Disenfranchised Citizen

Oversight? What...why?

Really? No foolin?

“While the stimulus bill was being debated in Congress in 2009, numerous companies lobbied for environmental exemptions, but their efforts were ultimately rebuffed by environmental advocates.

But while companies may have failed to pressure Congress into issuing legislative exemptions from environmental oversight, federal agencies granted exemptions to 96 percent of stimulus projects so far, according to documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.

The energy companies BP, Westar Energy and Duke Energy, chemical manufacturer DuPont, and ethanol maker Didion Milling were among the companies to receive “categorical exclusions” from the National Environmental Policy Act.”

Yeah, the environment, we’re really taking it seriously.

96% of stimulus projects exempted, including British Petroleum’s from environmental oversight, because if there’s one thing we’ve al learned, BP can handle their own business. Even if these exemptions were given to this company before their oil spill, didn’t the White House ever hear of Texas City, or how about Prudhoe Bay?

Read the article:

BP among companies Obama excluded from US environmental oversight

Have a nice day.

National Security's newest enemy, keep a look out...

For anyone not following the story, Wikileaks has begun to publish more than 250,000 secret State Department documents on its website, in one of the largest leaks of classified information in history. Previous to their release, the documents were shown to the New York Times, the Guardian, El Pais, Le Monde and Der Spiegel and several weeks ago, they were also shown to the US government who were given opportunity to help edit and comment. The US government declined, and the White House responded, “To be clear — such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government.”

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, commented on this refusal in a letter to the State Department “I understand that the United States government would prefer not to have the information that will be published in the public domain and is not in favor of openness…that said, either there is a risk or there is not…you have chosen to respond in a manner which leads me to conclude that the supposed risks are entirely fanciful and you are instead concerned to suppress evidence of human rights abuse and other criminal behavior.”

In publishing the documents, The New York Times wrote, “The question of dealing with classified information is rarely easy, and never to be taken lightly. Editors try to balance the value of the material to public understanding against potential dangers to the national interest…The Times has taken care to exclude, in its articles and in supplementary material, in print and online, information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security. The Times’s redactions were shared with other news organizations and communicated to WikiLeaks, in the hope that they would similarly edit the documents they planned to post online.”

So, what do the documents say?

A number of things, but to explore this would not be what is most on my mind this morning, so feel free to check it out yourself:

Wikileaks US Embassy Cables: New Documents Released – HuffingtonPost

State’s Secrets – New York Times

The US Embassy Cables – Guardian

What is on my mind this morning is the US governments desire to have things both ways, oftentimes at the expense of its citizens in the name of “National Security,”  and how Wikileaks release of the cables effectively does what an American citizen is unable to do, shine a light on a government that seems to no longer feel it is accountable for its actions.

Since 9-11, government abuse of privacy and civil rights in our country has sped up to an alarming degree. Illegal wiretapping, infiltration and monitoring of activist groups including the prior arrests of citizens in New York and Denver before national political conventions, the government monitors the internet, shuts down websites without court order…etc, all in the name of business and National Security. We have our citizens being spied on, inadvertently put on no-fly lists, intrusively screened and patted down at airports, being told they can’t get within shouting distance of politicians and in many other ways restricted, all with little to no recourse at all.

Wars are begun in Afghanistan and Iraq. People are illegally extradited. Large financial institutions are bailed out with our money while the same financial institutions illegally foreclose on our homes, in process making even more money while the government does nothing to stop it. In the Gulf of Mexico there is an alarming and growing health crisis as a result of chemical poisoning from the BP oil spill and the government simply pretends it isn’t happening. Katrina killed well over a thousand people and though everyone knew the levees had been suspect for years, the government did nothing about it and seemingly even less when they broke. We now have torture in this country, we are lied to every day and encouraged to feel afraid by politicians who dismissively speak the phrase, “It’s a new world,” and then justify all by telling us “we don’t understand the real dangers,” all while a complicit media agrees to being embedded with troops, accompanied by the National Guard in New Orleans, and in the Gulf told to get on board or get out.

And we as citizens have no recourse.

The Freedom of Information Act has been gutted, thus enabling the government to be even more secretive as to what it is doing, leaving any concerned American citizen in the dark, and time and time again we are told the same thing:

Its about our safety.

