Time to embrace proper profiling at U.S. airports

Is there any bigger prize for a Jihadist terrorist than an Isreali plane or airport? Probably not. Yet, in thirty years there has not been a successful attack on an El Al plane nor has a plane from the Tel Aviv airport been hijacked. One would think that in a post-9/11 world, we might want to consult with Isreali airport security and see if we could pick up some pointers.

However, there is a great fear of profiling here in the USA. I don’t believe it’s so much a matter of being afraid of being labelled “racist” as the fear of liability. Isreali airport security profiliing is not about race. It’s about behavior. Obviously a 22-year old from Saudi is going to attract a bit more attention than a 64-year old Irishman. But the Isreali’s don’t strip search every 20 something Arab. It’s not necessary and would only serve to alienate paying customers. What they do focus on is conversation, speech patterns, facial expressions, eye movement, body language. Security is both uniformed and covert. Agents engage people in trivial conversation. They are trained to be attentive to things that don’t make sense. Ask a similar question twice during the course of a lengthy conversation. Get two different answers. That’s a red flag. It’s similar to the type of security at major casinos. Everyone is being watched by someone, yet most aren’t conscious of it.

So why don’t we employ some of the same techniques here??Because it would necessitate the most feared thing in the American system of justice; the judgment call. Here in the most litigious society on Earth, the most dangerous thing you can do is employ logic and reason on your own. In Isreal, if you’re pulled out of line and subjected to higher scrutiny and turn out to be innocent, you get your things together and proceed to your flight. Here, you call your attorney and start preparing the lawsuit, and you’ll probably win or at least settle out of court. So, we attempt to make all security procedures a matter of uncontestable fact checking or strict adherance to detailed procedures. We confiscate shampoo, remove shoes and ban nail clippers. Furthermore, there’s no rhyme or reason to who we subject to higher scrutiny. The more random the better. We don’t want to be accused of singling somebody out. Then we’d have to explain our reasoning. Reasoning is frowned upon.

The other drawback is training. You can’t just hire somebody off the street, give them a two-week orientation and expect them to be an expert profiler. Learning to read the “tells” of a would-be terrorist takes continous and long-term training, as well as sound reasoning ability. It’s expensive and time consuming. High tech equipment is also expensive, but much easier to deploy quickly. That’s why it is favored. Also, there is less liability exposure from a false positive from a machine, than from a human being.

Another, I think lesser, factor is that there are a lot of people in America who have convinced themselves that the Jihadists only want to destroy us because they don’t really understand us. It’s an appealing prospect. It simplifies the situation considerably. All we have to do is show the Jihadists how cool we really are, and everything will be groovy. The fact is, the Jihadists see the direction that the “civilized” countries are taking the world in and they don’t like it one bit. If Mr. Rogers were our president, they’d still want to take him out. Democracy, equal rights, tolerance of opposing views and lifestyles are simply not consistent with the world they’d like to create, and they never will be. Lax security in the name of demonstrating our civility is just going to get more people killed.

We can effectively employ profiling without being racist and without turning air travel into shear torture. We need to consult with our Isreali friends, casino security experts and perhaps some of the most successful poker players in the world. Bombs don’t blow up planes. Crazy people do.

DMV Purgatory, a health care reform preview?

I decided to go register my new (used) Jeep today. I figured an hour or so, early in the afternoon, leaving plenty of time for other errands. So my son Max and I headed out. There was a line going out the door. I got number 708. They were on number 640 at the time, and there were two other, higher priority categories; military and renewals.

Before I start venting, let me be clear. This is not about the folks who work at the DMV. It's just an illustration of the nature of an operation in which customer service is of no consequence. There's no downside to frustrated customers. It's not like you can take your business elsewhere.

Anyway, after an hour and a half of waiting, I noticed the ATM machine. Why is there an ATM machine in here? These guys take in hundreds of dollars per minute. They must take plastic. I'd better ask. Nope. Only cash or checks, but don't worry, there's an ATM. It's not actually working, but if it were.... No problem. At the rate they were going I could drive to any ATM in the state and still be back before my number was called. So, off to the nearest gas station. The first one's ATM was also out of service. The second one worked. Back to the DMV. They had served exactly one more person in my category by the time I got back. Another hour and a half and my number finally got called. I felt like I'd won the lotto. That is, until the nice lady informed me that I needed to get a VIN verification first, since I bought a car with out of state plates. "Don't worry", she assured me, "we're open until 5pm". So, off to the nearest car dealership for a VIN verification. What does that entail? Well, the nice young lady copied some information from my title (the same title I had handed the lady at the DMV) onto a different piece of paper, asked me to read off my odometer numbers and charged my $20. She never so much as popped the hood. Back to the DMV. At least I didn't have to wait in line again. Just three hours and 45 minutes after my arrival, I left with my new plates. The title will arrive by mail in 6-8 weeks. Total cost, about $140 (the car is 16 years old).

