bill will get emasculated. Can you imagine this provision passing unscathed?
I can just hear the neocons now, "we can't micromanage the security and be second-guessing them -- they need to do what they need to do to ensure security."
But there's one thing the emasculated, eviscerated bill will accomplish: it will get some "no" votes recorded that can be used by future liberty candidates to campaign against.
Reforming government is slow and difficult work. After 24 years in Congress, all Ron Paul ever got passed was an emasculated Audit the Fed.
I fear the wheels of tyranny turn faster than the wheels of liberty and that tyranny will win. But it's not certain, and Rand Paul is fighting a good fight. Could you do any better? I couldn't.
It's also something I wouldn't want to spend my time on, and I'm glad someone like Rand Paul is doing it.
1. it makes them immune to Freedom of Information laws, as they only apply to government and government agencies
2. eliminates the horrific waste of potential for profit and corporate welfare - it's never a good idea for a government to do something when they can pay corporations ten times as much to do a crappier job.
remember children: "Government Bad! Business Good!"
You keep electing politicians who create, empower and fund these government programs
Not al of us vote for Democrats thanks, or for th Republicans that have strayed and do just as you say.
Some of us even vote libertarian from time to time...
So don't lump us all together.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice try, but UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law. Go ahead, try to get a quote for a letter to be delivered in 3-5 days from anyone other than USPS. Sure, they'll give a quote for 2 Day Air, but the same service from USPS certainly doesn't cost 'pennies'.
On top of that, USPS is basically funded now by delivering junk mail to your door on an almost-daily basis. They also sell contact information of people who file change of address forms, in addition to the barrage of advertisements they subject people who file the form online to.
Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
On an on-topic note: if security were handled by private agencies they would be subject to state & federal law. Airports with security firms that were doing things like making a woman breast-pump in front of others would be pressured to fire those firms. Instead we have TSA agents who act as if no law at all applies to them.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.
Anyway, here's another example. WA state used to have state run liquor stores and used the profit from those stores to fund state services, like fire departments and whatnot. Now, WA did have some of the higher booze prices in the nation, but we also don't have an income tax, so it used a "sin tax" in part as a way to make up the difference. The stores had a really nice selection too.
Here is the last price list the state published:
http://whatcomnewsforums.com/misc/washington_state_liquor_control_board-MAY_2012_PRICE_LIST.pdf
On June 1st, the first day of privatization, selection went in the toilet, and prices skyrocketed. Here's one example from page 6 of the price list for Red Breast Irish Whisky.
The state store price was $49.95 out the door.
The state retail price was $39.11
The wholesale price can be calculated (*): $25.66
Fred Meyer is currently selling Red Breast at a special price of $60 (reg is $65). This is pretax.
Many voters favoring the initiative stupidly believed that "competition" was synonymous with "lower prices," but I-1183 included a provision that wholesalers would have to pay a 10% fee, and retailers a 17% fee, to make up for the loss to the state from losing the stores. The Office of Financial Management, as required by law, evaluated the law and concluded prices would rise. This summary was even in the voter's pamphlet, but if many slashdotters can't RTFA, most voters only watch TV and totally bought the notion that competition and lower costs go hand in hand -- they never read more than the title let alone the summary -- just voted like the ads told them to.
Anyhow, starting with a wholesale price then of $25.66, after the wholesale fee, it would be $28.23, and after the retail fee, $33.03. The reg shelf price at Fred Meyer is almost a 100% markup, and even the sale price is an 81% markup, to which the old state taxes are added, making the out-the-door price of the bottle of Red Breast, $75.13 (on sale) or $81.16 (reg price).
Now, certain store brand rotguts are perhaps 50 cents to a buck cheaper than rotgut carried by the state stores, but anything decent is at 25% more expensive and some things are substantially more, Red Breast being about 60% (reg price). Worse, the profit the state would have used to benefit all Washingtonians, is now largely exported. It has been partly replaced by the new fees, but surely an initiative will kill those in the future and it is at that point, a WA income tax would become more likely. I'd really rather just decide whether to "sin" and pay a sin tax, than to have an income tax shoved down my throat every year.
So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run. But Costco will make gazillions so its all good right? Corporate socialism is the name of the game now.
