Category: Government Failure

Is Bin Laden Laughing At Our Airport Searches?

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure

William S. Lerach thinks so. In an article in Huffington Post he writes –

I recognize that many people believe this is necessary to assure safe flying and are willing to put up with it. But I believe it is wrong. I do not want to debate intricacies of whether the Fourth Amendment allows government bureaucrats to impose these kinds of searches daily on millions of Americans who are demonstrably honest, law-abiding people who pose no threat to anyone. I’m pretty sure it does prohibit this, but even if it doesn’t I am offended at a government that does this to its people. If conservatives and Tea Party types object to centralized power in Washington they should certainly hate this situation. If liberals treasure in our constitutional guarantees of freedom of movement and protection from unreasonable searches they should certainly hate this situation.

Everybody ought to be concerned with what is being done to us by a government that is seizing more power and stripping away more of our individual freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism. Face it — the terrorists have already won. Look what they have turned this country into. That bin Laden must be doubled over in laughter in some cave over in Pakistan when he contemplates how he has disrupted the life of the people in this country. There has to be a better way — a way that is less offensive to our notions of privacy and individual liberty — to keep bombers off airplanes.

If you’ve been following what I’ve said, you’re hearing the same things. We are making ourselves a terrorist laughing stock by giving in to our government’s bizarre ideas of protection. As long as we live in fear the terrorists and our government can lead us around like puppy dog on a short chain.

Do you like that vision of yourself? – not a man, not a woman, not an American but a small helpless animal. That’s what we’re becoming.

I’m not that frightened. Are you?

James Pilant

Mrs. Clinton, Would You Submit To A Pat Down?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure1 Comment

From the Huffington Post –

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she thought “everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public.” She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “striking the right balance is what this is about.”

However, when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” if she would submit to a pat-down, Clinton responded: “Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”

Do you think that the White House may have miscalculated in bringing her into the discussion?

She doesn’t sound like the President’s emasculated staff. It adds credence to recent comments as to who has balls.

She said what she thought.

Let this be our meek but vital battle cry against the TSA – “NOT IF I COULD AVOID IT. NO. I MEAN, WHO WOULD?”

James Pilant

President Obama Understands Your Frustrations!

On By southwerkIn ethics, Government Failure, President Obama

From Huffington Post –

President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there’s a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.

That is not what he asked. Further down in the article, they say what he actually asked, which was, “Is there another way to catch a bomber like the Nigerian man who had explosives in his underwear?” And his experts said no.

For now, they’ve told him there isn’t one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

But there are some other questions, President Obama could be asking. For instance, should the American security establishment always focus on the last attack? Since that enables terrorists to literally “call the tune.” They decide what security we deploy. You think that’s overstated?

Let me try it out on you. I take a toothbrush into the lavatory and with the sharpened decorative star off my cowboy boots cut it into a makeshift but entirely effective shiv. I then cart this thing back into the plane and get caught. Do you think you’ll be carrying a toothbrush onto an American plane for the foreseeable future? Don’t get me started on the cowboy boots.

I want you to picture five guys, Middle Eastern or not, having those kinds of discussions, not what will succeed in harming an aircraft but what will make the Americans do stupid things ceaselessly demeaning their citizens.

“I understand people’s frustrations,” Obama said, while acknowledging that he’s never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.

He feels your pain but not directly.

Passengers at some U.S. airports must pass through full-body scanners that produce a virtually naked image. If travelers refuse, they can be forced to undergo time-consuming fingertip examinations, including of clothed genital areas and breasts, by inspectors of the same sex as the passenger.

My general perception is that body cavity searches are the one frontier left for the intrepid explorers of the TSA.

Obama said he’s told the U.S. Transportation Security Administration: “You have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive.”

He implied to them that they should make it better.

At this point, that agency and counterterrorism experts have told him that the current procedures are the only ones that they think can effectively guard against threats such as last year’s attempted Christmas-day bombing. A Nigerian man is accused of trying to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a flight from Amsterdam with nearly 300 people aboard.