Its about National Security.

All of these arguments hold the same water these days as a parent telling a child to do or not do something, simply because the parent “told you so.” The American government has become so accustomed to manageable reaction, they now engage freely in these acts of lazy parenting where we are told our patriotic duty is not to question, but instead go shopping.

So Wikileaks comes along and does what none of us has been able to do, they shine a flashlight on the whole damn thing by exposing our unvarnished foreign policy goals, our comments about various leaders, our diplomats unfiltered opinions about the actions of our government, their successes, their failures and their embarrassments.

Already various members of Congress are calling for Wikileaks to be declared a terrorist operation as a result of this release because it is, of course, harmful to National Security.

Well, as an ignorant child, I would guess it is not my place to speculate but should I get too upset and decide to throw a tantrum in the aisles of Wal-Mart, I might so respond to these same politicians how they should hope no inside staffer gets a bug far enough up his ass that they go after their secrets and expose them to the country, because as a Guardian columnist writes about the Embassy Cable release: “Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing’s snake-oil salesmen claim. No organization can treat digitized communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms.”

And I’d also like to think, like any child growing up, eventually “because I said so,” will finally stop working and the parent must at last begin to explain their reasoning to every American citizen.

Have a nice day.

Nothing to see here but things making right...eyes forward...

Making things right.

Over the past seven months or so this has become the new slogan, British Petroleum’s brand new bumper sticker they wish to slap on every American’s forehead who is paying attention to the Gulf. The CEO says it. The underlings say it. The television throws it at you every chance it gets. But what does that even mean? And who gets to define the terms? Is British Petroleum trying to make things right for residents of the Gulf Coast or for the bottom line of public perception?

If I were chosen to define such a phrase, it would mean to make things as they were before you dumped 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, and admittedly this would be impossible. Can’t be done. Some things you can’t take back and by that I would include the eleven men who died on the oil platform, the men and women so overwhelmed with losses from this spill they committed suicide, those we know about and those we don’t. You’d have to include all the dead wildlife, the whales, sea turtles, the pelicans and all other birds who succumbed and the millions of fish of all species, all dead. For these examples, you can’t make things right, not entirely. I don’t care how much money you throw at those left behind. You can’t reunite dissolved families who succumbed to the pressure of this spill. You can’t fix the marriages, reverse physical illnesses or newly discovered mental health diagnosis. You can throw some money at it, but these things can’t be made to be as they were before.

Okay, so if British Petroleum is sincere about what they say, if this promise isn’t simple PR posturing, then what can they make right?

The amount of homes foreclosed on as a result of lost wages – none.

The amount of bankruptcies filed by people and businesses – none.

How many people should have lost income as a result – none.

How much money should be contributed by taxpayers to recoup lost wetlands, coated with oil – none.

How much lost revenue should the five states of the Gulf Coast have to contend with as a result of lost tourism, lost taxes on failed businesses, lower state taxes due to reduced incomes – none.

How many Gulf Coast residents should have their electricity shut off – none.

How many people should have to worry about their car being repo’d – none.

All the people getting sick, how many of them should pay a dime for any medical expenses – none.

How many people should want for mental health services, down to the dollar for any co-pay for any prescription – none.

How many people should have to delay retirement as a result of their finances getting screwed – none.

How many people should have to worry about their own hunger and/or their children – none.

To me, fixing all this would be a good start to making things right.

To me, if this isn’t what British Petroleum is trying to do then that PR slogan of theirs is simply that, another hollow, empty slogan meant to put the country at ease and distract them from the reality of what is really going on in the Gulf of Mexico and with its people in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Making things right.

So far, that phrase is merely a set of horse blinders put on the 45 other states, the same states British Petroleum is assembling into a horse team, reigned in and pulling some media relations consultant’s empty car down the road to the closest BP gas station.

Have a nice day.

Hello everybody…

Typically, I try not to make these things all that personal, usually covering up a lot of feelings with humor, dark cynicism, take a few jabs at politicians while emotionally stepping slightly outside of myself, a calculated distance learned from many years of social work that makes it easier to blunt the emotional impact of what I do for a living, but I don’t really feel like doing that today.

Today’s kind of different for me, sometimes it’s okay to let the guard slip a bit.