(*) WA markup was 13c for a 750 ml bottle, plus 51.9% http://liq.wa.gov/stores/liquor-pricing
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I honestly can't tell if you're a very naive anti-privatization person, or a pro-privatization person doing an absolutely brilliant parody of the anti-privatization position.
This is why sending mail via government costs pennies, while sending mail via UPS or FedEx costs $10 or more. Privatization only makes things wasteful and inefficient because companies can't compete when they have to make a profit.
The only kind of mail that costs pennies via USPS is first class (letters), which private companies are forbidden by law from carrying. Also, the USPS is indirectly subsidized by taxpayers via exemption from federal taxes and special borrowing privileges, among other things. If the USPS provides such a better value, why do almost all online retailers use UPS or FedEx?
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
This privatization of the TSA will only serve to hand tax dollars to private companies with zero return.
Why would the private companies that take over airport screening receive tax dollars? Shouldn't ensuring the safety of their customers be the responsibility of the airlines?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The first idea that came to my mind was that they would be screening for expanded canines, a.k.a. Vampire Watch. That's probably not what they meant, though.
Ezekiel 23:20
and with a privatised TSA, when they waste a billion dollars they'll just ask for 1.2 or 1.5 or 2 billion (incl. profit), and congress will give it to them just as willingly...or more so because there will inevitably be kickbacks to ensure the gravy train keeps rolling.
and the government will be even less likely to turn around and decide the DHS and TSA were a stupid idea because corps will have billions of dollars per year worth of reasons to campaign against such dangerous notions that imperil the precious people.
Do not blame the free market for a law that didn't provide for a free market. A 10% dig at wholesale and another 17% at retail is not a free market. The reason is clearly the government wants your money. You should reject a booze tax as much as a income tax. You still have a sin tax, apparently on steroids!
Corporations aren't answerable to the public. Government is.
(and no, that "invisible hand" you're thinking of? That's always been connected to a limp wrist.)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
it's will be a lot more expensive, and people won't have any recourse against abuse short of spending 10's of thousand of dollars on a lawyer.
Which you won't be able to do if he gets his tort change pushed through.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Exactly.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
the government is infected and warped away from serving the people, by the very same entities you now want to reward for doing that
what the hell is wrong with you people?
FIX your government, don't DESTROY it by handing it to the guys who will happily rape your rights
"The corporations are servants and we are the masters. We vote with our dollars"
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
where does this utter idiocy come from?
without government regulation, corporations would happily gobble each other up, collude with each other and YOU WON'T HAVE A FUCKING CHOICE
in a natural, unregulated marketplace, the law is simple: domination by the big guys, the little guys get raped repeatedly
seriously, you tea party losers are grade AAA certified propagandized morons
"The corporations are servants and we are the masters. We vote with our dollars"
you do this, in an environment maintained healthy, by government regulations, within a strong middle class, supported by government equities that keep the big guys from gobbling up everything
or at least, it used to work that way, until certain idiots started galloping across the american political landscape, making way for the death of the american middle class, by removing all of the support and handing all financial generation to the big guys. soon we will be a country of a few ultrarich and the rest in grinding poverty. how do you vote with your dollars then, genius?
you losers operate on this free market fundamentalist faith that has no bearing in any economic or historical reality
start here, genius, and explore reality, rather than your deluded quasireligious beliefs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services,_Inc.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
and with a privatised TSA, when they waste a billion dollars they'll just ask for 1.2 or 1.5 or 2 billion (incl. profit), and congress will give it to them just as willingly...or more so because there will inevitably be kickbacks to ensure the gravy train keeps rolling.
Some truth to that. But it's still a weaker system than the current one, especially since the privatized TSA contractor can't hide behind sovereign immunity and can be replaced by another privatized TSA contractor.
Top 5 Contributors, 2007-2012, Campaign Cmte
Alliance Resource Partners
$40,650
Koch Industries
$17,000
Mason Capital Management
$16,800
Murray Energy
$14,613
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00030836
Even more:
http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg/?C00462069
YOU need to wake up to the fact he wants to turn everything over to unregulated corporations.
Do we need a 3rd party? yes. heel a 4th and 5th party!
