“The 11-7 vote in favor of the panel co-chairmen’s recommendations for a painful mix of spending cuts and tax increases foretells a bitterly partisan and possibly unproductive debate in the House. If there’s a deal to be had, it will likely be reached in the Senate. Fourteen votes were needed to officially send the plan to Congress now for quick action on it.”
“The draft put out by the commission chairs has been released, coming in at 50 pages. The overarching goal, Simpson and Bowles write, is to achieve ‘nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction through 2020’ while reducing ‘the deficit to 2.2% of GDP by 2015.'”
“How they get there is going to be a matter of contention as other commission members have already stressed their displeasure with the suggestions. But here are a few of the more noteworthy suggestions.”
* Roll discretionary spending back to FY2010 levels for FY2012, requires 1% cut in discretionary budget authority every year from FY2013 though 2015;
* Fully offset the cost of the ‘Doc Fix’ by asking doctors and other health providers, lawyers, and individuals to take responsibility for slowing health care cost growth;
* Reduce farm subsidies by3 billion per year by reducing direct payments and other subsidies;
* Achieve100 billion in Illustrative Defense Cuts;
* Index retirement age for Social security to increases in longevity. ‘This option is projected to increase the age by one month every two years after it reaches 67 under current law, meaning the normal retirement age would reach 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075.’ There will be a ‘hardship exemption’ for those unable to work beyond 62;
* Give retirees the choice of collecting half their benefits early and the other half at a later age to minimize impact of actuarial reduction and support phased retirement options;
* Reduce corporate tax rate to 26% and permanently extend the research credit;
* Gradually increase gas tax to fund transportation spending.”
[SNIP]
Think about it: The American president appoints a select group of like-minded officials tasked with coming up with a plan to tackle the deficit, the debt and the government’s long-term, looming liabilities. The commission completes its task by agreeing not to tackle the task. Meanwhile, the British PM has fired hundreds of thousands of state worker and slashed departmental budgets.
Shepard Smith of Fox News encapsulated what to him was the counter argument for taxes on the person earning $20 million annually: “He’ll be $1 million the poorer. Is that going to impact his life style, asked Smith? Will he fire the chauffeur? Not really.”
That’s also not really the right, utilitarian, economic argument for letting a man keep what is his. One million in the hands of government is one million dollars circulating the drain. As soon as you transfer private property into communal ownership, it’s as good as squandered. Left as private property, that money could be saved, invested in productive endeavors, or spent on consumer goods, which will generate work for producers.
How do you think the government collective will allocate $1million it has stolen, and has never worked to generate?
To the moral side of the matter:
From “The 2 Parties’ Question: How Much To Steal”: Taxes are private property plundered. The government has several ways to pay for its obligations, one of which is to seize private property in the form of taxes. The particular portion of the ‘stim’ and bailouts that was not borrowed or counterfeited by the Fed once belonged to individual Americans. Thus, a tax cut for high-income earners, who also pay most of the taxes, is tantamount to a return of stolen goods.
With a tax cut, the plundering class simply agrees to pilfer less. The notion that you must ‘pay for tax cuts’… is akin to a burglar promising to return the television he stole just as soon as he is in a better financial position.”
Observe the technique used by the detritus of humanity, the TSA agents, in performing a breast examination. The predatory bitch will circle her victim’s breast, cleaving closely to its contours. The female attack dog will then pass a grubby paw between the woman’s cleavage. Sometimes the neckline above the shameless assailant’s fondling fingers is youthful and firm; other times it’s sagging and old. At all times this specter is pathetic.
We are a country of subjects and sovereigns.
On its website, the Transportation Security Administration ought to provide a technical, detailed, clinical description of the procedure so that a citizen may see in writing the ritual one of these Stasi agents are to perform on his person.
UPDATED I: SPREADING THE FILTH. WND: “Martha Donahue in a commentary at Resistnet said she’d spent 30 years in the medical industry.
‘For those of you who fly and opt for the ‘pat down,’ you need to demand the TSA thugs change their gloves. I’ve been watching on the news how they operate. People are being searched [with] dirty gloves … gloves that have been in crotches, armpits, touching people who may be ill, people who pick their noses. Do you want those gloves touching you?'”