Today’s “Black Friday,” and I understand that if I were to head out into the early morning darkness, it would be likely I’d encounter a large number of people waiting in line outside various stores – get there early, get the best deals and all that. Good enough, I’ll cast no dispersions here because its not really any of my business, but I have to wonder how the people in the Gulf Coast feel about the term “Black Friday” this year. I imagine it would bring about certain associations they haven’t previously had to deal with, at least not so harshly, not so emotionally charged. Keeping that in mind, I have a few things I’d like to write down, put out there for anyone so interested:

Personally, I don’t know anyone who’s lost anything as a result of the British Petroleum oil spill.

Perhaps this might come as a surprise to people who’ve read this blog, perhaps not. Knowing this, one might be inclined to question why I might spend the time I spend doing this. It’s certainly a question I’ve asked myself and after much thought I’ve come up with a number of reasons – my love for the city of New Orleans, my disgust with injustice in this country, my job as a social worker and my resulting desire to try to help people (Chicken and egg argument to me, been doing it so long I don’t remember what came first anymore – the job or the desire?). I tend to hold a lot of anger, simply because I see a lot to be angry about and all these reasons, my reasons, are good enough for me but I think the most important reason, the one that typically wakes me at five am to sit at my computer is I do know what it is like to watch, seemingly powerless, as something so important to you is taken away.

This is what continues to happen in the Gulf, and this is what makes me very angry.

Everything changed for so many on April 20th, due to the errors, malfeasance, greed – what have you, of corporations operating in the Gulf of Mexico. And that is not a story of mistakes by a business just trying to get ahead, you know, engaged in the act of trying to do right, of trying to honestly bring needed product to market. It’s the story of greed, of domination, of wink wink nudge nudge with government regulators set up to ensure things like this don’t happen. It’s unromantic piracy of the worst sort, filled with half-truths, buried information and powerful people sitting in well decorated offices and mahogany boardrooms making insulated decisions with very little regard for the impact of their decisions beyond the bottom line and the company’s shareholders.

It’s simply, wrong.

In the offices of British Petroleum, Transocean and Halliburton, in the offices of the NOAA, the EPA, the FDA, the MMS, on the oil platforms, in the engineering departments, in the contractor’s offices and in all the state government buildings and even in the Oval Office, people will be sitting next week and some of them will be aware that they knew something. They made a decision, they changed a policy, they cut a corner because they were greedy, or busy, or they figured the next guy would catch it. They thought, that’s a problem for later, for next week, for after vacation…or that can’t be proved in court, I have deniability, I covered my ass, I decided it was necessary to look at the big picture.

And nobody really thought the current big picture in the Gulf of Mexico would be the result.

Nobody thought that for five states, “Black Friday” would take on a new meaning or carry with it new word associations.

But it has.

It does.

So to them, and more specifically to Mr. Bob Dudley, I know you have a corporation to run, but the decisions your company made ruined thousands of lives, have made thousands sick, destroyed places so beautiful and much of the wildlife that once thrived there. Everything’s gone legal now, positions are being chosen, strategies adopted and everything’s become precedent so you’re being careful…but as you run through the next few years of your life doing what it is you do, take a minute every now and again to think about, not “the people” because you’ve learned how easy it it to distance emotionally from a label or a group, but think of one person. That’s a bit more difficult, person is personalized, think of one person whose kids are hungry, who can’t pay her bills, who cries more than she used to, who is depressed, who has a sick husband, who is feeling overwhelmed by all the paperwork, the worries that she didn’t have before or are stronger now, and then realize there are thousands of this person. Realize your company had a big hand in doing this to all of these thousands of persons.

And then stop hiding behind your rhetoric, your boardroom walls, your feelings of legal responsibilities and liabilities, of what can be proven and what can’t, your newest commercials…

Or don’t.

Your choice.

Not much I can do about it personally, but keep writing and hope you know the spit in your face, some of it’s mine.

Enjoy your Black Friday, whatever it means to you.

And to the residents of the Gulf Coast and everyone affected, for whatever it’s worth, I wish you the best today and hope that it soon gets better for every person that’s suffering, right now.

You’re in my thoughts.

Have a nice day.