That does not me we should blindly jump on board anyone who shows up as 3rd party. Since you are ignorant of who donate money to them, I don't think it's not too far of a stretch to say you are blindly jumping on his bandwagon simply because it's a new band wagon.
The question is: Have you rapped yourself so emotionally into the Paul's that you won't change your view in light of the new evidence?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Likewise, it's easy to spot Arabs in foreign airports. They're the ones taking off their shoes to throw at the Americans!
Why do they care so much about the currency?
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
The TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks, with the reasoning that failures in airport security were at partly to blame for those attacks succeeding. But the reason the hijackers succeeded (or partly succeeded in the case of United 93) was because they exploited existing assumptions about what airline hijackers do.
Prior to 9/11, the primary purposes of a hijacking were to gain publicity and to use the passengers and crew as hostages. The terrorists would issue demands (usually for release of prisoners allied with them), maybe force the pilot to fly the plane around from airport to airport. Maybe (but not often) they might pick out a passenger belonging to a group they hated (members of the US military, or Jews) and kill him. But overall, if everyone cooperated, they'd come out of it alive, albeit after some miserable days or weeks -- TWA Flight 847 in 1985 being the archetypal example. This is the way the public perceived it, and it was the basis for official government policy: cooperate and negotiate, because the hostage are valuable to the terrorists. If the hostages are dead, the terrorists have nothing to bargain with, and the government has no reason not to go in with guns blazing.
Based on this, all the 9/11 attackers had to do was present the passengers and crew with a situation where the perceived risks of resisting were greater than the perceived risks of cooperating. Without the knowledge that their situation did not match the pattern and that cooperation would result in everybody being killed, a credible threat to the life of just one person would have been enough. The hijackers could have accomplished this with their bare hands by ganging up on a single vulnerable person (elderly or very young), holding him/her, and threatening to strangle them. No pilot was going to say "Go ahead, break the old lady's neck, the cops can arrest you when we land in LA." Having box cutters made things easier, but not having them (because airport security would have confiscated them) would not have stopped them.
The way people perceive the situation is different now, and indeed the perception changed during the hijackings, once the passengers aboard United 93 found out what what the hijackers actually intended. Now, a hijacking couldn't succeed unless the hijackers were heavily armed, because the assumption among everyone else would be that cooperation means dying.
My point here (sorry for the rambling) is that the assumption behind creating the TSA is "if we'd only had it on 9/11, the attacks would have been prevented", and that's not true. Likewise, if the 9/11 attacks were attempted using the same tactics today, they'd fail, TSA or no TSA.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Since these privatized security forces won't initiate force, I guess we can just walk right past them and board the plane, right?
No need to privatize it at all. Just de-fund the TSA and call it good.
IRS court as establish procedures, and you have recourse. It's also more efficient. Read up on their budget and project reports.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You don't understand passenger traffic (hint, timeslots need to be filled, not wagons).
Also, you don't understand the concept of tax collection.
What are you, a libertarian?
Initiating force is initiating force. The excuse used hardly matters, the result is the same.
Meanwhile, naturally the airline will be free to tell the privatized force to go away, right?
Israel has exactly ONE International airport and is the size of New Jersey.
IT DOESN'T SCALE.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Am I the only person who find it amusing that a libertarian named his son after his favourite author?
...and call it liberty. Republicans are one trick ponies. Make a big deal about the government offering services, abolish those services and offer the contracts to their campaign contributors.
My kingdom for a donkey!
The opposite has happened in the private prison industry. Private actors with state power is the worst of both worlds.
Because prisoners don't get to chose their prison and nobody cares when they complain........kind of like how it is now with the TSA.
UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law ... Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
I respectfully call bullshit on your bullshit
It may be the case that UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service (I do not know). However, as I understand it, USPS is certainly forced to deliver mail everywhere, not just the well-populated and juicy areas. If you live an urban area, UPS/Fedex will step in to substitute for USPS. However, if you live in a remote village, you may notice that your letters will then cost $20 to deliver.
Considering that we are talking about the Federal Government privatizing the TSA, no, this will not be contracted by the airline. As for the rest, I have not noticed a lot of hesitance of weapons dealers to sell to even the most brutal dictator. History suggests that getting weapons was never a problem for the Mafia. Capital makes a beeline for a company that manages to coerce patronage unless there is a government threatening to seize assets.
