Hating the TSA

I don't use the "H" word lightly, but when it comes to the TSA - Transportation Security Administration or Thousands Standing Around, depending on your perspective - I make an exception. Oh, how I hate thee, let me count the ways.

While acknowledging that my horror experiences with airport security are far from unique, or even unusual these days, at least, dear reader, you can be sure these stories are real and not some made-up Internet hoax. My most recent run-in with the TSA involves the recently-discovered deadly threat of carrying toothpaste on a plane at 30,000 feet.

When the TSA banned Colgate and Crest a couple months ago, most of us thought: 1.) That's just plain stupid. 2.) That's par for the course over at the TSA. The good news, however, is that some air travelers aren't taking such stupidity sitting down on their flotation devices any longer. They're speaking up and speaking out. They're letting the TSA have it. And they're finding kindred spirits all across the nation, thanks to the Internet (God bless Al Gore for inventing it!).

So under public pressure, the TSA, in its infinite bureaucratic wisdom, recently relaxed its prohibitions against deadly Sensodyne, Speed Stick and Listerine. You may now bring these potentially lethal items onboard with you - but only if they're in small quantities and only if packed in a sealable, clear plastic bag. (Apparently the notion of three terrorists all buying a ticket on the same flight and then mixing their toothpastes together to obtain the quantity necessary to bring down a jumbo jet never occurred to the world's leading airport security organization.)

So on my recent trip to our nation's capital, I packed miniature containers of toothpaste, deodorant and mouthwash in the sealable, clear plastic toiletry bag which came with my suitcase (proudly purchased from a non-union Wal-Mart) and took off for Reno International Airport. And that's where the fun began.

Airport security under the TSA generally encompasses three separate operations: There's the well-known long, snaking lines for the document verification phase ("Papers, please."). There's the take-off-your-shoes-and-walk-through-the-beeper-machine phase. And then, if you're unlucky enough to set off Mr. Beeper, there's the spread-your-legs-and-extend-your-arms perp-search phase.

But in Reno they've now added a fourth layer for those brave passengers who dare to pack personal hygiene items. Before you even get in line to show your boarding pass and photo ID, you now must stop at a new table manned by three full-time, government-trained, taxpayer-funded Barney Fifes. There you must present your bag of lethal weapon toiletries for close inspection to assure that you are carrying only 3 ounces of toothpaste and not 4 - and that said toothpaste is contained in a government-approved sealable clear plastic bag.

Alas, while my toiletries passed the size and quantity test, my sealable clear plastic toiletry bag - which was manufactured for the specific purpose of carrying.well, toiletries - did not.

According to the Einstein who inspected my bag, a sealable, clear plastic toiletry bag designed for the expressed purpose of carrying toiletries was not acceptable to the government. If I wanted to carry potentially lethal toothpaste on the plane, Goober explained, it had to be packed in a government-approved sealable clear plastic bag designed to carry.sandwiches. And if I wanted to get out of line and go back downstairs, Mr. Gump informed, I could purchase a proper sandwich bag for my miniature tube of toothpaste in the gift shop.

My head, which was not at the time considered by the TSA to be a potentially lethal weapon, was ready to explode.

Not wanting to miss my plane, I opted, without good cheer, to allow Deputy Dawg to confiscate my Crest. But here's the kicker. While this TSA security professional removed and confiscated my toothpaste, the bonehead missed two double-edge razors in the same bag, as well as a banned cigarette lighter. Boy, don't I feel secure now!

But you know what? This kind of bureaucratic stupidity isn't what I hate most about the TSA. And it's not their inefficiency. It's not their incompetence. It's not the unnecessary inconvenience. It's not even the expensive false sense of security TSA is giving the traveling public.

No, what I hate most about the TSA is how it's turned so many supposedly freedom-loving American citizens into sheep who mindlessly stand for such indignities and inanities all in the name of some illusory feeling of safety. The TSA has made random search-and-seizures without any cause, let alone probable, a perfectly acceptable practice.

And woe to the traveler who raises his voice in objection to being searched like a common criminal all because a machine beeped because you foolishly forgot to remove 73 cents worth of coins from your pocket. Your fellow passengers won't cheer your knowledge of constitutional rights or your vocal opposition to having them violated by gun-toting, badge-wearing government agents. No, no, no! You'll be mocked and ridiculed. You'll be eyed as a trouble-maker deserving of even more scrutiny, if not a cavity search. After all, if you have nothing to hide then what are you getting so worked up about, right?

