Can We Start Ridiculing TSA Agents Publicly Yet?

About a year ago I called for people to start verbally harassing and otherwise making people who work for the TSA ashamed of what they do.  There were a few people who seemed to think that it was a pointless idea and that those people were just doing a hard job.

Here’s my problem with that.  TSA agents blatantly violate and ignore their own rules and regulations, and then you have some agents while violating said rules, they act in a way as to desecrate a deceased loved one.  Then they laugh about what they just did.

“I was told later on that she had no right to even open it, that they could have used other devices, like an X-ray machine. So she opened it up. She used her finger and was sifting through it. And then she accidentally spilled it.”

The agent’s response?

“She didn’t apologize. She started laughing. I was on my hands and knees picking up bone fragments. I couldn’t pick up all, everything that was lost. I mean, there was a long line behind me.”

The TSA website has the following statement regarding their policy on human remains:

 Out of respect to the deceased and their family and friends, under no circumstances will an officer open the container even if the passenger requests this be done. Documentation from the funeral home is not sufficient to carry a crematory container through security and onto a plane without screening.

So I’m sure this particular agent will receive some extra training but that doesn’t excuse her attitude and behavior toward this passenger.  Behavior such as this from TSA agents is not the exception but the norm. There was a recent congressional report for Congressman Marsha Blackburn that detailed only 50 of the numerous crimes since 2005.  Most disturbing of the 50 detailed was the following statistic:

Theft is followed closely by sex crimes and child pornography charges, with 14 such incidents listed in Blackburn’s report. Six TSA employees were charged with possession of child pornography; one of them got caught because he “uploaded explicit pictures of young girls to an Internet site on which he also posted a photograph of himself in his TSA uniform,” the report notes. Eight others were charged variously with child molestation, rape (including child rape), and even running a prostitution ring. It’s not hard to figure out why persons possessing such proclivities would seek jobs where they would be able to ogle and grope other people’s private parts with impunity.

So I again ask, why do people put up with this behavior and not start causing discomfort?  At a minimum you might make them police their own instead of everyone just looking the other way.  Heck, even the legal system is looking the other way and the real reason these individuals are in trouble is they got caught.  That’s why they are given probation for knowingly and willfully committing a crime.  Not just probation, but their record will remain clean without a conviction.   Whereas if you’re unlucky enough to get in an auto wreck from bad weather, you end up with a conviction, even though you intended no malice or harm.  They willfully violate other agency rules and cause damage to medical equipment.  Then after they’ve done the damage they play dumb about it.

Our congressional representatives instead of actually attempting to solve the problem have instead just exempted themselves from the indignities and crimes done by the TSA.  There have been a few instances where the TSA has abused a congress critter but the furor quickly dies out.  Our legal system as shown above is refusing to hold agents accountable for their actions.  For all intents and purposes though government has been shown to be incapable and inept and reining in the monster they created.  So other than hanging agents from trees, running them out on rails, and buckets of tar and feathers what is there left?  What is left to cause agents to either police themselves or leave the corrupt service they have created?

Agents themselves have absolutely no issue disgracing, abusing, and otherwise violating the public which they supposedly serve.  Their job itself is a farce and nothing more that a wasteful joke intended to make those who are sheep feel better.  The batting average of the public at large for stopping terrorist attacks since September 11th is 1000.  The batting average for the TSA since that date is 0.  Sure they’ve lucked out and found items people forgot about, but they have yet to actually find someone who set out with an intent to deceive the system.  They actually fail red team tests on a regular basis.

So given this information, why do the people who actually succeed at stopping terrorist attacks put up with this garbage from a bunch of high school dropouts who are incapable of reading at a 1st grade level?  I think any kid could read that statement from the TSA above and know thou shall not open the urn.

At this point, I want to see a group of passengers start chanting, “Two by two hands of blue”* while others continue to educate the agents on why they’re a bunch of tyrannical tories who deserve no love from their countrymen.