When the economy is crappy enough, staff won't quit no matter how much they might want to because they have to feed their family. All they can do is pray that their employer doesn't alter the deal further.
thank you
there are plenty of things that should NEVER be privatized
healthcare insurance, for instance
What about food? Surely food is more important that healthcare. We need to collectivize and put government in charge of the farms to ensure that the poor have enough to eat.
Oh wait, in the US food is so cheap and abundant that poor people are fat and in the Soviet union tens of millions of people starved to death and people waited in line for hours to buy bread when government managed the farms.
I know some Serbian refugees who came to the US and were on food stamps. A family of 4 was living on the food stamp allotment for one person and they still considered themselves to be eating like kings. How? They weren't spending any of the money on junk food, they were buying 20 pound bags of rice, 20 pound bags of hamburger, and pasta and cooking everything themselves at home. They were amazing with ramen noodles.
Don't be misled so easily. It is true that now corporations are profiting where they did not before, but the government almost certainly increased its cut in the process. Here in NC, the liquor control board has been bleeding money for years; far from reducing taxes.
I'd really rather not have the state shove morality down my throat by taxing some items more than others so that the richest can get off without paying their taxes (which is basically the whole point of no income tax states; "make" your money there, take it elsewhere). But to claim the prices increased because of the deregulation, when it is clearly the added tax on top of sales tax? What kind of cognitive dissonance is that?
I'm also not sure how you can claim selection got worse. With controlled alcohol, you have one store; if they don't stock it, tough (because the state is likely also making unconstitutional claims you cannot have it shipped from out of state). Sure Walmart might not stock as wide a selection, but someone CAN have wider, including specialty stores, which is not the case with one store.
Great Intellect...
Also, "corporate socialism" is literally impossible. The word you are looking for is corporatism. However, that is not what is going on here by a longshot. Corporatism is when large companies collude to influence the government into aiding them; ie, RIAA/MPAA. I don't see how that is being invoked in this case.
Great Intellect...
Sorry, your comment above where you say the steel can't "melt" is not only incorrect but missing the point (it doesn't have to melt to lose a lot of strength), and that abstract doesn't say what you suggest it says. Just because the dust ends up having properties similar to thermite (which is what is says) DOES NOT MEAN THERMITE WAS PLANTED IN THE BUILDING, it just means another unexpected thing that may have added to the flames. Since it was found as dust and not as a melted mass doesn't that rule out deliberate ignition anyway? That huge quantity of dust didn't ignite.
While you don't know me from anyone and I've never published any papers I did work as a metallurgist in a steel rod rolling mill for a little while in the early 1990s and in an electricity generating company after that. I've seen a lot of steel lose strength as it heats up, both the obvious red hot stuff (rod rolling from 600mm thick to 5mm), in boilers (a bit cooler) and in a crude oil heater in an oil refinery (just hot enough to lose strength and split).
Now you make thermite with metal dust, which means any metal dust made any way (eg. huge building collapse) is superficially going to look similar and unfortunately going to behave a similar way in a fire (see also flour dust explosions). In the case of a building made of steel and aluminium with a lot of organic material (wood, paper, plastics) and you grind it all up with a huge collapse then it is no surprise that it ends up as the material described in the abstract and we can all be thankful that the dust did not ignite after the buildings fell or there would have been an even larger death toll. I did some stuff with powered metal in the late 1980s at University, and the really fine stuff has to be handled very carefully due to the fire and explosion risk. The titanium powder came packed inside two tins, with the outer tin filled with an inert gas. Something like that would make a bigger bang, or actual thermite would have melted a lot more than what actually happened, or if that dust ignited there would have been a huge fireball.
Cherry picking key words appears to have led you to the wrong conclusion. There's conspiracy theorists that think a government is so powerful and omniceint that only an act of government can possibly hurt them. The real world doesn't work like that. Governments are made up of real fallible people, especially governments where Horse Judges are appointed to key positions.
What I get from that abstract is the sense that things could have been even worse. I do not see anything in it that implies that thermite was planted. Is there something in the entire paper that clearly implies that instead of just that the dust from a building made of steel and aluminium contains steel and aluminium? Have you read and understood the paper?
