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Metal detectors in schools, amusement parks, and courthouses had zero to do with foreign terrorists. It's all about punks, gangs, and run-of-the mill crazy people. All of those places had metal detectors and armed safety officers in place long before 9-11. I was called for jury duty in 1999 and had to go through a metal detector to enter the courthouse. I can remember concerts requiring metal detectors in the mid-90's. Six Flags in NJ had metal detectors by 1996 or so.
I'm not saying that these increases in security have anything to do with foreign terrorism but it shows that foreign terrorists aren't "winning" because we have increased our security measures in response to things that have happened or could happen. As you have pointed out, we have been doing this in many arenas way before 9/11 so for people to think that terrorists have won is absurd.
Both your posts act as though all this airport security is nothing more than a minor inconvenience. This ignores the economic waste involved.
My biggest beef with it is the cost and resources being expended because 14 years ago, 9/11 occurred. I don't advocate no security at all in airports. However, the current system we have has cost us about $120 billion over that 14 year period. A sum of $120 billion could educate many children, build new roads and bridges, make a small dent in the national debt, provide health care for hundreds of thousands of people, or simply be refunded to taxpayers.
The inconvenience to individuals is a small part of the problem. This is what I wish you would address. I also wish you could be more precise other than just making a general statement that any expense is justified to protect our security. I could use that argument to try and justify spending the entire federal budget to build a twenty foot fence around the USA. We had a security system in place before 9/11 that was paid for by the airlines. It was less secure, but was not paid for by the taxpayer. That's what we need. A cheaper system, downscaled from what we now have.
Well, rather than taking away the expenditures on TSA and Border Control right now, maybe we could cut out tons of fat in the incompetents that work at the IRS. Just a start. Then do the same in every other government office at every level of government.
Due to the currrent status of outside influences that are beyond our control, (meaning USA), the need for expenditures which you want to cut, would not be a wise move. Let down your guard and the enemy will defeat you. We build a fence, they dig a tunnel. We stop scrutiny of who comes and goes and what comes and goes & the enemy builds a stong-hold.
On a final note, you have absolutely no idea how many threats to this country have been stopped because of our investment in security. You only think about the ones that manage to hit the news. That isn't even 1% of what is real. If you take note, have we had another 9/11? No...Why do you think that is? It certainly isn't because they haven't tried....we've had the shoe bomber, the underware bomber, and other foiled plots. Most of the "successful" plots have been people who "slipped into the system", acted like they put down roots here, and then took revenge on their "new" country.
So, no thanks. I will deal with the inconveniences that have become part of life here so that I can continue to travel lots, get on a plane, go to theme parks, tourist destinations, and other....and not really give it a second thought. And no, I don't feel like the terrorists have won. I am glad my country takes our security seriously and makes it a priority.
Freedom isn't free. Never has been. Never will be.
"As the 9-11 commission reported in 2004, all of the 9-11 terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North America. They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued by the United States government and no 9-11 terrorists came from Canada."
Well, rather than taking away the expenditures on TSA and Border Control right now, maybe we could cut out tons of fat in the incompetents that work at the IRS. Just a start. Then do the same in every other government office at every level of government.
Undoubtedly, there is much waste in government and I would love to eliminate it. Cutting jobs at the IRS though doesn't sound particularly brilliant. Fewer IRS employees translates into smaller tax collections. This translates into less revenue to fund essential government operations. This translates into a wholesale elimination of programs. It sort of sounds to me like you want to keep TSA and Defense and get rid of everything else. If that is true, I could never see eye-to-eye with you. Many people don't understand that about 75% of the federal government budget is social security, medicare, medicaid, defense and interest on the national debt. In my world, keeping social security and medicare is more important than the additional security that TSA provides to airline passengers.
Quote:
Due to the currrent status of outside influences that are beyond our control, (meaning USA), the need for expenditures which you want to cut, would not be a wise move. Let down your guard and the enemy will defeat you. We build a fence, they dig a tunnel. We stop scrutiny of who comes and goes and what comes and goes & the enemy builds a stong-hold.
