Posted on 11/17/2010 8:00:30 PM PST by Whenifhow
Naked body scanners cost taxpayers $734,000 each and the DHS plans to spend $734 million in FY2011 to purchase another 1,000 scanners. Contrary to what Janet Napolitano is telling us, the naked scans can be saved, stored and disseminated via the internet. Full disclosure: President Obama’s BFF, George Soros, owns 11,300 shares of stock in the company that makes the scanners and Michael Chertoff, former DHS secretary, also benefits financially from scanner sales.
It was the Christmas Day underwear bombers’ failed attack that led to naked body scanners in our airports. Due to inexperience and misguided ideology, President Obama and Eric Holder decided to conduct a trial on US soil, granting the underwear bomber all the rights and privileges afforded to American citizens.
The DHS plans to “spend $200 million to pay state and local costs of securing terrorism-related trials; a 10 percent increase.” This is unacceptable and unnecessary. Military tribunals have been established, and that’s were these terrorists need to be tried.
The TSA, which President Obama intends to unionize, has received a $508.7 million increase, bringing their FY2011 budget to $8.2 billion. Once unionized, TSA leaders will have free reign over Americans and they will be as difficult to fire as teachers who call students the “n” word or sexually assault children. Clearly, the TSA budget should be cut in half and the remaining $4.1 billion needs to be used for private companies who can fulfill the needs of airport security in a professional manner. Private competition from companies who have no ties with politicians will be far superior to what we’re getting from the TSA as evidenced by this video, and this one.
Explosive-sniffing K-9 teams cost $258,182 per team. The DHS plans to spend $71 million for 275 more teams. Taxpayer dollars are better-spent on K-9 teams than $734,000 per scanner!
Summarizing the above FY2011 Federal Budget cuts of $5.034 billion, coupled with those specified below, we can now add $315 billion to the $1.2 Trillion identified in my prior article. This brings our total to $1.515 Trillion in spending cuts thus far.
* $5.034 billion – TSA, Naked Scanners, Terror Trials in US (discussed above.)
* $2.2 billion – Pay Raises (a 1.4% increase for FY2011 for 2 million Fed employees.)
* $44 billion – 28% Pay Decrease for Fed employees (Fed pay increased 36.9% since 2000 while private worker’s pay increased only 8.8%. It’s time to be “fair and equal,” right?)
* $1.416 billion – Serve America Act FY2011 to recruit our children at school and force “volunteerism” (i.e. recruit and train community agitators.)
* $1 billion – Dead people to whom our Federal government sends money.
* $63 billion – US Global Health Initiative.
* $5 billion – Pre-existing condition coverage. Oops, only 8,011 people in entire nation.
* $100 billion/year – UN Climate Scam.
* $80 billion to Apollo Alliance (socialist/communist George Soros group) for climate scam; see this video too…
* $1.741 billion – “critical efficiency and renewables programs” FY2011 budget increase.
* $8.6 billion of the DHS’s $43.6 billion FY2011 budget (defund the duplicate organizations DHS created.)
* $535 million – Global warming scam jobs for Solyndra (see video here.)
* $611.4 million – Bureau of Labor Statistics to gather data on ‘green jobs.’
* $657 million – Planned Parenthood.
* $400 million – Michelle Obama’s Food Deserts.
* $422 million – Corporation for Public Broadcasting/NPR.
* $161 million – NEH anti-American group which targets our military.
* $17 million – Obamacare Section 203 for civilian “Ready Reserve Corps.”
* $5.96 million – U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation 2010 Awards (i.e. mosque restoration overseas).
NOTE: Section 205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations prohibits USAID funds from being used for the rehabilitation of structures to the extent that those structures are used for “inherently religious activities.”
When we hear media pundits and politicians state that a few hundred million are no big deal, clear thinking Americans know it’s an egregious misstatement. As we can see in this article, millions here and billions there, add up to an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars.
If ordinary Americans are able to find $1.515 Trillion in wasteful government spending, imagine how much more our newly elected Congress will find. It’s up to us to request that they do so, and to insist that they do not appropriate funding for these wasteful programs in a time of financial crisis.
Reference: HOW TO REDUCE U.S. DEBT BY $1.2 TRILLION – “DEAR CONGRESSMAN BOEHNER”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2629021/posts
http://noisyroom.net/blog/2010/11/07/how-to-reduce-u-s-debt-by-1-2-trillion-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9Cdear-congressman-boehner%E2%80%9D/
If anything the underwear bomber just gave the government the excuse to deploy them on a shorter timeline.
If McCain, or any other Republican had won, these scanners would still end up being deployed.
This is not a conservative/liberal issue, or even a conservative/libertarian issue. This is a public security issue.
Whether your or I like it or not these scanners will be fully deployed and an overwhelming majority of Americans will learn to tolerate them.
They may eventually get rid of the backscatter X-ray versions, if they prove to be unsafe. However the mm wave versions will stay put.
We are now forced to wear seatbelts, helmets when we ride motorcycles, etc. There was a big hew and cry among libertarians and constitutionalists about how these were grave impositions on our freedoms. But the vast majority of people were willing to go along.
That is what will happen this time. Especially if there is another incident where a terrorist gets on a plane at an airport without the scanners.
The rugged individualists who exposed themselves to great risks in order to found this country have given birth over time to average human beings who crave security more than freedom. We are now as risk averse as the typical European and our nation's laws will begin to reflect that.
Ah here is the info I was seeking after hearing tail end of Tom Sullivan’s comments regarding the scanners/what an outrage!
Thanks for your post, a keeper.
2. Eliminate the following Federal Departments/Agencies: DHHS, Transportation, HUD, Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Interior, EPA, SSA, National Science Foundation (WTF?), Corps of Engineers, National Infrastructure Bank (WTF?), Corporation for National Community Service (WTF?), Small Business Administration, General Services Administration, Other Agencies, Other ($501.3Bn)
3. Cut the following “Mandatory Spending” by 25%: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Other ($500.7Bn)
4. You now have a $834.4Bn surplus to pay down the debt and reduce taxes.
Didn’t the underwear bomber get on a plane before it got to the US? Scanning here would never have caught him.
Then we get what we deserve. Why wouldn’t that logic lead to the our 2nd amendment rights being overturned. I mean..it’s for our security. When do we draw the line?
The good news about the 2nd Amendment is that there's at least one political party ... and many in the other ... that need to support it in order to get re-elected.
I haven't seen a lot of high-level politicians spending a lot of time talking about the TSA pat downs.
The only way that the TSA pat downs go away is if they can be made into a true constitional issue with some bite.
Unfortunately arguing for the 4th Amendment has not been a very profitable endeavor over the years. Both liberal and conservative justices have more often than not sided with law enforcement over citizens.
“Whether your or I like it or not these scanners will be fully deployed and an overwhelming majority of Americans will learn to tolerate them”
This is a true statement, unless of course we the people refuse to tolerate them.
Tell you what—I believe we will refuse. Marxism-inspired police tactics don’t go over too well, nor do other marxist ideas.
The democrats, and any republicans going along with them, will answer to us.
We'll see what happens over the next few days. If a significant number of people opt out of the scanners resulting in noticeable delays it will be interesting to see how the average flyer reacts.
If the average flyer sides with the protestors and blames the TSA, then there is hope. If the average flyer complains about the protestors and says something like "I know I know it's not right, but I have to get to Aunt Edna's and I don't want to get stuck in the airport so please do what you're told" well then that's another story entirely.
This will not play out over a few days.
The fruits of this garbage will come home to the democrats in months and years.
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