Sometimes  you need a break…

How To Destroy Angels – The Space In Between

The hidden subtext?

Obviously…       It’s really hard to find a song I like that has anything to do with the Thanksgiving Holiday.

In any case, enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving to all, especially… American Zombie, bayougirl, Cliff’s Crib, humid beings, Katy’s Exposure, Library Chronicles, Liprap’s Lament, moosedenied, NOLAFemmes, Pistolette, Slabbed, The Chicory, The Lens, Your Right Hand Thief

And last, but certainly not least, Editilla of the New Orleans Ladder

Have a great day all

Is it time yet?

Go Saints!

Oh, did I forget to mention that part?

In a recent article about the $20 billion dollar escrow account and claims process, Ken Feinberg estimated that after all is said and done, he will have paid out 6 billion of the BP Oil Spill trust fund, and he will then return the remaining $14 billion dollars to British Petroleum. These are surprising numbers, especially when you consider the amount of displeasure and suffering in the Gulf today. Second Harvest and Catholic Charities of Louisiana are reporting a 25% increase in demand, much of it attributable to the effects of BP’s spill, especially because most people in the country believe BP is taking care of this increase monetarily (the company is not) and it has resulted in fewer private donations.

The situation in the Gulf is getting worse, with Iray Nabatoff, director of the Community Center of St. Bernard, a Second Harvest partner reporting requests for food, clothing, assistance information and computer laboratory sessions continue to rise. “We’re seeing the ripple effects of the oil spill and the cessation of fishing activities right through the economy,” Nabatoff said. “I think we’re still on the ascending end of this. I wish I could report things are abating. On so many levels, it’s actually more of a struggle now.”

Again, these charities are not covered by the trust fund. These charities are on their own.

In light of this and several other developments, $14 billion dollars being returned to British Petroleum seems almost obscene.

Consider:

Over the past few months British Petroleum has been scaling back the amount of cleanup workers despite continuing reports of heavy oil washing up onshore, and the company also began cutting the pay rates to companies that contract with cleanup workers.

The ever increasing amount of bankruptcies occurring in the Gulf as a result of lost wages, lost businesses and lost lives as a result of this spill.

The amount of people in the Gulf Coast region who are getting sick and the number of people who have  been exposed to chemicals and will become sick in the future. If British petroleum doesn’t pay for their health care, after the individual is forced into bankruptcy by medical bills, the state and federal government will be the ones to do so, and what of the pain and suffering caused in the meantime?

As I wrote yesterday, there are numerous accusations being levied at Ken Feinberg that people are being underpaid in an attempt to steer them towards final payments. Feinberg denies this, but it doesn’t change the feeling of many residents on the Gulf Coast. They see 60,000 denials of payment, 147,000 under review, a lack of transparency in the claims process, no details given to explain how the amounts they received were calculated, all the claimants who feel they have little recourse, the changing rules, the pressure of forced decisions.

These feelings don’t come about when people consider a process fair.

And lest we forget, this spill has produced untold environmental impacts to the entire region which are years in the measuring, costwise.

August of 2013 is when the whole claims process is set to expire, when Feinberg states the last check will be sent from the fund. That may seem like a long time but it really isn’t, not in the big picture. This is only two and a half years and it would be my guess that in such a short time frame, some problems will only be really starting to show evidence: physical health, mental health, continued deterioration of fish stock and the environment.

In two and a half years, British petroleum gets the money back.

Okay, so consider this:

Two decades after the worst oil spill in U.S. history, huge quantities of oil still coat Alaska‘s shores with a toxic glaze, experts say. More than 21,000 gallons of crude oil remain of the 11 million gallons of crude oil that bled from the stranded tanker Exxon Valdez on the night of March 23, 1989.

The oil—which has been detected as far as 450 miles (724 kilometers) away from the spill site in Prince William Sound—continues to harm wildlife and the livelihoods of local people, according to conservation groups.

Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, who was on the ground at the Exxon Valdez disaster as Alaska’s commissioner of environmental conservation, remembers wading through knee-deep pools of bubbling, thick oil. The smell of the pure oil was intense and pungent, he said.

When he returned to the same beaches years later, he found “surprisingly fresh” oil just below the sand.