I worry about ISIS too. However, I hear too many broad, general arguments about all the threats we constantly face from abroad. There's always something isn't there? The Nazis in World War II. The Russians after World War II. Al Quaeda. ISIS. Sometimes, I think the military-industrial-complex helps invent these threats because its good for business. That's undoubtedly a simplification and I'm not a "tinfoil hat conspiracy nut". I am unwilling though to give DHS and DOD blank checks while we starve every other program in this country that helps the elderly, the sick, and the needy.
Quote:
On a final note, you have absolutely no idea how many threats to this country have been stopped because of our investment in security. You only think about the ones that manage to hit the news. That isn't even 1% of what is real. If you take note, have we had another 9/11? No...Why do you think that is? It certainly isn't because they haven't tried....we've had the shoe bomber, the underware bomber, and other foiled plots. Most of the "successful" plots have been people who "slipped into the system", acted like they put down roots here, and then took revenge on their "new" country.
I don't huh? Well make a list for me. Than divide that number of threats by the $120 billion we've spent just on TSA in the last 14 years. Than let the rest of us here decide if that was a good investment or not. If you come up with six incidents that means we stopped six threats at the cost of $20 billion a piece.
S
Quote:
o, no thanks. I will deal with the inconveniences that have become part of life here so that I can continue to travel lots, get on a plane, go to theme parks, tourist destinations, and other....and not really give it a second thought. And no, I don't feel like the terrorists have won. I am glad my country takes our security seriously and makes it a priority.
What you are failing to do is engage in logical reasoning. First of all, the freedom you believe you have from terrorism and threats of terrorism is illusory. The system we have is not perfect and even if we doubled DHS expenditures, it still wouldn't be foolproof. The real questions are these:
1. What amount can we afford to spend on anti-terrorism prevention?
2. How can we best do this without sacrificing our civil liberties?
3. How can we prevent terrorism without dramatically altering our own lifestyles?
4. What exactly are we getting in return for each dollar we spend on DHS or TSA?
Second, what I attempt to do that you and many others are unable to do is try to engage in a genuine benefit vs. cost analysis. I ask myself what amount have we spent on anti-terrorism prevention? The $120 billion dollar figure I keep quoting is a small amount of the total expenditures this country has made to prevent incidents like 9/11. DHS spends money on all kinds of things. Virtually every federal building and installation in this country now is built so that it cannot be attacked by car bombs or truck bombs. Dams and special sites have security details assigned to them. I took a tour of Hoover Dam not many years ago and was restricted from areas they used to allow tourists to access. Some argue that the $2 trillion spent on the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars are anti-terrorism expenditures. If we divide just the amount of $120 billion by the 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attack, the cost of every one of those lives was about $4 million dollars. I have news for you. We don't even spend $400,000 per life to prevent the 30,000 plus people who die every year in car accidents from being killed. We spend less than that to prevent deaths at factories and the places where most of us work.
In short, the amount we spend to prevent deaths from terrorism is way out of proportion to what we spend to prevent deaths from any other cause at all. The only explanation for it is that politicians have successfully exploited the fear and hysteria that resulted from 9/11 and used it to justify funding for all sorts of things.
Third, money is fungible. If it wasn't spent on all this anti-terrorism stuff than imagine what it could be used for. We could have the best roads, bridges, and transportation system in the world. We could still have a real space program. We could shore up social security and medicare. We could medical care for lots of lower-income kids that are not covered by medicaid or private health insurance. We could give the taxpayers a rebate or a tax cut that would result in more spending in the private sector that would create jobs. What so many seem unable to figure out is that you make trade-offs in life. Spending on one thing prevents you from spending on something else. The opportunity cost of spending all this money on these alleged national security needs costs us elsewhere and it costs us in a big way.
Quote:
Freedom isn't free. Never has been. Never will be.
I suggest some time you check out a book from the library. Its a book by Paul Kennedy called "The Rise and Fall of Great Nations". The point Kennedy makes is that every great nation that has been surpassed by other nations in an economic and military sense is largely because that nation and its citizens cannot continue to bear the burden of what it perceives as national security needs while other nations choose to not make similar expenditures. Its a very sobering book. I see America well along that path. Ultimately, those nations come to realize that "national security" is something greater than simply having a military and intelligence services. It includes having a healthy and well-provided for citizenry.
