1. The profit motive.

The 2006 Citigroup "Plutonomy Symposium" memo states that technological revolution is one of the drivers of plutonomy, of the very rich becoming ever-richer. We've already seen Halliburton awarded no-bid contracts by former employees then in government, and using the opportunity to charge taxpayers $45 per case of cola delivered to troops, and $100 per bag of laundry done. A nation-wide "homeland security" tech revolution, including drones and TSA scanners, are working to help further engorge the profit parasites.


Meet the Contractors Turning America's Police Into a Paramilitary Force

The national security state has an annual budget of around $1 trillion. Of that huge pile of money, large amounts go to private companies the federal government awards contracts to. Some, like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, are household names, but many of the contractors fly just under the public's radar. What follows are three companies you should know about (because some of them can learn a lot about you with their spy technologies).

http://www.alternet.org/meet-contractors-turning-americas-police-paramilitary-force?paging=off


2. That the profit motive helping drive the very rich to ever further heights, becomes self-reinforcing through government and lobbyists working to vote into law bills which simultaneously limit our freedoms and provide wild profiteering for the very rich.


Anonymous: Night Raid Equipment-Maker Lobbied for NDAA, Singles Out Sen. Rob Portman.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/12/19/1046972/-Anonymous-Night-Raid-Equipment-Maker-Lobbied-for-NDAA-Singles-Out-Sen-Rob-Portman#

Anonymous singles out Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) for receiving a particularly large sum from companies and PACs lobbying for the NDAA. From the RT report:

Robert J. Portman...we are truly disturbed by the ludicrous $272,853 he received from special interest groups supporting the NDAA bill that authorizes the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil.

Even in Washington terms, over a quarter million is a ridiculous amount of money from special interest groups supporting an issue to any single legislator. Congressmen have been bought for far less, with around $50,000 considered a serious ante at anyone's table, and much less merely keeping you in the game.

snip

“Among the supporters of NDAA are California-based manufacturer Surefire, L.L.C., who won a $23 million contract from the Department of Defense three months ago.


---

The leaked Citigroup memo, "The Plutonomy Symposium: Rising Tides Lifting Yachts."

https://www.box.com/shared/9if6v2hr9h

He was also trained to use said cane as a weapon, including a few techniques that are lethal. Not that he'd ever use it for anything other than self-defense.

This wasn't a failure of the TSA, the Americans with Disabilities Act forced the TSA to let him through with it.

Go back to metal detectors and x-ray the bags only. Get rid of all the circus, hire a few more dogs to walk around and smell for things, and save the American people billions in tax dollars.

and protested and argued and reasoned....to no avail.

I've said that forever.

No nail clippers on a plane, but you can carry a screwdriver as long as it's seven inches or less. ONE person tries to detonate a shoe bomb and millions of travelers now have to take off their shoes. It'd be simple to fill breast implants with explosives, but we have no way of checking for that (let alone the ease of sticking a pound of C4 in one's rectum to smuggle it through security).

The only purpose of TSA checkpoints is to harass millions of travelers so they "feel secure".

only provide a small increase in security - and are probably one of the lesser impediments to anyone bent on really attacking a plane. Although I do feel that there should be something there, it would be nice if it was less obstructive and a provided a bit more believable security in exchange for the hassle...

The TSA has never thwarted an attack on American civil aviation. The panty and shoe bombers were stopped by other passengers.

All the other reported plots to attack American civil aviation from the plans in the late 1990s in Asia to the planned attacks from London to stopping the cargo bomb from Yemen were stopped by law enforcement - a combination of the efforts of the intelligence services including the FBI, CIA, etc.

I feel no safer after being harassed and porno scanned than if all we had were some basic metal detectors.

The problems on 9-11 were that the cockpit doors were not enforced. Those doors are now enforced and the crew have specific protocols on when they do or do not open the cockpit door.

We waste billions on this charade and along with it cost travelers hundreds of thousands of hours of lost productive time and significant additional cost to businesses.

We should shut TSA down and go back to what we had before.

Mom was flying to Florida with my aunt (who is also another 80 something year old lady) and they pulled my mother out for a pat down. They gave her no reason for the pat down. My 15 year old was flying home from San Antonio, Texas having just attended an Air Force Graduation. They pulled her out for a pat down because her hair was tied up in a bun rather than loose. She offered to take her hair tie out and they refused to let her do it.

Neither one of them presents what I'd call an imposing presence, and for sure neither of them fits any known profile for terrorism. My mother, bless her heart, gave them a raft of crap for making her stand there for very long. She gave them full details of her quadruple bypass a few years ago, and told them that they better get her a chair.

My kid, was flying with a friend of ours who is an Assistant State's Attorney who was at the hospital with us the day she was born. My daughter reported that there there were some pretty hard questions asked of the TSA agent while she was being patted down. She said they all but gave them the bum's rush to get them out of there once it was done.

I find myself wondering, if two of my less than threatening family members are getting patted down, just who all ARE they patting down? Is this some kind of bad lottery system that they change up every so often just for shits and grins? Next week is it gonna be old men in wheelchairs and four year olds with Barbie Backpacks? This shit is crazy. Anybody that thinks this is doing any good--keeping us safer--needs to just go sit in an airport for a while and observe. TSA is a joke, and an expensive joke at that.



Laura

I posted about this before, but yes, it's true. Boarding a flight in Bullhead City AZ my SO was asked to "run her hands up and down her legs and pat the pockets" while the TSA agent watched.

I guess this follows the same lines of thinking as Romney's idea of "self-deportation".

How many times they've saved us from explosions, gunfights, and crashing airplanes. Oh, the carnage we almost suffered. Like that shoe-bomber guy, subdued on an airliner by passengers and flight crew--okay, bad example. How about the underwear bomber? Also caught by passengers and flight crew on a plane after successfully passing through TSA security. Still, not a good example. Okay, what about Cat Stevens, aka Yusef Islam (translation: Joseph Peace)? They put his name on a no-fly list, and stopped him from flying one time. Why, if they hadn't been on the ball then, he might have started singing soft rock or something right on the airplane.

All right, I can't actually think of a single time they saved us from anything. But that's no reason to give up on the program now. Look at the embargo on Cuba. Fifty years, over fifty years, and we still haven't given up on it. Any day now it may bring down the Castro regime. Then we can put Batista back in power.

Although plenty more tax money, not used for airport personnel, is pissed away on this Terror bullshit.

The people who set up and profit from the T.S.A. should be on the no fly list even though they are a fly on the shit that is air travel .

every move of the TSA employees and allow the TSA employees to actually look for security threats without feeling the need to be constantly doing something.

and how bad of technique it was for finding weapons. He summed it well, people wouldn't probably stand for the more invasive real pat down, but most people have never been patted down by the police, they don't the difference so the TSA looks like it's doing something.