TSA, Promoting a Gestapo State Whilst Pretending to Oppose it
Politics / US Politics Apr 04, 2012 - 09:56 AM GMTBy: LewRockwell
Becky Akers writes: Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And Congress holds hearings on the TSA while the agency sexually assaults passengers, steals their valuables, torments children, the elderly and handicapped, and spits on the Constitution.
A "joint hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure" last week supposedly "focus[ed]" on the "Transportation Security Administration (TSA) program challenges and failures." This sham will neither restrain nor eliminate the TSA, no more than have the innumerable other hearings on which Congress has squandered our money – or those upcoming in this series ("The committees plan to continue conducting joint oversight hearings examining additional TSA issues in the coming months"). Indeed, the hearings’ sole purpose and achievement are fooling voters into believing that Our Rulers care when the thugs they’ve unleashed irradiate and grope us.
Leading the show-trial were Darrell Issa (R-CA) and John Mica (R-FL). You needn’t wade through the dozens of reports and transcripts these hearings generated to capture their flavor: Issa supplied a taste when he remarked on a radio show, "This is one of those where we have to start asking: One, are personal liberties being protected?" Yeah, go grab a hanky: I laughed so hard I cried, too. "Two, is the convenience and efficiency of air traffic being affected adversely?" Ditto. "And last, is there a more efficient way to do it?"
Sorta like the Supreme Nincompoops pretending the Constitution may empower the Feds to compel the purchase of medical insurance. There can be no question here, no debate: those who insist that the Commerce Clause authorizes Obummercare or that the TSA’s atrocities "protect personal liberties" are either shockingly venal or downright stupid.
Which brings us to Issa’s accomplice. It’s possible a more hypocritical charlatan than John Mica leeches off taxpayers, but not probable. Mica admits and on occasion has even bragged that he founded the TSA. (We’ll have to take his word for that: there’s no independent confirmation. His claim becomes even more doubtful when we remember that "Democrats in Congress … saw how they could use the shock value of 9/11 to force federalization of security, as they had been proposing for years, ever since the Lockerbie bombing." [Susan and Joseph Trento, Unsafe at Any Altitude, p. 136]) Nor do the agency’s barbarities trouble Mica: when two air-marshals slaughtered a short-term missionary named Rigoberto Alpizar – whom they alleged to have shouted about a bomb; other witnesses denied that Mr. Alpizar ever mentioned the b-word –, Mica chortled, "The system worked exactly as designed." (Intriguing reversion to the passive, there; notice he doesn’t say "as I designed it" when an innocent man dies.)
But Mica’s recently changed his tune. Now he condemns "the system" as too top-heavy. Never mind the TSA’s pedophilia and thievery: it pays its managers too much and hires too many of them. Bloated bureaucracy, not murder, carcinogenic porno-scanners, or irretrievably lost liberty, twist Mica’s knickers. (Not that bloated bureaucracy shouldn’t perturb him – but oughtn’t he have realized the nature of the beast when he supposedly established the TSA? What bureaucracy isn’t bloated? And who spends even a moment in Leviathan’s employ without understanding that elemental truth, let alone the five terms in Congress that Mica had racked up by 9/11?)
Or perhaps we can attribute his discontent with his brainchild to the "contributions" he solicits from "private" security firms. No wonder Mica wants to "reform" the TSA, restricting it to a supervisory role while "private" goons staff the checkpoints. Passengers won’t notice any difference: since the TSA will still dictate "screening protocols," X-rays and a proctologic exam will still torture victims at airports, even if it’s Acme Security rather than the TSA thrusting its hands down our britches. But Mica and his cronies will profit from the misery. No reason Chertoff should hog the whole pie.
Mica’s horribly disingenuous priorities mirror those of the Committees and their hearings. Our Rulers object to the porno-scanners not because they denude and humiliate citizens while increasing our odds of contracting cancer, nor from any revulsion at such gross insult to the Constitution, but because "recent reports suggest that whole body imaging technology [sic for porno-scanning] may not be as effective as the Department [of Homeland Security, TSA’s über-bureaucracy] envisioned" – "despite the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars already spent on AIT." Yep, so much wasted loot is unconscionably criminal and more than enough cause for abolishing the TSA. Now throw in its sexual molestation and its swiping of laptops, cash and jewelry, let alone its petty pilfering of shampoo and mouthwash, and annihilating this Satanic agency becomes as mandatory as trial and punishment for its sociopaths.
Instead, Congress will conduct more "hearings … [to] examin[e] the effectiveness and reported shortcomings of TSA’s security initiatives." Thanks, guys: that’ll have the TSA shaking in its jack-boots.
Meanwhile, Rep. Gerald "The Conman" Connolly (D-VA) informed the TSA at Monday’s hearing, "We're not cattle…" Good gracious, Gerry, of course you’re not: cattle are useful. And they don’t produce nearly as much BS as congresscritters do. Then Conman "add[ed] that ‘barking orders’ undermines the good work of the Transportation Security Administration." Um, Ger? What "good work"? Then again, you wouldn’t sit in Congress if you didn’t consider robbery and lying "good work."
Rep. Tom Petri (R-WI) must have figured it’s never too early to campaign: he wildly exaggerated when he denounced the TSA for "treat[ing] traveling Americans ‘like prisoners.’" We wish: the State’s lackeys must at least suspect prisoners of committing a crime before pawing them.
Our Rulers threaten to stage more of these ludicrous hearings. You can bet that not only will they waste as many of our taxes and as much of our time as this one has, but that you’ll never once hear the word abolish at any of them.
Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.
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