Category Archives: Private Property

State-Controlled Airport Security In The West Hires For Terrorism

Affirmative Action, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Private Property, Terrorism, The State

Donald Trump has a point when he emphasizes that the doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 had taken off (on Thursday May 19) from the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. All roads these days lead to the Dar al-Islam of France or Belgium and to government controlled airports where hiring is in accordance with a preferential spoils system based on race and gender. (And if you’re a black Muslim woman, wearing a nose bag, you’re perfect for the job.)

The Center for Security Policy seems focused on Paris, too:

While Egyptair Flight MS804 made six stops prior to the disaster, authorities in France are questioning workers at its last stop, Charles De Gaulle Airport, a reflection of growing concerns about the safety of air travel thanks to suspected penetration of sensitive airport sites by employees sympathetic to jihad.

Last December, following the Paris attacks Augustin de Romanet, head of the Paris Aeroport Authority, noted that 4,000 employees had their lockers searched, and 70 of them lost their red cards and were terminated over terrorism concerns. Red cards granted airport employees access to restricted parts of the airport including access to the plane. Last October, six IS sympathizers working as baggage handlers at Sharm el-Sheikh Airport in Cairo, allegedly developed the explosives used to destroy Russian Metrojet 9268.

On March 22, 2016, IS members attacked the Brussels-Zaventem Airport in Brussels killing 32 people. Two of the suicide bombers Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Lachraoui had worked at the airport as a custodians. The Daily Mail reported that Brussels-Zaventem airport had 50 jihadist sympathizers among their employees.

U.S. airports have also seen breaches. In 2015, multiple reports displayed security concerns at U.S. airports including hundreds of employee security badges from Hartfield and Dallas-Fort Worth airports went missing. In addition, reports found 73 TSA workers in U.S. airports were found to have already been placed on the terror watch list, yet did not have their access to sensitive areas terminated.

As for our Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security, not for nothing have the news nitworks stopped interviewing Israeli experts. This from “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism)”:

In the words of a horrified Israeli aviation security expert, speaking to a Fox News crew: “You cannot allow the security personnel to see, and show the entire world, images of naked bodies of women and men!” Amid ongoing American insanity, this laconic Israeli, Isaac Yeffet, has been making the rounds on CNN, PBS, Fox News—has been doing so for a decade, at least. Yeffet is a former member of the Israeli Secret Service, and was once in charge of security for El Al. Almost a year has past since Fox News probed him for his opinion about the “full body scanners.” Nearly ten years have gone by since the man testified before an equally idiotic Congress.

No other western country is a bigger target for terrorists than Israel. Yet no other nation runs a better (largely privatized), less invasive, smarter, security system, whose able agents simply talk to travelers. These profilers understand that 99.9 percent of fliers are “bona fide” (Yeffet’s favored bon mot). “Shoes aren’t removed, passengers aren’t body scanned, and there are no pat downs,” confirms the New York Times. A “hand search” is seldom conducted, and only with probable cause.

Fox News wanted tough answers; Yeffet gave them smart ones. In countless news interviews over the years, Yeffet has implied that there is no substitute for intelligence—intelligence as in smarts; as in that dreaded G Factor. (No, Cosmo Magazine readers, that’s not the same as the G Spot.)

In a few, well-chosen words, Yeffet has suggested that the thousands hired by the TSA are riffraff. “What we should do is to stop using a low level of people.” And, “Unqualified and untrained people, undedicated people are running the security in our country.” “We need to hire people that, at minimum, have graduated from high school; speak English, are U.S. citizens.” (PBS’s NewsHour, 2002.) “Technology can help the qualified, well-trained human-being but cannot replace him. … We must look at the qualifications of the candidate for security jobs. He must be educated. He must speak two languages.” (CNN.)

Does Pidgin English qualify as a second language?

Yeffet’s are valiant but vain efforts to warn America that homegrown retardation is by far its most pressing problem. Alas, in addition to the perverse incentives that power all state bureaucracies, in general, government departments are staffed in accordance with a spoils system based on race and gender, and not on intelligence.