UPDATE II: SOVEREIGNS ARE EXEMPT. And Boehner Of Orange is no exception. Not a murmur about TSA terrorism have your representatives, new and old guard (other than Ron Paul), uttered. Understandably. TSA sexual assaults are not a pressing matter when you are exempt therefrom. According to the New York Times, “any member of Congress or administration official with a security detail is allowed to bypass security. … The appropriate security procedures for all Congressional leaders, including Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid [and Boehner] are determined by the Capitol Police working with the Transportation Security Administration.”
UPDATE III (Nov. 24): When all argued for the rights of pilots and flight attendants to go to work without TSA abuse, I warned against interest-group, government-granted rights. How likely are you to get back some of your Fourth Amendment natural rights now that the sectional interests are satisfied with their deal? Strive for chaos. The more the homeland security cauldron bubbles over, the better. You want the thing to implode. Signs that travelers are settling into a status quo ought to trouble you.
The AP: “Cabinet secretaries, top congressional leaders and an exclusive group of senior U.S. officials are exempt from toughened new airport screening procedures when they fly commercially with government-approved federal security details.”
“Aviation security officials would not name those who can skip the controversial screening, but other officials said those VIPs range from top officials like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and FBI Director Robert Mueller to congressional leaders like incoming House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. …”
The heightened new security procedures by the Transportation Security Administration, which involve either a scan by a full-body detector or an intimate personal pat-down, have spurred passenger outrage in the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday airport crush.
On Friday, the TSA exempted pilots from the new procedures; flight attendants received the same privilege on Tuesday, TSA spokesman Nicholas Kimball confirmed. Both groups must show photo ID and go through metal detectors. If that sets off an alarm, they may still get a pat-down in some cases, he said. The rules apply to pilots and flight attendants in uniform when they’re traveling.
While passengers have no choice but to submit to either the detector or what some complain is an intrusive pat-down, some senior government officials can opt out if they fly accompanied by government security guards approved by the TSA.
UPDATE IV: CONTRA CNN. Judging from the reports by the females of CNN (those cringe making goody-goodies), and even from FoxNews’ pin-up Megyn Kelly, the planned, Thanksgiving protests against the TSA fizzled; didn’t happen.
Not if you read DRUDGE. Here are some of the headlines, accompanied as they are by an image of at least one heroic passenger, stripped to the waist, sporting a “Screw Big Sis” on his bare back.
OPT-OUT…
POLL: 61% oppose new airport security measures…
Prosthetics Become Source of Shame at Airport Screenings…
Scanner Uproar Shadows Holiday Travel…
AAA Expects Record Traffic on Highways…
30-Mile Backup on Mass Turnpike…
VIDEO: TSA Speedo Protester…
VIDEO: Woman wears bikini to LAX…
Woman: Agents Singled Me Out For My Breasts…
Fliers Claim TSA Has Deactivated Body Scanners…
UPDATE V: In a supercilious op-ed, an ex-CIA agent by the name of Mike Baker, a fixture on FoxNew, demands: “America, Let’s Give the Drama and Hysteria a Rest.” But not before describing with relish how a “TSA dude named Frank got to third base” with him.
A manifestly malevolent stranger gropes, feels, and frightens this reporter’s small little girl. And the attack bitch does not let up; she persists in the futile exercise. The little girl has the healthier attitude. She screams bloody murder and doesn’t stop, even as her mother tries to subdue her. I would not subdue her.
Why doesn’t an infantile American people listen to the sounds coming out of the mouths of babes?
I will not be flying anytime soon. I urge you all to do the same.
Good-to-be-groped: This is the Tribune reporter’s impetus; help parents turn their kids into malleable little sheep.
I see that the newspaper has blocked the shocking YouTube in which Mandy, its reporter’s daughter, is frisked, groped, pawed by a TSA agent who only gets more aroused and adamant with each yelp from the tiny terrorist.
All Big Daddy aims at is to help make groping a game. Perhaps Myron, who was kind enough to send the clip, can locate the transcript of the actual newspaper report.