That’s twenty years later; two and a half years ain’t shit…but for BP, their escrow account disbursements will be over. As for the Gulf of Mexico and its residents, the trouble may still be in its infancy and at that time, as Feinberg estimates, British Petroleum will walk away from the Gulf with $14 billion dollars.

Have a nice day.

A serious man for serious times...vogue

All affected by the BP Oil Spill Catastraphuk have a quickly approaching deadline to face.

Tomorrow, November 24th is the last day to file for emergency payments from British Petroleum’s $20 billion dollar escrow. Beginning Thursday the choices they face become much more difficult and the rhetoric from the “neutral” arbitrator, Ken Feinberg appears designed to increase the pressure in an already pressurized situation.

Originally, when this account opened the people of the Gulf Coast affected by the spill were told they would have emergency payments within 24 hours and business, inside of a week. The payments were promised to be fast and fair and after November 24th, people had two options, they could waive the right to sue and accept a final payment from Feinberg which he promised would be more generous than any court, or they could turn down the final payment and sue BP for damages. In the past six months a few changes have been made to the process. Now, people also have the option to continue applying for damages every three months without waiving their right to sue up until August of 2013 whereupon all payments end and they will have to accept a final payment from the escrow to cover future potential damages or they will have to sue BP.

On the face of it, this could be considered reasonable, until you understand that not only has Feinberg turned out to be about as efficient as the DMV, but his rhetoric is becoming more and more reminiscent of Monty Hall, playing “Let’s Make a Deal” with people’s lives while British Petroleum waits in the background ready to reclaim whatever remains in the account once this is all said and done.

Of the $20 billion dollar account, only $2 billion has been paid out so far. 400,000 claims have been filed and about 122,000 have been paid or approved for payment. 60,000 have been denied and 147,000 are under review. These are overwhelming numbers, but when Feinberg rode into town he made a lot of promises: he would take the reigns from BP and get this done, he was going to set this financial shipwreck right, he was the people’s crusader who was going to get them back to their previous lives of solvency, promising to be more generous that any court, more generous than anyone could ever dream, but you know what they say about promises that are too good to be true.

Yeah, get in line and wait.

Of the 250,000 claims still in waiting, while Feinberg accepts some responsibility for this and has upped his workforce, he is putting most of the blame on the people of the Gulf Coast for not having enough documentation and some, for committing outright fraud. The payments that are being made, many consider them to be low and some are starting to believe these payments are being kept low and under review with the coercive purpose of getting people to accept a final payment offer.

Keith Ladner, a Mississippi seafood processor who has been out of business since the spill said, “If he keeps everybody hungry, they’re going to have to take any kind of settlement…we’ll have to take whatever he offers.”

Feinberg denies this, but with every passing day he keeps the people waiting, his credibility diminishes and while he gets to set his own timetable, claimants don’t have this luxury. Their bills need to be paid. Their houses are slipping into foreclosure. Utilities are being turned off and businesses are going bankrupt. The situation in the Gulf has become so pressurized, even the Justice Department has asked Feinberg to speed it up and be more transparent in how the claims process works.

Even worse, Feinberg appears to understand this and is taking advantage. He warns that if they choose not to accept a final payment now, to instead keep applying for interim payments while they decide if they want to sue, “they’ll have to show prospective damage,” and going even further, “But my offer may not be available to them a year from now if everything is back to normal.” In other words, by not accepting a final payment now and retaining the right to sue BP, they will have to prove their losses and the final settlement offer may get smaller by the day.

This is your neutral arbitrator.

This is the man whose firm has been paid $3.5 million dollars in fees by British Petroleum so far to administer the account.

This is the man whose stated goal all along has been to keep people out of the courts, making promises of generosity.

That’s all great if you are trusted, but when the perceptions change and you are now seen as a part of the problem rather than the solution to it, you become just one more affliction on a region who’s already suffered too many, a region that never asked for any of this.

So Feinberg, tone down the rhetoric and do your job, transparently, fairly…and not fair to BP, but to the residents that BP screwed. As a neutral arbiter you are there to help reduce pressure, not increase it.

In other words, quiet down and do your job as promised. If you are no longer perceived as generous or timely and the entity that would benefit from you being neither is the same corporation that pays your bills and unleashed this disaster, the whole claims process would appear to be a sham.