So, let me get this straight, we have organized our entire TSA screening process as if another person was going to wear a bomb in his underwear?

Obama said that in weekly meetings with his counterterrorism team, “I’m constantly asking them whether is what we’re doing absolutely necessary, have we thought it through, are there other ways of accomplishing it that meet the same objectives.”

For now it sounds like there aren’t, and travelers will face potential pat-downs and scans.

“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

No, you are creating a vast security apparatus and you’re not asking the right questions, just the conventional ones.

The President has the power to say, stop. The President has the power to say, “This is one step too far. We don’t have to sacrifice our dignity and our honor to our fear.”

Don’t hold your breath for that one.
James Pilant

Non Monetary Penalties?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

A top Treasury department official said Thursday that the government has still not imposed any fines on banks that do not comply with the Obama administration’s mortgage modification program.

In testimony before a House Financial Services subcommittee, Phyllis Caldwell, chief of Treasury’s Homeownership Preservation Office, said her department has pursued “non-monetary remedies” but has not actually imposed any fines on banks for not complying with the administration’s flagship $50 billion foreclosure prevention program.

I have a video explaining how the HAMP program works for consumers. You will see that it is brutal. The main reason it is brutal is the banks do not have to negotiate in good faith. They can simply decide not to agree. The treasury led by our indomitable Phillis Caldwell (twenty years in the banking industry) hasn’t even set up guidelines for the banks to pay back the money they took from the government. So, if the bank voluntarily offered to give the money back, they wouldn’t know how to do it. By the way, it’s almost two years and they still haven’t got the rules in place. Nevertheless, I think their priorities are right where they want them, Consumers second (dead last) and banks first.

Still, Treasury has not yet punished these banks in any significant way. “To date we have not gone back to take back incentives that have already been paid, but we have pursued many of the non-monetary remedies, including further actions and evaluations, and re-evaluations,” Caldwell told Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, after Waters repeatedly asked her if she had “levied any penalties or sanctions.”
Even in the midst of a growing controversy over allegedly fraudulent foreclosure paperwork, Treasury has not imposed any penalties on banks.

The difference between how the banks are regulated under HAMP as opposed to how the homeowner is regulated is staggering. The HAMP program simply has no rules for recovering federal money paid to banks who refuse to cooperate. On the other hand, the banks can mercilessly stack fees on the homeowner and foreclose on his home after the trial period. Essentially a bank makes money both by getting federal funds from the program and then forcing the homeowner into foreclosure.

James Pilant

Will New Technology Fix The TSA Scandal?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

What if you could walk through that airport body scanner, pause for the camera, and know that your naked image would never be pored over by human eyes? If it was software, not TSA screeners, who searched you and other passengers for possible explosives?

That’s the vision of Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole. At a Senate hearing yesterday, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson conjured this future and suggested to Pisole, “It looks like technology can be a solution to the privacy issue.” Pistole responded, “I think so, I’m very hopeful in that regard.”

The lead two paragraphs from an Atlantic Monthly story written by Alexis Madrigal. Mr. Madrigal them goes on to explain why this is probably never going to happen.

From the article –

While vendors like L-3 and Rapiscan are actively trying to come up with a magic technological solution for the TSA, independent experts on body scanning technology and automated threat detection aren’t nearly as optimistic as the TSA head. Setting aside the question of how much real safety would be afforded by body scanners that use algorithms to detect artfully hidden explosives under someone’s clothes (I’ll leave it to our big guns to debate that point), there are fundamental problems that may make it very difficult to deploy them.

This is an excellent description of how the technology used in scanning works. I heartily recommend it.

There is no magic bullet.

Currently our actions are terrorist driven. Have one terrorist hide an explosive near his genitals and suddenly millions of Americans are having the genitals groped by the unfriendly hand of the government.

Tell me, what are we going to do if a terrorist hides the explosive more internally? Do you really want to meet your friendly TSA employee while he’s putting on the rubber gloves?

Let’s stop the nonsense now.

James Pilant

Banks Investigated For Fraud!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

I’m not holding my breath.