How would a for-profit, competitive environment have been different? First of all, there were about 6 to 8 unmanned stations. A competitive enterprise would have done the math and figured that if each employee is taking in well over $1,000 per hour, and you have room for more employees, it's probably worth the expense. Also, how about on-site VIN verification. It's a five minute transaction at $20/pop. Mo money, mo money, mo money. These things even make sense from a political standpoint. How much productivity (and therefore tax revenue) is lost due to people spending half a workday at the DMV?

I suppose there's an upside, if we turn health care into a non-profit bureaucracy. We wont have to worry about people running to the hospital or the doctor's office every time they have the sniffles. If it's as torturous as the DMV, they'll have to drag people to their health care provider, kicking and screaming, or wait until they lose consciousness.

Is Wall Street slitting its own throat?

So, I'm watching the FOX business block, and the champions and defenders of free market capitalism each dutifully rail against government excess, new regulations, subsidies and take-overs. Yet in the final two-minutes, when it's time to recommend a stock, they invariably select a company that stands to benefit from new regulation, government excess and take-overs.

In 2009 we got bail outs, stimulus, a tripling of the deficit, industry take-overs, cap and trade passed the house, the health care take-over passed both houses of Congress and the market soared.

It seems as if the top 20% of earners in this country actually believes that they can keep on truckin' without the bottom 80%. Their words say to the government "No, no, no." but their actions say "Go, go, go.".

The overt defenders of the new world order can't even bring themselves to decry multi-million dollar get-aways for government employees to hang around hotels and talk about their new contracts. The bribery that takes place in legislation is brushed off as "business as usual" which means, we shouldn't care. All news is good news so long as their favored party remains in charge. It reminds me of the prisoner in "Life of Brian" hanging upside down in shackles, talking about how great the Romans are.

I think that most people know that we are totally abandoning the founding principals of the United States. Many will even state opposition to it if you ask them. However, many of the same people believe they're going to benefit somehow in the short term, so they don't put up much of a fuss about it.

My optimistic side likes to point out that we still have the capacity to turn things around on a dime in this country. My pessimistic side observes that Rome was not destroyed in a day. There were multiple generations of misery before the once mighty empire finally dissipated onto the ash-heap of history. Are we headed for a similar fate? It's entirely possible.

I would urge all you market moguls to put your money where your principals are. Never mind the short-term trade and invest in freedom, or at least refrain from investing in statism. Money talks. Speak up!

The New Transparency of Government

During the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama promised a new era of transparency in government. He said that bills would be debated in the open, even on CSPAN. Everyone would have their due input and the public would be able to witness the process from beginning to end. Well, it hasn't exactly gone down that way, but thanks to ever progressing communication and information technology, the motives and character of our elected officials has never been more transparent.

2009 was the year of the crisis. Every major piece of legislation was an emergency. So much so that they had to be written behind closed doors by a handful of chosen legislators and policy makers. When they were finally released, there was no time for debate, or even for most members of Congress to read the bills before voting on them. Stimulus, bail outs, climate change and health care were all deemed way too important to be subjected to the whims of the common citizen.

This approach may have worked in the past. There was a time, not so long ago, when there were only three major television networks. Each had a half hour of national news per night, airing at roughly the same time. The average American was provided perhaps ten minutes of information per day on what was happening in Washington D.C.. Today, you can literally keep tabs on our elected officials 24/7. Deals might be made in private, but the fact that the deal making is happening is as plain as day. Whether its scientists fudging data to promote their pre-conceived conclusions or Congress members getting huge paydays for their states in exchange for their votes, the public is fully aware and tuned in and none too happy about it.

Big government proponents are embarking on a power grab agenda. The plan was to rush everything through so that, by the time Joe Six Pack realized what was happening, the deals would be done, the game would be changed, and eventually we'd all get used to the idea that the government is going to tell us what to do and when and how to do it. The problem they're having is that tactics that worked even 3 or 4 years ago, no longer work today. Releasing an important piece of news on Friday evening no longer means it wont garner major scrutiny. You can't just make ridiculous statements like the center of the Earth is "millions of degrees" or the polar ice cap is going to "disappear within 7 years" and not expect people to take 5 minutes on Google to check your facts. You can't just tell people "Relax, we know what we're doing" and hope we don't ask for details. Technology has made it possible for government to disseminate information to almost everyone in real time, and we want to know exactly what they're up to.

Despite their best efforts, our government is becoming more and more transparent. They are currently promoting government by the state, of the state and for the state. This aggression will not stand. George Orwell had it backwards. Big Brother, we're watching you.