The TSA has created this us vs them environment and the sooner we all realize it already exists the better.  The only argument I have heard against calling these jack booted thugs out as they are was that we could increase the rift.  Well the rift is already pretty damn big, what the hell else do you want?  A hole through the middle of the earth, would that finally be big enough for you to say the time is now?

Personally I think verbal abuse isn’t enough any more, a rail, tar, and feathers I think still might be too nice for most of these folks.  Start off verbally and if they double down on stupid, break out the rail.

*If you don’t get the reference, go watch Firefly… now.  Seriously why are you still here? It’s on Netflix and Hulu and you can watch the whole series and Serenity in a day.

h/t To Uncle on this one.

Fast and Furious, With Regards to the Cause

So if you didn’t read it, a couple of months ago I wrote a root cause analysis on the causes and reasons behind Operation Fast and Furious, also known as Operation Gun Walker.

Today Uncle posted a link to an article from CBS that stated the following:

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3”. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

Think about that long and hard. These individuals broke the law willfully with an intent to create “necessity” for their new violations of the law.  Their new violation of the law was the gun control they wished to implement itself as it is a blatant violation of the Firearm Owners Protection Act.

Many have attempted to vilify the gun shops in this case saying they should have just not sold the weapons.  What these people are refusing to acknowledge is the ATF, through their regulatory power, forced these shops to sell to people the would have otherwise not sold weapons to.

Seriously, go read the CBS article, it’s is yet further evidence that validates my conclusions in the root cause analysis.

To add the icing to the cake though, I am reasonably sure the White House was aware of this program given Obama is now exercising “Executive Privilege” over the material.  I have no doubt this was his “under the radar” efforts at gun control.  As Jennifer said, “no one died when Nixon lied.

SSCC #353 – ATF

Rochester police and federal agents made a mistake in Charlotte this week that has one woman baffled and frightened. She wants to know how they could mistake her house for one they were supposed to raid in a drug bust.

Simple really, they don’t hire the best and brightest.  Tyrannical bureaucrats don’t want enforcers who can think, much less read and tell the difference between the address on the warrant and the house they just arrived at.

How close was this almost a fatal screw up for the ATF as well as the home owner?

“My son had heard me arguing with this man and it was not a voice he’d recognize. My son is a hunter, he put a bullet in the chamber of his gun. They heard that, they yelled down long gun, at that point there he told another ATF agent that was with me, handcuff her and take her out,” Dominicos said.

However the real take away is the following:

“I’m still terrified. It’s almost like a P.T.S.D. experience, you keep hearing things. You think oh my God I hear a door slam, I hear someone pulling into my driveway. I see a light it’s like oh my God are they back?”

That’s the point.  Law enforcement and the government want us to live in fear.  Their actions exercise the very definition of the word terrorism.    The best part of the story though is the discrepancy between the home owners story, which is considerably more believable, and the statement released by police.

“Upon encountering an elderly resident, the team realized that they were at the wrong location at that time and left the premises.”

No you did not, you put her in cuffs and took her outside until someone bothered to read the house number and street name and noticed it didn’t match the warrant.

Considering this can happen to anyone, anytime, and quite easily can have dire consequences, why is this considered acceptable?  Especially since unsurprisingly the bad guys pretend to be cops.  At this point it’s better to just let the bullets file and sort it out afterwards.  Maybe if cops would knock first and be civil about it this wouldn’t be a problem.  If you think the screw ups are rare:


View Original Map and Database

Don’t give me the line about how serving a warrant is dangerous because the majority of warrants served are for non-violent offenses.  When the criminal is actually dangerous, they negotiate him to come out to reduce collateral damage.  There is the argument about the destruction of evidence, well if we weren’t serving warrants over victimless crimes involving nouns that wouldn’t be a problem now would it?

Even better though, with the consistently increasing use of SWAT teams in unnecessary circumstances, the number of people caught in the middle who are innocent continues to increase.  You can not use the service more and expect it to also become more accurate about it’s use, if anything it will become less accurate.