TSA pre-check, yeah that's the key! I think Delta assigned me automatically as a frequent flyer, it just appears on my boarding pass. It really helps. No shoes off, etc. Not all airports have it however.
This is true and unfortunate, that not all airports have it. Most of the big ones do though.
What's worse is that airlines are not forced to participate; Frontier, for example, refuses because they don't want to pay the fees. Thus why I refuse to take them regardless of price. Given how much private information about a person is collected when you sign up for NEXUS or Global Entry or SENTRI, I feel that Pre Check should be a requirement, even if the airlines don't choose to do random selection.
The only negative to the Trusted Traveler program is the scarcity of locations you can go to get and renew. In my case for NEXUS, I had to go all the way up to Blaine, WA - NOT a short drive. And I actually had to go twice because of a scheduling issue. I think they've started setting up shops in each airport, which helps somewhat.
Quote:
Originally Posted by annerk
Pre-Check was a good idea until they began randomly assigning people to use it. When it was pretty much offered only to very frequent flyers who met specific criteria and couldn't be "bought" into, it was a good idea. Those are the passengers who present the least risk. They are regular flyers on regular routes paying with a credit card and in many cases have been doing so for 5-10-20 years.
Now that they assign it randomly to any and everyone, it's ridiculous.
I'm ok with the random assignments, for three reasons.
Most of the random selects are older or disabled flyers where they've had the same address or flown the same airline for years to the same destinations. They're low risk.
Some people assume that Pre Check is for super rich people. Random selection helps debunk that assumption. I paid a grand total of $50 to be allowed to take that line on unlimited flights for 5 years. Not bad.
If there are 5,000 passengers going through the checkpoints in a given time span and they randomly pull 10% to go through PreCheck in addition to the maybe 5% that already are, it helps manage the other lanes just a bit. Especially if the random selects are, as noted, otherwise trustworthy travelers.
In any event the complaints about security are simply because people refuse to do the alternative that would negate those complaints almost entirely. Metal joints and things that set off metal detectors - to me that's moot, metal detectors were there before 9-11, nothing's changed.
At some airports they actually yell at you for taking too long. How it should be.
TSA checkpoint hasn't taken me more than 5 minutes since I signed up.
That's good to hear. I thought about signing up for pre-screen but I, though I travel more than most, I don't travel enough to justify the expense. Also, I've seen pre-screen be abused by overworked TSA agents under pressure to clear crowds quickly. Specifically, I've seen pre-screen lines (maybe I'm mixing up pre-screen with another program) be converted into regular lines to "speed things along" in cities like New Orleans. If I paid for the privilege of expedited proceedings and had to deal with that, I know I'd be pissed.
That's good to hear. I thought about signing up for pre-screen but I, though I travel more than most, I don't travel enough to justify the expense. Also, I've seen pre-screen be abused by overworked TSA agents under pressure to clear crowds quickly. Specifically, I've seen pre-screen lines (maybe I'm mixing up pre-screen with another program) be converted into regular lines to "speed things along" in cities like New Orleans. If I paid for the privilege of expedited proceedings and had to deal with that, I know I'd be pissed.
If you have a travel rewards credit card you may want to check if they will reimburse your application fee as one of your benefits
Undoubtedly, there is much waste in government and I would love to eliminate it. Cutting jobs at the IRS though doesn't sound particularly brilliant. Fewer IRS employees translates into smaller tax collections. This translates into less revenue to fund essential government operations. This translates into a wholesale elimination of programs. It sort of sounds to me like you want to keep TSA and Defense and get rid of everything else. If that is true, I could never see eye-to-eye with you. Many people don't understand that about 75% of the federal government budget is social security, medicare, medicaid, defense and interest on the national debt. In my world, keeping social security and medicare is more important than the additional security that TSA provides to airline passengers.