The Latest on the Global Warming scam

Reality has taken another swipe at the religion of Global Warming. The Global Warming cult is not just annoying, they may potentially deal a devastating blow to economies and freedom worldwide based on the premise that man-made carbon emmisions are building up in the atmosphere and bringing about catastrophic global warming. Mother nature begs to differ.

A new study published online in Geophysical Research Letters, states: “New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.”

In plain English, the oceans and land are absorbing our carbon emissions as fast as we can put them out. The catastophic greenhouse scenario is not happening. From PhysOrg.com: “The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.”

In other words this study deals with reality, whereas the nightmare scenarios are based on commonly held belief.

There is some confusion among scientists, particularly those seeking new grants to combat global warming, as to why the atmosphere is not absorbing the CO2. I’m not a scientist, but I know that mixtures have saturation points. When you stir salt into a glass of water, and continue to add salt, there will come a point where the salt will no longer dissolve into the mixture and you’ll simply get a bunch of salt resting on the bottom of the glass. My unprofessional guess would be that the atmosphere has absorbed about all the CO2 it is capable of absorbing. That’s a good thing. The Earth is recycling our carbon for us.

As you read this, the United Nations is conducting a Climate Change Conference, where world leaders will debate what to do about the non-existent build up of CO2 in the atmosphere. Proposals include payments from countries like the United States to developing countries which emit less carbon; a carbon-debt system, which would be enforced by a newly formed, unelected, global governing body. Here at home, Congress is attempting to pass the infamous “Cap and Trade” bill, which will enrich traders, at our expense, and accomplish very little else.

It’s not that good information is not available to the powers that be. Global Warming or Climate Change is just the most recent vehicle to drive the real agenda; world government. If this crisis comes apart at the seams, they’ll find a new one. It’s never been about protecting you. It’s always been about controlling you.

More info: http://www.physorg.com/news177059550.html

Capping executive pay, You asked for it.

The federal government’s new Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, has determiined that executives at several bailed out firms must take substantial pay cuts. This has predictably sparked a heated debate about whether the government should be involved in pay decisions and what constitutes “excessive pay”. I believe Wall Street has made its own bed, and now must lie in it.

When firms accept themselves as “too big to fail” and take money from taxpayers through the federal government, they lose any right to make free market arguments. These firms turned their backs on the free market system because they didn’t want to face the pain of failure. Now they have to accept their new masters.

Will government meddling and bureaucracy make the situations at these companies worse? Probably. Will talent walk away? Of course. Then again, it was the alleged “best and brightest” that helped create this fiasco. What about “mission creep”? What if the government decides to cap pay at companies that weren’t bailed out? The optimum time to put the brakes on the government takeover of the free market was before they started doling out TARP loans. Where were the shouts from the free market champions back then?

Eventually the government will wind down its takeover of big business because it will fail. Whether it’s this administration or the next one, reality will set in over time. For now, we’ll get a demonstration of what happens when entrepreneurs are replaced with czars and committees. I believe individuals are entitled to every dime they can make honestly in the free market, but I also believe that individuals and companies have to take the consequences of their actions and inactions. If you want out from under the thumb of the government, give the money back or find a new career.

No More "Lesser of two evils"

The Republican Party may have thought it had a great ally in the "Tea Party" movement. However, they're beginning to learn that opposition to liberal Democrats does not automatically mean support for Republicans.

The most obvious illustration is the race in N.Y. for the 23d Congressional District seat up for grabs this November. A liberal Republican, Dierdre Scozzafava, is vying for the seat against Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman. While old-guard Republicans like Newt Gingrich are supporting Scozzafava, many of the "Tea Partyers" and conservatives such as Dick Army, are supporting Hoffman. Critics say that by splitting the vote between Hoffman and Scozzafava, the third party supporters may be handing the Democrat a win in a traditional Republican stronghold.

The fact that Republicans would even make that argument is a sign that they still don't understand what's going on out in the real world. People who are concerned about ever-growing government, outlandish spending, runaway deficits and the destruction of the free market system, don't give a hoot about the welfare of any political party. They want to vote for individuals who will work for what they believe in. Voting for the lesser of evils is no longer tolerable.

The grass roots rebellion that has become known as the Tea Party movement is comprised of individuals looking at the long term and not liking what they see. They see a real crisis upon us right now. They aren't interested in the numbers game played by the ruling parties in Washington D.C.. They want credibility, accountability, commitment.

I tend to agree with this sentiment. We are always told that it is our duty as a citizen to vote. However, if I don't like the choices put in front of me, I believe the better option is to not vote. Maybe we have to take another step or two in the wrong direction before we move to the right track. If one or both major parties becomes extinct in the process, so be it. If Republicans think that conservatives, capitalists, libertarians and independents have nowhere else to go, they're wrong...dead wrong.