UPDATE I: Some state politicians are tabling objections. This via New Jersey’s Back Room:
State Sen. Diane Allen (R-Edgewater Park), state Sen. Michael Doherty (R-Washington Twp.) and other legislators will join Deborah Jacobs, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, at the Statehouse on Monday to discuss their opposition to the new Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) screening procedures at United States’ airports and the nationwide reports of passenger abuse.
Doherty, Allen, and Assemblywoman Valerie Vainieri Huttle, Assemblywoman Alison McHose, Assemblyman John DiMaio and Assemblyman Erik Peterson will announce the introduction of a resolution urging Congress to immediately review the new TSA screening procedures and the reports of passenger abuse occurring at airports.
The problem I foresee is with backroom deals, whereby the bastards develop a certain system of what I call sectional privileges and rights, based on professional need and proximity to power. That’s the problem. The new Tea Party pols have been silent so far. Or, as far as I know.
UPDATE II (Nov. 16) JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS. After a day of radiating and rogering innocent men and women, One TSA agent urged WND, “to remind people that the policies come from Washington, including … President Obama. The individual agents, including Christians, the agent said, are as helpless and upset as the passengers.”
“‘Over the years TSA has certainly become more invasive in its SOP procedures. First the changes regarding liquid carry-ons, and now the implementation of Standard Pat-Downs along with the roll out of Advanced Imaging Technology. As each and every change has been handed-down and implemented I would cringe anticipating an understandable negative reaction from the general public (not to mention myself),’ the agent said.”
“‘Attack the system,’ the agent asked. ‘Out the misguided bureaucrats … but spare our Christian brothers.'”
[SNIP]
Where have we heard the “I was just following orders” excuse? Damn this brother to hell. If he were a true Christian he’d quit his cushy job rather than abuse other human beings.
UPDATE III: PENILE PAT-DOWN. That was the lot of radio host Owen JJ Stone of “The Alex Jones Show.” “Stone [noted] how the TSA thug directly patted down his testicles, penis and backside while his hand was inside Stone’s pants. Stone was initially embarrassed to reveal the full scope of the groping but related the details of what amounted to nothing less than outright sexual molestation.”
As the lede in “Congress: Call Off Your TSA Attack Dogs!” details, I was touched inappropriately. The “touching” caught me by surprise because my molester did not utter a murmur, just did her thing. What’s more, I did not know that these proceedings had been put in place. As a news person, I would have known had they been widely reported at the time. I didn’t because they were not.
I don’t intend to fly. That piece of dreck Janet Napolitano says that the traveler who doesn’t submit should seek alternative means of traveling. Does the deranged dodo not know that people fly for business and work-related purposes? How are you supposed to get to DC from, for instance, where I live? Embark on a two week train odyssey? She’s messing with livelihoods.
Predictably, some statists on Fox News such as Bill O’Reilly and his blond Squad don’t seem particularly perturbed.
Did you know that the nation’s airports are not required to have Transportation Security Administration screeners checking passengers at security checkpoints? The 2001 law creating the TSA gave airports the right to opt out of the TSA program in favor of private screeners after a two-year period. Now, with the TSA engulfed in controversy and hated by millions of weary and sometimes humiliated travelers, Rep. John Mica, the Republican who will soon be chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, is reminding airports that they have a choice.
There is no substitute for intelligence (as in IQ). The Examiner again:
many security experts have urged TSA to adopt techniques, used with great success by the Israeli airline El Al, in which passengers are observed, profiled, and most importantly, questioned before boarding planes. So TSA created a program known as SPOT — Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques. It began hiring what it called behavior detection officers, who would be trained to notice passengers who acted suspiciously. TSA now employs about 3,000 behavior detection officers, stationed at about 160 airports across the country.
The problem is, they’re doing it all wrong. A recent Government Accountability Office study found that TSA “deployed SPOT nationwide without first validating the scientific basis for identifying suspicious passengers in an airport environment.” They haven’t settled on the standards needed to stop bad actors.
“It’s not an Israeli model, it’s a TSA, screwed-up model,” says Mica. …