I may hate the TSA, but I loathe the government school system which has systematically destroyed the pro-liberty/anti-government heritage our Founders passed on to us. "Give me liberty or give me death"? Give me a break. Patrick Henry would be stoned with miniature tubes of AquaFresh by fellow passengers were he to utter such nonsense in a TSA line.

When exactly did we lose the spirit of George Washington who once said, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence - it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and fearful master"? Or Thomas Jefferson who said, "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive"?

As you wait in line to show your government-approved toiletry bag, filled with your government-approved portions of mouthwash and toothpaste, before presenting your identification papers to an armed government agent, you realize Jefferson's spirit of resistance is largely dead.

May God have mercy on the political souls of the idiot Republicans who brought this plague of airport security federal bureaucrats upon us. May they rest in TSA hell.

And no, this is NOT off topic because, if government were REALLY concerned about the safety of the "Murican Peepel," ask yourself how much cargo x-ray and nitrate sniffing equipment this nearly 23 million bucks (and that's just the number they have a trail on) they could have bought.

When are folks just gonna get pissed and, like Howard Beal in "Network," stand up and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it any more?"

In the nation of sheep we have become, I'd guess never.

My God, we're clearly doomed...
and, oh yeah, if our "leaders" have become as duplicitous and untruthful as the foe and America is becoming something the Founders never envisioned or intended and America -- the idea -- has failed, what's the point of trying to save America the place?

From boort.com this am:
SO WHAT'S FEMA GOING TO DO WITH THEIR PUPPET SHOW?

We wonder now that the hurricane season is over if FEMA is going to fold its traveling minstrel show in Florida?

Oh .. you haven't heard about this. Well, here's another "your tax dollars at work" story for you. How many tax dollars? Well, how about $22.6 million. For what? Well .... let's see. We have hurricane bingo, Windy Biggie puppet shows, yoga on the beach and something called "salsa for seniors."

This stuff makes me just mad as hell. It's government spending gone amuck ... and nobody seems to give a flying fling about it.

I believe that every single time a government or bureaucrat spends one penny of taxpayer dollars he ought to be willing to sign a statement saying that it is his firm belief that it is far more important for him to spend this money in this way than it would be to allow the person who earned that money to keep it and spend it on their own personal needs. These bureaucrats and politicians spend money with not so much as a moment's thought to the person who expended a portion of their lives to earn it. It truly disgusts me.

So ... where did this $22.6 million go? Sally Kestin of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel did an investigation of this huge FEMA grant to the State of Florida. The money was spent through an agency called Project H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People in Emergencies). This is a classic story of bureaucrats spending money because its there ... and accomplishing basically nothing.

Kestin's story is incredible. Here are just a few of the things that these taxpayer funds were spent on ... and remember, in every case this money was taken by force of law from people who have bills to pay, medical emergencies to meet, children to educate, a retirement to plan for, and a home to buy. The money wasn't there, though, because it was seized by the government and spent for:

Puppet shows.

Hurricane Bingo for seniors at retirement homes who had no clue what was going on

Sea shell collecting trips by Project H.O.P.E. employees

The "toilet paper game"

Silly string and art therapy

Yoga relaxation on the beach

The "Planting for Inner Peace" workshop
Look ... I just can't cover this in the notes, though I'll spend some time on the air today ranting and truly raving about this. You just need to read the story for yourself.

BINGO!!!

Of course, fomenting class envy and hatred serves the purposes of the political and economic elite: Reduction/destruction of the hated middle-class that poses the most dangerous threat to their vaunted positions.

But Taylor Caldwell wrote about this far more eloquently than I could ever hope to, to wit:

The Middle Class Must Not Fail
by Taylor Caldwell
With the rise of the Industrial Civilization in the world,
about 200 years ago, there also arose a social body which we
know as the middle class. Before that, most of the world
suffered under a feudal system in which the people were
truly slaves of their governments in all things. There was
no strong buffer between them and their despotic rulers, no
assurance of freedom to pursue commerce and to live
decently, to keep the fruits of their labor and hold the
paying of tribute at a minimum. The middle class made the
dream of liberty a possibility, set limits on the
government, fought for its constitutions, removed much of
governmental privilege and tyranny, demanded that rulers
obey the just laws as closely as the people, and enforced a
general civic morality.

Sound readers looked to the experience of Rome, the first to
encourage a middle class, noting that Rome had been a strong
and prosperous republic, with much public virtue, a large
degree of freedom for every citizen, and a constitution (the
Twelve Tables of Law) on which our own is based. After the
fall of Rome, governments had everywhere destroyed the
middle class, returned to despotism, and entered the Dark
Ages. It had been centuries since a rising middle class
resolved to keep government at a minimum and to force
respect for the people and eschew tribute except for such
absolute necessities as armed forces, street protection, and
the guarantee of authority of contracts in commerce.