You don’t want this and neither do the people of the Gulf Coast.

Unfortunately, people are depending on you.

Read the article:

BP Oil Spill Claims Are A Gamble For Gulf Coast Residents Seeking Compensation

Have a nice day.

They're afraid of Americans, and memory, and logic, and etc...

So, a group of BP’s investors got together last June and decided to sue British Petroleum, Tony Hayward and Bob Dudley for wasting corporate assets, exposing the company and therefore, its shareholders to billions of dollars in liabilities and for violating their responsibilities to its shareholders by allowing the BP oil catastraphuk to happen.

This lawsuit was filed in Houston.

Ah, but BP has a problem with this.

British Petroleum is now claiming they can’t be sued by investors in American courts, because the company isn’t based in America and the lawsuit should be heard in England, where I imagine they assume they will get handled with much cleaner gloves, more prim, fewer oil stains. Oh, and Tony Hayward can’t be sued in Texas because he isn’t even an American citizen. “England is the more convenient forum for this action,” BP claims.

Yes, convenient.

Remember a while back when British Petroleum was arguing with a federal judge that the 180 oil spill lawsuits should be consolidated and heard in Houston, not Louisiana? At that time they claimed Houston was more logical (and the courts arguably more friendly than in Louisiana) because BP executives are “headquartered in Houston and maintain their key witnesses and documents there.” Well, now Hayward’s only connection to Houston is in his role as CEO which brought him to Houston from time to time.

“The assumption of jurisdiction by the court over Mr. Hayward and his property would offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice,” BP said in its filing against the lawsuit’s location.

Nice, assholes.

If there is one thing BP and Tony Hayward would seem to be completely ignorant of, it would certainly be the notion of fair play and justice, or as Loren Steffy of the Houston Chronicle puts it:

So, basically, BP is arguing that it can set up operations here, get a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, employ thousands of people and unleash the worst offshore oil spill in our nation’s history, but it doesn’t have to answer to investors in a U.S. court. It would prefer to be sued someplace it finds more convenient, thank you. BP will stick around just long enough, and shell out just enough money, to maintain its access to its lucrative oil fields in the Gulf. But when it comes to BP officers facing claims they betrayed their responsibility to shareholders, BP’s accountability has already left town.

Hear Hear…all rise…

Read the article:

BP changes to a spill and run strategy

Have a nice day.

Ya, I had to work during the game, so the best I could do was follow the win on game tracker…but it feels good to see the team coming together over the past few weeks…and in case you are finding this post on accident, check out moosedenied for great coverage of all things New Orleans Saints

Cheers to the whole team, even Hartley. No, I haven’t forgotten that missed field goal against the Falcons, but I have been working extra hard on forgiveness.

-Drake

Umm...nice gun?

Talking about the new porn booths she’s rolling into airports across the nation, Janet Napolitano, Homeland Security Chief says “Each and every one of the security measures we implement serves an important goal.”

Okay, but what is the goal?

Violation of the fourth amendment? Invasion of privacy? Profits for a company, Rapsican who makes the scanners and wouldn’t ya know, is a client of Michael Cherthoff’s lobbying group, the same Michael Cherthoff who introduced the idea of using the scanners when he was Department of Homeland Security Chief?

In case you’ve been living in a bubble, people are getting angry about the TSA’s new tool to fight crime, full body scanners. They take a full body image that is sharp enough to show non-metallic weapons and body genitalia through x-ray technology. The TSA maintains these x-rays are safe, but par usual whenever a government agency maintains the safety of (gulf seafood, genetically modified crops and salmon) something they mandate by law, scientists without agenda hold a differing view: “They say the risk is minimal, but statistically someone is going to get skin cancer from these X-rays,” says Dr Michael Love, who runs an X-ray lab at the department of biophysics and biophysical chemistry at Johns Hopkins University school of medicine. Should one opt out of the scanners they are then forced, in lieu of a $10,000 fine should they try to leave the screening process, into an intrusive body pat down, one that has been an equated with sexual assault. In response to such comparisons, Ron Paul, introduced a bill which would waive immunity for TSA airport screeners, opening them up to charges of assault by travelers, feeling they should beheld to the same laws as the rest of us.