No knocks, like the TSA, need to be done away with.  They have both grown since September 11th and it’s eroding and destroying the last semblances of freedom and liberty.  The police state is here and we need to put an end to it.

State Sponsored Criminals 353: The ATF

Because it’s not the job of the swat team to read the warrant or make sure they’re at the right house.  If there’s collateral damage, the law-abiding citizen should have just behaved, he had no reason to defend himself.

via Uncle.

Fast and Furious, Root Cause Analysis

Currently Eric Holder is screaming that the cause of guns going into Mexico was because of a “lack of gun control.”  There’s one problem with that though, it is false.  Not only is that statement blatantly false but in light of the evidence, given Operation Fast and Furious, gun control is what allowed those guns to walk to Mexico.  While it may seem humorous and a joke, the fact is it’s true.

I have largely been silent on Fast and Furious for one major reason.  There are a lot of other people covering it better and more in-depth than I possibly could.

To start off for those who are familiar with the term, root cause analysis is something used in engineering to identify problems to come up with solutions that don’t just hide the problem.  Ultimately proper root cause analysis should trace the problem to a point where you can turn the issue on and off like a light switch.  Now we’re going to trace back through the events and find the point where we can turn this issue that would turn this problem on and off.

What was Fast and Furious?

Fast and Furious otherwise known as Operation Gunwalker, was an operation conducted by the ATF under the guise of busting Mexican drug cartels.  This was done by forcing FFLs to complete illegal firearms transactions, purchasing firearms and handing them over to known criminals, and otherwise circumventing current law for criminals.

The ATF didn’t just allow guns to flow into the hands of criminals, but actively encouraged the practice. They purposely cleared transactions that were flagged. They performed the straw purchases themselves, delivering the weapons to known criminals. They instructed dealers to go ahead with transactions the dealers could tell were not “honest”.

Often when agents had followed the firearms they were told by their superiors to let the recipients go and not to follow them.  All of these actions violated existing law, yet the cause, as purported by Eric Holder, was a lack of gun control.

How did gun control cause Fast and Furious though?

The most direct route is the fact that this whole program was done with the mind of expanding gun control.  New gun control legislation and powers were the motivator behind the program.  Even as the program crashes and burns, pushes for new legislation based of the inflated numbers of Fast and Furious keep appearing.  The results of the program were used to force the long arms registry and to bolster support for additional funding for the ATF.

However the actions of the ATF have common threads with different agencies.  It is all a quest for money and power.  So we have to look back further to where the ATF got the root of its power and what allowed them to use this power to try to gain more.

The ATF is responsible for overseeing FFLs and ensuring adherence to existing firearms laws.  The can put a business that works in firearms under faster than any other.  The agency can halt a FFLs license during an investigation which can easily put them out of business.  So when the ATF asks a FFL to do something illegal, there ATF has all the leverage to make the dealer comply.  The only other option is for the FFL to go out of business under the weight of the ATF.

The ATF gained this power and latitude under the Gun Control Act of 1968.  Unsurprisingly allegations of abuse led to the Firearm Owners Protection Act to attempt to rein in the ATF.  The FOPA also stated different registry’s were prohibited from being enacted or run by the ATF, one of which they are attempting in the wake of Fast and Furious.

The depth of the corruption within the ATF and its drive to seek power through runs even deeper back to the National Firearms Act of 1934.  This provided the ATF, which was under the department of the Treasury at the time, the ability to enforce the newly created firearms laws.  This law laid the foundation for what would become the power-hungry space the ATF occupies today.

Both the GCA 1968 and the NFA 1934 are both pieces of legislation made in the effort to regulate firearms and limit their ownership.  The ATF blatantly violated existing laws during Operation Fast and Furious and went through considerable effort to arm and traffic firearms to prohibited persons.  All the while the ATF was clamoring for more gun control.  However many law-abiding citizens were left jumping through the hoops and difficulties of the existing maze of firearms legislation despite the appearance of lax laws created by the ATF.