AN INTERNATIONAL ELITE

Those who for centuries had ruled their nations, from father
to son, in total despotism, realized that they were
threatened. Were they not the elite, by divine right? Were
they not by birth and money entitled to rule a nation of
docile slaves? Did the people not understand that they were
truly inferior dogs who needed a strong hand to rule them,
and should they not be meek before their government?

Little wonder that the elite hated the middle class which
challenged them in the name of God-given liberty. And
little wonder that this hatred grew deeper as the middle
class became stronger and imposed restrictions through which
all the people, including the most humble, had the right to
rule their own lives and keep the greater part of what they
earned for themselves.

Clearly, if the elite were to rule again, the middle class
had to be destroyed. It had to be destroyed so despotism
and the system of tribute could be returned, and grandeur
and honor and immense riches for the elite -- assuring their
monopoly rule of all the world. For you see, the elite of
all nations, then as now, were not divided. They were one
international class, and worked together and protected each
other. But the middle class laughed and said "we will bind
you with the chains of our Constitution, which you must obey
also, lest we depose you, for we are now powerful and we are
human beings and we wish to be free from your old
despotism."

The elite did not give up. While it profited from the
Industrial Revolution which under liberty of enterprise
freed the people from the feudal and despotic systems, and
which gave a new birth to the middle class, it also hated
the threat to its own authority. It did not wish to destroy
the Industrial Revolution; it wished to use it for its
exclusive purposes. In the early 19th century this elite
looked for a way, once and for all, to regain its power and
extort tribute from the people and so destroy the burgeoning
middle class which stood in its way, and to subdue the
populaces again to their proper role as slaves of government
by the elite.

CONSPIRATORIAL ADVANCE

Through the "League of Just Men", elitist conspirators
sought a fanatic to cloak the point of their purposes in
slogans and cant. The man they hired was Karl Marx.
Certainly Marx was no worker; he had never soiled his hands
with labor. He hated the middle class, which he
contemptuously called the bourgeoisie, for he considered
himself superior in mentality and breeding to what he called
"the gross merchants of commerce and exploitation." He did
not attack the waiting despots, no indeed. They were of one
mind with him. Rather he proposed in his books and
pamphlets the return to government of the total power to
exact tribute from the people in order that government might
better direct every phase of the peoples' lives, as he
asserted, "for their own welfare." The elite, in turn,
would control the governments.

Marx began to accuse the middle class of heinous crimes and
aroused the workers against their benefactors. He labored
to create envy and malice among the workers -- all aimed at
the entrepreneurial middle class which had raised them from
serfdom, restored their human dignity, and given them
liberty for the first time in nearly 2,000 years.

Karl Marx was made to order by the self-styled elite. They
financed the propagation of his sedition all over Europe and
in America. They bled France and Germany with it. They
financed sedition in Russia. And the plan began to succeed.
By 1910, the Scandinavian countries had already fallen to
the socialism of Karl Marx. Only three nations stood
between the elite and their ambitions -- the British Empire,
Czarist Russia and the United States of America.

Much is now made of supposed Czarist tyranny. But the fact
is that the Czar of Russia had already granted his people a
greater measure of freedom. A constitution had been
established, and a parliamentary system. Russia, too, was
well on her way to nourishing and encouraging a middle
class.

HATE AND ENVY

The elitists were anxious to promote the Marxist notion of
demanding tribute from the people, for only through forced
tribute could freedom be destroyed and the people reduced
again to forced labor for the benefit of the elite. Only
thus could the middle class be eliminated. So, we have Karl
Marx's infamous notion: "To each according to his needs,
from each according to his ability." That is a foundation
for slavery and tribute. Marx and the elite had a juicy
bait for the workers, who were deluded to envy and hate the
middle class which had freed them. If the riches were taken
away from the middle class, then the workers would become
their equals. Marx called this redistribution of wealth.
Not wealth from the elite, with their vast fortunes in every
country of the world -- inherited fortunes which would not
be taxed as income -- but wealth from the strong middle
class, which would be robbed in the name of the people.
Only "earned" income would be vulnerable to seizure.

But in the way of all this happiness for the conspiring
international elite, and the slavery of the people, stood
the United States, the British Empire and Czarist Russia.
They would have to be destroyed. Britain had only a small
income tax, used for the armed forces, for roads, for the
maintenance of law and order, and for the payment of a tiny
body of bureaucrats.