Why, "corporate socialism" is perfectly possible. A corporation, after all, is a small dictatorial state; if given sufficient room to do whatever it wants, it can well delve into some form of paternalistic socialism if that's how the people running it are inclined. Ford is a pretty famous example of that, but there are plenty more.
The fundamental problem with this arrangement is the same as with any dictatorship with an "enlightened ruler" - it's run on the whim of a single person or a small group, and does not respond to the populace. Therefore, it can change its nature quite radically for no reasons whatsoever. Practice shows that such arrangements don't last long term.
You ask a question and then give an answer to it right away. Food stamps are "food insurance" in US, and it's obviously not privatized.
Organized crime seems to do a fine job of projecting force without the state's help (and in spite of the state trying to stop them). When the state breaks down badly enough, corporations hire mercenaries to act as a goon squad and effectively become the state. Sometimes government is the mechanism, sometimes not.
This is simply untrue. Any carrier can deliver "mail" or the equivalent. They just can't use the mail boxes, as it is not their property.
It just so happens that they charge a lot more than the USPS. Mail delivery isn't cheap and it's not cost effective if you don't have the infrastructure.
Food stamps are "food insurance" in US, and it's obviously not privatized.
Hey, no fair defeating a debater who already defeated himself! :)
He should have gone with 'shoes'.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
By your numbers they obviously didn't want you to be able to get booze at competitive prices. It's still the government's fault you're paying too much, not the private market.
But, please, at least let North Carolina go private. They have state monopolies run by individual counties, and when I was there the selection sucked. They apparently have a limit on the number of different things that can be stocked. And of course prices are very high, acting as a sin tax to fund the counties. So, even if the price doesn't go down during privatization because the government laid extra taxes, at least private retailers would stock what the customers want, instead of what bureaucrats feel like stocking.
And there's no other option there. It is a felony to mail order booze, and even if you go to another state and bring some back, there's a very low limit.
Just about every internal structure in steel just dissolves into something not much stonger than pure iron not all that far above 600C. A large building relies on relatively stong steel to stay up. There isn't a single steel framed building on the planet made to withstand the sort of fires that happened in the twin towers. You'd need the sort of stuff used for jet turbine blades (eg. iron based superalloys from the 1950s, or later stuff).
Also the buildings cannot handle HUGE impacts, for instance twenty floors dropping when one floor in the middle collapses. The structure below is strong enough to handle the load if nothing is moving but cannot handle being hit by such an impact.
So, this is an example where privatization costs the public much more in the short run, AND increases the likelihood of an income tax, which will cost the public much more in the long run.
We need to confront the need to feed government, not just look for ways to satisfy the beast whenever it is hungry.
For first class ("standard") mail, they're required to charge 6x the price as USPS. It wouldn't be profitable to offer the same product at that price, so letter delivery by UPS/FedEx is limited only to same day, one day, or two day service.
If mail delivery is cheap and cost effective if you have the infrastructure, then I guess the USPS doesn't have it either. They're losing $3 billion per quarter and talking about shutting down some of that infrastructure.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
especially since the privatized TSA contractor can't hide behind sovereign immunity and can be replaced by another privatized TSA contractor.
Yes they can, any private security company would make sure that an immunity clause is written into their contract. Most likely what you'd see is an increase in scapegoating - publicly fire the schlub doing the patdown that someone complains about in order to protect the person who ordered the process in the first place. This would convince people that the privatized process is an improvement even as they're taking off their shoes and getting ball-groped.
You may appreciate that flying out of MEX about two weeks ago, security need to "pat down" my kippah-- not a very big kippah. In IAH a few days later, they actually did an explosives test on it! -- I fly with a rather small (6 inch) kippah.
I've been through security about six times since, with no "issue." Go figure.
The relevant regulations are here: http://about.usps.com/publications/pub542/welcome.htm Private couriers like FedEx and UPS can deliver letters, but only if they're express ("Extremely Urgent Letters" is how the regulation puts it). They're not allowed to deliver regular "I don't care exactly when it gets there as long as it doesn't take too long" letters, which are the "costs a few pennies" referred to in the comment I was responding to. During the 90s, the USPS got worried that people were using FedEx and UPS too much, and was conducting investigations with an eye on cracking down on the practice. My memory is fuzzy, but I think the key allegation they were making was that people were sending letters express that didn't really have a time-sensitive aspect to them. That is, they wanted to step in and say "your letter doesn't need to be there that fast. You can't send it via FedEx, you have to give it to us."