From the Associated Press –

The federal government has opened criminal investigations into approximately 50 executives and directors of U.S. banks that have collapsed during the financial crisis.

Deputy Inspector General Fred Gibson said Wednesday the inspector general’s office at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has been probing the role of the executives in bank failures around the country.

The criminal investigations are separate from civil lawsuits approved by the FDIC’s board against some 80 bank executives, employees and directors. The FDIC is seeking to recoup about $2 billion in bank losses that the regulator says were the result of negligence or misconduct by executives or directors.

The FDIC has shut down or seized 311 banks since January 2008 at a cost of around $77 billion. The criminal probes were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.

2008!! What was the hurry? They waited two full years and suddenly woke up morning and thought, “Hey, these banks collapsed. I wonder if something could be wrong?”

Whenever a bank collapses, some alarm bells should go off.

Let me give them some advice, when 100 banks fail, criminality is likely. No, that number is not 311, it’s 100. If you wait until the number is 311, you might appear to be foolish or unwilling to prosecute bank fraud.

James Pilant

Debt Collectors Are Using Facebook!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business

From the Associated Press –

A Florida woman claims a debt collector went far beyond the usual phone calls in an attempt to recoup $362 for an unpaid car loan by sending her messages on Facebook — and by telling family on the social networking site to have her call the agency.

Melanie Beacham, who is suing the debt collection agency Mark One LLC in a Florida court, said she never expected to hear from a collection agency on Facebook, which she used to talk to loved ones and post the occasional photo or funny status update.

“I was shocked when I found out these collectors used Facebook to contact my family because they knew exactly where I was,” Beacham, 34, told The Associated Press in an e-mail on Thursday. “I’m angry they caused me so much embarrassment with my family.”

When will it stop? It probably will not. Now, that they have established that they can humiliate people, they’ve struck gold.

The federal government is the only power who can defend us from this kind of abuse. Without 50 state authority, any legislation at the state level is hit or miss.

But the federal government is a protector of large companies in almost all cases. It is little inclined to act in the public’s behalf and barely representative of the people.

You can see from the current controversy over airport scanners how little concerned they get over a public problem. An industry problem causes them to jump to attention and perform. A financial industry problem has them barking like a trained seal.

Where do we go for help?

James Pilant

Get Rid Of TSA (Transportation Safety Administration)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

If they don’t have the brains to change course when they are obviously wrong. Yes, it’s time to become a relic of history, a monument to fear, stupidity and official indifference.

From the Associated Press –

In a climate of Internet campaigns to shun airport pat-downs and veteran pilots suing over their treatment by government screeners, some airports are considering another way to show dissatisfaction: Ditching TSA agents altogether.

Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead. The push is being led by a powerful Florida congressman who’s a longtime critic of the Transportation Security Administration and counts among his campaign contributors some of the companies who might take the TSA’s place.

Furor over airline passenger checks has grown as more airports have installed scanners that produce digital images of the body’s contours, and the anger intensified when TSA added a more intrusive style of pat-down recently for those who opt out of the full-body scans. Some travelers are using the Internet to organize protests aimed at the busy travel days next week surrounding Thanksgiving.

Let’s stop routine doses of radiation.

Let’s stop the pointless groping of our genitals.

Let’s stop the pretensions of serving the public while instead encouraging a climate of fear to induce compliance.

The TSA is there to serve the public not to hold us in contempt, not to treat us like hardened criminals in a maximum security prison. (The only thing they are missing is body cavity searches.)

They have never caught a terrorist. Never.

James Pilant

TSA (Transportation Security Administration) ABUSES – How Many Before Someone Does Something?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

Tell me. How many terrorists has the TSA caught?

Hmm, would that be zero?

Oh yeah, that’s the number.

So, why are we stripping you with technology or groping you up?

I don’t know. Maybe you should ask?

James Pilant

Once Again, Joe Lieberman Defends Boarding Pat Downs

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Government Failure

Joe Lieberman justifies groping airline passengers.

Where do we stop?

Can anybody, anywhere explain this to me?

James Pilant