I worry about ISIS too. However, I hear too many broad, general arguments about all the threats we constantly face from abroad. There's always something isn't there? The Nazis in World War II. The Russians after World War II. Al Quaeda. ISIS. Sometimes, I think the military-industrial-complex helps invent these threats because its good for business. That's undoubtedly a simplification and I'm not a "tinfoil hat conspiracy nut". I am unwilling though to give DHS and DOD blank checks while we starve every other program in this country that helps the elderly, the sick, and the needy.
I don't huh? Well make a list for me. Than divide that number of threats by the $120 billion we've spent just on TSA in the last 14 years. Than let the rest of us here decide if that was a good investment or not. If you come up with six incidents that means we stopped six threats at the cost of $20 billion a piece.
S
What you are failing to do is engage in logical reasoning. First of all, the freedom you believe you have from terrorism and threats of terrorism is illusory. The system we have is not perfect and even if we doubled DHS expenditures, it still wouldn't be foolproof. The real questions are these:
1. What amount can we afford to spend on anti-terrorism prevention?
2. How can we best do this without sacrificing our civil liberties?
3. How can we prevent terrorism without dramatically altering our own lifestyles?
4. What exactly are we getting in return for each dollar we spend on DHS or TSA?
Second, what I attempt to do that you and many others are unable to do is try to engage in a genuine benefit vs. cost analysis. I ask myself what amount have we spent on anti-terrorism prevention? The $120 billion dollar figure I keep quoting is a small amount of the total expenditures this country has made to prevent incidents like 9/11. DHS spends money on all kinds of things. Virtually every federal building and installation in this country now is built so that it cannot be attacked by car bombs or truck bombs. Dams and special sites have security details assigned to them. I took a tour of Hoover Dam not many years ago and was restricted from areas they used to allow tourists to access. Some argue that the $2 trillion spent on the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars are anti-terrorism expenditures. If we divide just the amount of $120 billion by the 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attack, the cost of every one of those lives was about $4 million dollars. I have news for you. We don't even spend $400,000 per life to prevent the 30,000 plus people who die every year in car accidents from being killed. We spend less than that to prevent deaths at factories and the places where most of us work.
In short, the amount we spend to prevent deaths from terrorism is way out of proportion to what we spend to prevent deaths from any other cause at all. The only explanation for it is that politicians have successfully exploited the fear and hysteria that resulted from 9/11 and used it to justify funding for all sorts of things.
Third, money is fungible. If it wasn't spent on all this anti-terrorism stuff than imagine what it could be used for. We could have the best roads, bridges, and transportation system in the world. We could still have a real space program. We could shore up social security and medicare. We could medical care for lots of lower-income kids that are not covered by medicaid or private health insurance. We could give the taxpayers a rebate or a tax cut that would result in more spending in the private sector that would create jobs. What so many seem unable to figure out is that you make trade-offs in life. Spending on one thing prevents you from spending on something else. The opportunity cost of spending all this money on these alleged national security needs costs us elsewhere and it costs us in a big way.
I suggest some time you check out a book from the library. Its a book by Paul Kennedy called "The Rise and Fall of Great Nations". The point Kennedy makes is that every great nation that has been surpassed by other nations in an economic and military sense is largely because that nation and its citizens cannot continue to bear the burden of what it perceives as national security needs while other nations choose to not make similar expenditures. Its a very sobering book. I see America well along that path. Ultimately, those nations come to realize that "national security" is something greater than simply having a military and intelligence services. It includes having a healthy and well-provided for citizenry.
Ok.....I assume by your rant that you are an expert in everything and that you are somewhat radicalized with no room in your head to ponder suggestions or ideas which don't agree with your own. I gave my opinion--period. You just want to crap on every bit of what I said....not to mention say that I said things that I did not. Don't even go there....I have no desire to debate every single issue with you. Nor do I care if we EVER see eye to eye. You are no one to me. Even if you were, I am still entitled to my opinion. Honestly, I quit reading all of your ranting to me after the third paragraph when I realized that apparently you don't think we have even had 6 threats to our security in the last 14 years. OMG OMG OMG Just curious if you know the $$$$$ amount that 9/11 cost us? Well over $20 billion--but I'm just guessing--not bothering to research it. I'll leave that up to you--the expert.
BTW-I've worked in healthcare and wellness for many years.
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