TSA , VA, ObamaCare, SandersCare; Gov.Com: Economically They’re The Same

Economy, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Political Economy, Private Property, The State

To the economically literate: It’s your obligation to know by now—especially if you read this space—that nothing the head of the Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security can say or do will change the fact of “long waits at the nation’s airports” this summer and any other peak travel time.

Lines—overload, undersupply, malfunction—are a function of a government system, whose incentives were explained in “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work,” and elsewhere:

Since it “manages” money not its own, government has no real incentive to conserve resources, ensure a job is properly done, or deliver on its promises. Entrusted with the administration of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of people you don’t know and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your on-the-job performance mirrors that of the government? …

… A monopolist, moreover, doesn’t have to please consumers, because he has them cornered. Therefore, in a politburo, political decisions trounce considerations that would win out in the market place. Consider: HealthCare.gov was coded with the goal of harvesting sensitive information from applicants while concealing rip-off prices from them. Why would the Central Planning Board (aka the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in charge of Obamcare) care that such coding has created a hacker’s dream, when their wet dream is to share data culled through HealthCare.gov with the IRS, the DHS, the TSA, on and on?

Like the communist elite, the Congress elite seldom subjects itself to the same health care or the same laws as the people. Unsurprisingly—and by legislative sleight of hand—lawmakers have used their privileged positions to pass laws exempting themselves and their lackeys from liability. “Governmental immunity” is designed to “stop people from suing the government and government employees and officials in many cases.”

With taxpayers ponying up for any … slip … and responsibility collectivized—fear of being fired or penalized is non-existent among the ruling class. Government failure will never see the closing of a government agency, or the firing of nasty, inefficient, over-paid, affirmatively appointed official.

I hope you are able to generalize from healthcare.gov to TSA.gov, to VA.gov and beyond.

Economically, the incentive structure is the same in the TSA , ObamaCare, SandersCare, Gov.Com.

The nationalization of airports by BUSH II was first explored in “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?” (June 5, 2002). Read it. Teach it.

Private Property Solves THE POTTY Problem

Gender, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, libertarianism, Private Property

First, one would hope that even creepy Ted Cruz would, like Donald Trump, open his home to Caitlyn Jenner, “reality-TV star and gold-medal-winning Olympian who competed as Bruce Jenner.”

Trump was right to rely on libertarian sensibilities when he said, on “The Today Show,” that in his Trump Tower, “Caitlyn Jenner would be free to use any bathroom she wanted.”

Trump Tower belongs to Trump.

Of course, the North Carolina bathroom law, that “bans people from using bathrooms that don’t match the sex indicated on their birth certificate,” demonstrates why government should not own any property and should certainly not have a say as to how private property is managed.

It ought to be up to private property proprietors to decide what kind of bathrooms they wish to offer at their establishments.

Myself, I’d avoid establishments that don’t offer strict, separate, “ladies” and “gents” loos. I don’t think it’s safe. Women-only bathrooms have worked quite well for women. You never have to think, “It’s late at night, I hope there’s no scary or creepy looking man in there and I am not allowed to carry.”

Scenes from “Dressed To Kill”:

On A New Trick From The Feds’ Funny-Money Bag of Tricks

Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, Private Property

Its old tricks are bad enough, but when an wrecking-ball like the Federal Reserve Bank tries something “new,” there’s even more reason to be afraid:

“T]here is something new [and ominous] in the present [quantitative easing] cycle,” warns Murphy, Robert P. Murphy, in the latest Mises Institute “Austrian.”

“The Fed is trying to raise rates while simultaneously maintaining its bloated balance sheet. It is attempting to pull off a magic trick whereby it can keep all of the ‘benefits’ of its earlier rounds of monetary expansion (i.e., “quantitative easing” or “QE”) while removing the artificial stimulus of ultra-low interest rates. …”

“Raising interest rates without selling assets,” gives us “the worst of both worlds.

We still get the economic effects of “tighter monetary policy,” because the price of credit is rising as it would in a normal Fed tightening. Yet we don’t get the benefit of a smaller Fed
footprint and a return of assets to the private sector. Instead, the US taxpayer is ultimately paying subsidies to lending institutions to induce them to charge more for loans, while the big banks and Treasury still benefit from the effective bailout they’ve been getting for years. …

Important reading: “The Fed Can’t Save Us” by Robert P. Murphy.