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
I hope this goes better than that whole Blackwater/Halliburton thing went down in Iraq.
Rand Paul is a fucking piece of shit. Anyone who thinks that he's concerned about liberty or civil rights is an idiot. Having your rights violated by someone working for the private sector every time you get on a plane is in no way, shape or form better than having them violated by a federal employee. Paul's privatization proposal is nothing more than a way to transfer federal dollars into the pockets of the corporations that will take over screening operations. Paul's reform is no reform, it's as much of a scam as hiring mercenaries from Blackwater/Xe or privatizing state prison systems and if anything will end up being even less efficient and more fucked up than the system we have today. When Paul's idiot fucktard of a son proposes doing away with the TSA entirely call me, until then this is just more libertarian corporate bullshit.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In this case privatise and reduce power. Basically extend airport security to passenger check in and the only law they are allowed to use is "either do this" or "we will no let you board the plane". Nothing less and certainly nothing more. They should ask permission before carry out any inspection, whether it be, checking your luggage, asking you to allow yourself to be irradiated (with full notification of risk), check of carry on luggage or to be frisked and, that's it. If they deny you boarding they have to refund the ticket and, all the way along you should be advised of your right to refuse and you will only be denied boarding and you can leave at any time. Anything beyond that is handed over to the regular police force.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Yes they can, any private security company would make sure that an immunity clause is written into their contract.
Two problems with that. First, a contract doesn't have the force of law. They probably could get some sort of bond or liability coverage from the airport operators, but that still means I could sue and if successful someone would pay.
Second, why would they get immunity? The TSA didn't need it either for airport security. They just get it as a part of being a government agency.
Most likely what you'd see is an increase in scapegoating - publicly fire the schlub doing the patdown that someone complains about in order to protect the person who ordered the process in the first place. This would convince people that the privatized process is an improvement even as they're taking off their shoes and getting ball-groped.
You still have the matter of patterns. If you get many such complaints, then there's grounds for a class action lawsuit which can be considerably larger than a single lawsuit.
Finally, why should people be "convinced" that a security process is better merely because it is privatized? You aren't and I'm sure there's a lot more people like you than like the free market types. The only reason I think it's possible for such a change is the rampant abuse from the TSA. If that weren't happening, then I doubt this proposal would even be on the radar.
...that or they're wearing steel-toed boots which they've been asked to take off so many times they don't even try to avoid it anymore.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Also, USPS gets breaks on motor vehicle registration, cheap government loans and breaks on many other government costs of doing business. See the wikipedia article on USPS.
"Cursed is he who rises early in the morning..." Isiah 5:11
It scales fine. You just do it at two or more airports at the same time
Learn to love Alaska
I never have to:
1. Take my shoes off
2. Submit to a body scanner
3. Suffer a pat-down
4. Wait more than ten minutes to get through security
Quiet year so far, only 30 flights.
1 - Shoes off at Moscow (DME), Washington (IAD), Manchester
2 - Forced through the probulator Moscow, Manchester, Erez (ok not an airport)
3 - Pat down Dulles, Heathrow
4 - More than 10 minutes - only Tel Aviv, and that was only about 15 minutes (my first trip in 2010 took 90 minutes)
On a scale of 1-10 for rudeness
10: Manchester
6: Washington
4: Erez
1: Everywhere else.
Now, immigration on the other hand, that can take time. 90-120 minutes at Dulles, 45 in Jakarta. Would have been a couple of hours at Heathrow a couple of months ago had I not been Iris registered.
The only reason this happened because Rand Paul himself got inconvenienced and offended.........like the resut of us.
Don't mistake it for a sese of civic duty or patriotism.
Like the blurb said, the changes are neglible beyond privatizing airport security. Translation: the TSA made Paul angry so now he is getting even by trying to make them go away.
Paul would be fine if we were all working sub minimum wage in company towns like the kind that existed in the 19th century where the owners got away with shooting their workers.
Paul is a first rate scum bag.
Israel has exactly ONE International airport and is the size of New Jersey.