Over and over, in America, the elite tried to establish
their federal income tax, but they did not succeed. The
people were too vigilant, too jealous of their freedom, too
proud, too respectful of themselves. They embraced the
ancient proverb, "To work is to pray," and they guarded the
fruits of their labors. No, America had no graduated income
tax to drain the capital of the hard-working middle class,
and so she became strong and rich and powerful, the envy of
nations which exacted tribute and forced labor from their
people. Attempts were made to exact such tribute from
Americans during the Civil War and the war with Spain, but
each time the Supreme Court declared that our Constitution
prohibited it. As late as 1902, the graduated income tax
was again declared unconstitutional, and the Chief Justice
observed: "It is a method to enslave our people, and deprive
them of their liberty and right to the fruit of their
labors."

The conspiratorial elite fumed. How best, now, to institute
their system of tribute and slavery? The solution was WAR.
During wartime, governments were better able to tax the
people, harnessing their patriotism to maintain enlarged
armed services.

And so the elite began to prepare America for war, and
conspirators of the French and German and Russian and
English elite worked with them -- for the destruction of
their own nationals and the elimination, once and for all,
of the defiant middle class. The American elite, under
advice of their brother conspirators in other nations,
proposed an amendment to the American Constitution -- a
graduated income tax, just as Karl Marx had proposed. To
support this elite were very busy, through their henchmen,
the socialists and the populists, and through their secret
communists, in arousing the envy of the workers against the
middle class. They told the workers that they would never
be taxed, "only the rich," and even then the highest rate
would be only two to three percent. And the taxes would go
to "our exploited workers," through all sorts of government
benefits. The unthinking, the envious, the stupid, and the
malicious thought this was wonderful. They supported the
16th Amendment -- the federal income tax -- and it was
passed into law in 1913.

Now the stage was set for war, the attack on the British
Empire, Czarist Russia and the German Empire. The major thrust
of the effort to destroy the freedom of the whole world, and
reduce it to total control by the elite, had begun.

The rest is sad contemporary history. Few in America heeded what
Thomas Jefferson had said long ago, that when we are taxed on our
earned incomes, in our food and drink, in our coming and going,
in our property, we would face the return of slavery and the
reestablishment of an all-powerful and despotic elite. So it is
that we of the middle class are being destroyed through the
exaction of tribute, resulting in an ever-increasing power and
despotism of a central government controlled by a conspiratorial
elite, and everlasting wars to subdue us and drive us to our
knees.

NEVER AGAIN?

Do not believe for an instant that the world's conspiring elite
in every nation have so much as a serious quarrel among them.
They have just one object: control through tribute. Your
slavery, through tribute, and mine. And they use wars for their
purposes just as they use inequities, harassment, bullying,
capriciousness, and extortion of their graduated income tax. The
system of taxation with which they have yoked us is really forced
tribute from the hard-working, and especially from the middle
class, who are slowly being eliminated.

Behind this attack are the self-styled elite, secure in their own
power and riches. Most of them have huge fortunes which are tax-
exempt. But every man and woman of us -- we of the middle class
-- are taxed in our food and drink, in our comings and goings.
The harder we work, the more tribute we have to pay for the elite
are determined that never again will the middle class challenge
them, and never again will we be able to save money and so rise
to power, and never again will we protest the slavery they have
planned for us.

But many of us still dare to protest, and will continue to do so
while God gives us breath. To be effective, we know we must
direct our attacks on the real criminals, the wealthy and
powerful secret elite of all the world -- the conspirators
laboring night and day to enslave us. Even our own government is
now their victim, for it is the conspiratorial elite who choose
our rulers, nominate them, and remove them by assassination or
smear.

I have fought these enemies of liberty in every book I have
written. But too few have listened to me, as too few have
listened to others who have warned of these conspirators. The
hour is late. Americans must soon listen and act -- or endure
the black night of slavery that is worse than death.

* * * *
(From Grolier's Academic American encyclopedia)
Caldwell, Taylor

Janet Miriam Taylor Holland Caldwell, b. Sept. 7, 1900, d. Aug.
30, 1985, was a popular American novelist who began her prolific
career with Dynasty of Death (1938), a fictional biography about
the fortunes of two powerful families of armament manufacturers
over the course of 60 years. Many of her other novels followed
this generational pattern, including The Captain and the Kings
(1972; film, 1976) and Glory and the Lightning (1974). Caldwell,
who also wrote under the pseudonym Max Reiner, also wrote The
Devil's Advocate (1952), Dear and Glorious Physician (1959), and
Answer as a Man (1981).
Bibliography: Stearn, Jess, The Search for the Soul:
TaylorCaldwell's Psychic Lives (1973).

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