Conclusion, Gun Control is the root cause

The ATF completely disregarded existing laws and regulations in conducting operation gun walker.  Many of those coerced into participating were in a situation that allowed the ATF leverage over them because of existing gun control legislation.  The ATF during the operation was petitioning congress for more gun control legislation, which it would be responsible for enforcement.

The ATF was also petitioning congress for additional funding for two reasons.  The first was a claim of a lack of resources to enforce existing law, which was false since they were expending resources to actually circumvent it.  The second was that it would need additional funding for enforcement of the expanded programs.

The root cause of Fast and Furious is gun control itself.  Existing gun control legislation provided the ATF with leverage over FFLs to coerce them into transactions they knew to be criminal.  Gun control provided the ATF with the resources and power to organize and conduct the operation.  Lastly, gun control was the root cause of the operation itself.  The operation was conducted in an effort to create a crisis that would warrant the further restriction of firearms.  This restriction would either be that of ownership by law-abiding citizens, or that in preventing new purchase by a law-abiding citizen.

Without the GCA of 1968 the ATF would not have had the leverage over a FFL to coerce them into proceeding with an illegal sale.  Without the NFA of 1934 the ATF would have never been the power-hungry beast it is today.

To say that a lack of gun control allowed Operation Fast and Furious is like saying a lack of prohibition let the DEA allow drugs to be smuggled across the border.  Oh wait, bad analogy, the DEA took part in Fast and Furious too.

If a lack of gun control allowed Operation Fast and Furious then violating the law to commit a treasonous act of war against a friendly neighbor is lacking in laws as well.

Patriot Act Up for Renewal

The Patriot Act should have never been created to begin with.

It was made while we were all still very emotional, many of us, including myself though have hated it from the start.  It appears that the congress is going to be adding another year onto the Patriot Act.

This would extend it until February of 2012, and passage is likely to happen with little debate or contention.

Remember who the DHS considers terrorists.  Time to write your congress critters.  This renewal needs to be at least debated, preferably fully derailed.

Since when is it our job to take care of everyone else?

What happened to self reliance and why in Zeus’s butthole does the current administration want to take care of everyone else and ignore the issues in our own country?

The U.S. must shape a world order relying as much on the persuasiveness of its diplomacy as the might of its military, he said. All hands are required to solve the world’s newest threats: terrorism, the spread of nuclear weapons, climate change and feeding and caring for a growing world population, he added.

As I continue reading Atlas Shrugged I frequently see similarities between the book and present day America.

From each according to his ability to each according to his need. – Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Apparently other countries, who could IMO take care of themselves, are higher on the list of priorities than people right here at home.

The government also seems to think that throwing money at problems will be the solution. For example, programs such as Social Security, food stamps, unemployment, etc. are having money taken from tax payers for funding. This creates a decline for private wages.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. “This is really important,” Grimes says.

The Obama administration is pushing the country towards communism:

Economist David Henderson of the conservative Hoover Institution says a shift from private wages to government benefits saps the economy of dynamism. “People are paid for being rather than for producing,” he says.

(Emphasis mine). In this case, the way to make more money would be to have more kids, because then your need is greater.

We don’t have any kids and we are working our butts off to make ends meet, yet we are punished for our hard work just because someone else doesn’t work but needs more because they couldn’t keep it in their pants or their legs closed. Oh yeah, they also need a new big screen TV and an expensive ‘green’ vehicle to cart the kids around in.

Why should my husband and I not shrug?

TMW

Quote Of The Day Newbius, 05122010

Libertarian Terrorists? You mean those guys who want to take over, then leave you alone? – Newbius

[This made me laugh because when it comes to true Libertarians, it’s true! The idea of liberty is very terrifying to some people for some reason. Still haven’t quite figured out why. -B]