IT DOESN'T SCALE.
Sure it does, if you have the money and the attitude, Israelis have to go through metal detectors to go to the supermarket!
Also they only allow ONE bag through security. Not one carryon and one personal item. But ONE bag.
Not in T3 or T5, never had a problem with two large bags. Obviously still laptops out and stuff.
Despite all that, I managed to take a leatherman with a 4" blade in hand luggage to the states earlier this year.
I (and every one else in line) had to take off my shoes in Costa Rica, Taiwan, and Korea. CR shoe removal has happened 100% of the time, while Taiwan and Korea are under 50%.
My guess is that then they got to "confiscate" it.
FLxxx numbers are simply pressure altitude in hundreds of feet. In North America flight levels start at 18,000 feet so the lowest FL number is FL180. (In Europe it is much more complicated...) Below that level it is simply "altitude". A normal cruising altitude would be from FL300 to FL410 and may vary from that based on length of hop, specs of the aircraft, congestion, and weather. Not sure where you are going to find any quantity of aircraft cruising at FL180 and FL280 is definitely not "high".
Cabin pressure is not measured in "Flight Levels". That is just silly.
Common commercial aircraft are pressurized to a pressure equivalent of 8,000 feet. The big exception to this is the new Boeing Dreamliner that is pressurized to 6,000 feet which is hailed as a major improvement in passenger comfort and safety.
How about the abolition of private prisons?
Oh, wait they're convicted felons and don't deserve human rights either; never mind go on about your business.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The only reason you have food stamps is because of the government interferences into the food market that drive up food prices. The point still stands, food in the US is incredibly cheap, but it could be even cheaper.
Sugar in the US is twice the world price because of tariffs. Milk is made artificially expensive. Large portions of the Orange crop is removed by the market and/or outright destroyed in the name of keeping prices high
Without food stamps people would not starve, they just wouldn't be able to buy Doritos, steak, and soda, as I saw back when I worked a cash register. Instead they would have to make do with beans, rice, hamburger, carrots, and tang. I brought up the example of the Serbians to simply point out that it is not difficult to live on a very small food budget with a little planning and preparation. Hell, I can make Rice and pork-chops without even trying. It's damn tasty and cheaper than any fast food or hot-pockets. If you can't afford pork chops then make meatballs instead.
In all cases, when government does a task themselves, you don't have to worry about waste
LOL, that's the funniest thing I've heard all week. Thanks!
Government agencies are almost synonymous with waste and inefficiency.
The real questions here are:
1. Are the functions that TSA performs even necessary at all?
2. Can a private company do it better (assuming question one is yes)?
I think most people would generally stop after answering "NO" to question 1, though.
Do not blame the free market for a law that didn't provide for a free market. A 10% dig at wholesale and another 17% at retail is not a free market. The reason is clearly the government wants your money. You should reject a booze tax as much as a income tax. You still have a sin tax, apparently on steroids!
Boogers -- my mod points just expired and you need someone to mod you up.
I honestly can't tell if you're a very naive anti-privatization person, or a pro-privatization person doing an absolutely brilliant parody of the anti-privatization position.
This is why sending mail via government costs pennies, while sending mail via UPS or FedEx costs $10 or more. Privatization only makes things wasteful and inefficient because companies can't compete when they have to make a profit.
The only kind of mail that costs pennies via USPS is first class (letters), which private companies are forbidden by law from carrying. Also, the USPS is indirectly subsidized by taxpayers via exemption from federal taxes and special borrowing privileges, among other things. If the USPS provides such a better value, why do almost all online retailers use UPS or FedEx?
Furthermore, USPS does not provide the same level of service as FedEx or UPS. USPS is send and pray. FedEx/UPS is send and track it until it gets there, or the shipper will pay you for the failure.
I wouldn't mind seeing USPS continue to exist if they did a major revamp of how things work, but as is I see it as being totally useless.
Wrong.
There is absolutely no thing that falls into category: "should NEVER be privatised".
Less of all any type of insurance.
You can't handle the truth.
By privatizing the security, there is now a feedback loop between the customers and the providers. If you hate how one airline does it, choose a different one. This empowers the customers.
+1
--- wad
--- wad
but substantially built skyscrapers, not the cost reduced crap Twin Towers, have robust beams and thick insulation sufficient to withstand a period of time of burning aviation fuel. A substantially built skyscraper can withstand such impacts, because the momentum of the aircraft is a small thing when added to huge mass of building. Get it through your head, real skyscrapers can withstand such things. A piece of shit with flimsy struts joining a small inner core and outer core cannot.
First I must call BS on Mumbai. National and international flights throughout India have one security feature in common: Royal pain in the arse. Further down you will see people complain about Frankfurt. I can personally attest is is a horrid airport with hour waits to pass through poorly placed customs checks between terminals. Connecting the Frankfurt is it's own hell ... never fly Luftansa if you have to connect in Frankfurt.
Nope the easiest in/out international is Hong Kong and Singapore.
The easiest domestic (which is what we are really talking about) is Indonesia. Only a 25% chance they will check your ID for a domestic flight at check in. Yeah there is a metal detector that goes *beep* and sometimes they scan your carry on (looking for contraband).
Now if we can just get back to the 1990s when I used to pick people up at the airport by walking to their gate ... almost like I was living in a civilized society.
Just recently had someone point out a largely-hidden aspect of the new law. Distilleries are no longer limited in the amount of product they can produce each year, allowing Anheuser-Busch to start playing with the big boys (they bought a micro-brewery company that had a couple of small distilleries a couple of years ago).
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I had the WA state liquor store buy booze that they didn't normally carry, you just needed to make sure that they could get rid of the entire case (myself and a couple of friends) that the wholesalers required that they purchase. They also had stores that specialized, depending on the historical sales. A store on Capital Hill had a dozen different kinds of absinthe, the ones in Bellevue had racks and racks of whiskeys, the ones in Woodinville carried more varieties of tequila than I knew existed.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
There aren't very many "real skyscrapers" of that type on the planet beyond a certain height. The very tall buildings cannot afford the extra mass. If you take a look at any of the "worlds/whatever tallest" vanity projects (not just the twin towers), you'll see the same problem. The very odd GP poster gets misled about thermite because there is a lot of aluminium in these buildings, but aluminium also creates other fire problems if it gets hot enough (eg. HMS Sheffield).
Also it was a prolonged fire. That probably means you'd need more insulation than exists in any of the smaller buildings you are writing about anyway, but they would of course have lasted a lot longer than the twin towers or when we see another large fire in any of the other very tall buildings.
The same airlines that have to get bailed out by the government every few years? Do you really think they're going to volunteer to pick up the tab? Not bloody likely.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
They paid the tab before 9/11.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
terrorsts don't want to aim big jets at "small buildings", they don't matter. "We have brought death and destruction to America by destroying the 3613 N. LakeShore apartment building!" People go ".......?........well, ..... sucked to be those tenants..."
Note, address is fictitious, there are no buildings on that side of the street on that block, it's a lake shore.
Yep, and they're not going to go back to that. Once the taxpayers pick up the expense for something the mega-corps never go back to paying their own tab. It's never happened that I've observed, at least not since the days of Ronnie Raygun (Carter did make Chrysler go back to the previous status quo after their credit crunch was over.) Besides, the reduction in quarterly profits (those quarters when they actually make money) would lower the C-class execs' bonuses, and we all know that's far more important than public safety.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You really don't know how the domination of the food 'industry' by the megacorps has skewed our entire economy and our foreign policy, do you? Sugar has tariffs because southern beet sugar producers have bribed their congresscritters to do so. Additionally, they also get a subsidy for growing it, and an even larger subsidy to export the stuff. The same with wheat, rice, corn, milk products, etc. etc. etc. The product that is of such low quality that no foreign buyer can be found is purchased by USAID and used to destroy the local farming economies in Third World countries, allowing the megacorps to dominate those markets once the countryside has been abandoned and people have had to move into the slums in the cities just to survive.
This has been going on since the invention of the industrial foodstuff market sector in the 1950s, and will continue to get worse until ADM, Tyson, Monsanto and the rest are dismantled. Unfortunately the likelihood of that actually happening is about equivalent to the likelihood of actual election reform happening.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Well there's part of the problem - for those vanity towers to get to be taller than everything else they had to cut corners, not that a full load of fuel is going to be good for an average office building either.