Some have suggested that the more intrusive pat downs, rolled out this past October are meant as a deterrent to get people into the machines and some people, rightfully so, question what happens to these naked computer images? In an earlier post from August, I explored this issue. The TSA first maintained that the computers were not capable of saving or transmitting images. Then a courthouse in Florida demonstrated that not only are they capable, but the sheriff’s department at one court house had saved over 35,000 of them. Then the TSA said, okay, but they are deleted right away, but then those images started to make their way to the internet. Then they said well, okay, but we would never use machines with those capabilities at airports.

Right.

And since those capabilities are a matter of software inside the machines, we’ll never know, and even if those machines are truly disabled what would prevent a TSA screener from taking a picture of the image with his cellphone. Oh, right, the TSA doesn’t permit its employees to carry cellphones. How many of you work in jobs where cellphones aren’t permitted, but have brought them with you anyway?

Yep, me too.

So now the horror stories begin:

An airline pilot brings his 18 year old daughter to the airport and overhears one TSA agent say to another, “Heads up! I’ve got a cutie for you,” as she was headed for the scanner. When the pilot confronted the TSA clerk, he was told there must be a misunderstanding.

A breast cancer survivor is forced to remove her breast prosthesis in Charlotte. Cathy Bossi, a flight attendant relates the story: “She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’ Bossi recalled. “And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that.’”

Thomas Sawyer tried to warn the TSA agents that he had a urostomy bag and they might break the seal if they weren’t careful during the invasive pat downs. The TSA agents ignored this and then, of course, broke the seal, resulting in the man walking through the airport and onto his plane covered in urine.

And what do TSA agents think about this, well those without morale compass certainly wouldn’t be bothered, but lest we forget, TSA agents are people too and one particular agent who remembers this, describes his feelings this way:

“It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh. Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!”

“Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me, said in my presence as I patted passengers down. These comments are painful and demoralizing, one day is bad enough, but I have to come back tomorrow, the next day and the day after that to keep hearing these comments. If something doesn’t change in the next two weeks I don’t know how much longer I can withstand this taunting. I go home and I cry. I am serving my country, I should not have to go home and cry after a day of honorably serving my country.”

Initially, airline pilots were forced to undergo the screenings, but now will be allowed to bypass as the TSA apparently realized how ridiculous it was to check the individual flying the plane for bombs.

Several lawmakers are getting into the act, including President Obama, who despite never having gone through the scanners or suffered the indignity of the pat downs, said he “understands peoples frustrations.” He states he asks, constantly, if there isn’t a better way to do this, but TSA officials have told him there isn’t, not yet. Congressional members, who have been sounding off about this, both pro and con, you know, our elected representatives, they of course are exempt from these screenings.

This is not your Congressman

Oh, and the most amusing fact about these new procedures?

They all come as a result of last years attempted Christmas bombing when a man snuck explosive chemicals onto a plane in his underwear. Well, the GAO reports: “it remains unclear whether the AIT (Scanners) would have detected the weapon used in the December 2009 incident based on the preliminary information GAO has received.”

Passengers, pilots, flight attendants, members of congress, front line employees of the TSA, the media…everyone up in arms about these new procedures, the invasive pat downs, the radiation from the machines. Republican congressman are calling for airports to ditch the TSA and hire private security (an empty gesture as the airports would still be mandated to follow TSA guidelines), passengers are talking on public forums about the best way to humiliate TSA agents, four lawyers in New York City have proposed legislation to ban the machines in New York City’s airports, the morale of TSA agents are flagging, people are opting out of flying. With all the uproar, what is the response from the TSA?

TSA Chief John Pistole told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs that his inspectors at 453 of the nation’s airports are not going to back down in the face of complaints that techniques are invasive. Pistole acknowledged the outcry, but he argued that passengers need to be educated, rather than change the procedures.

“Am I going to change the policies?” he said. “No.”

So here we are:

I fly mainly into two airports: Louis Armstrong International and San Francisco International and both have the scanners. I can choose to be radiated and allow the TSA to take a nude image or I can subject myself to an invasive pat down where a TSA agent runs his hands over every inch of my body…well, either that or I don’t fly. The president, congress, people, the TSA’s own employees, everyone but Joe Lieberman and Michael Cherthoff are less than thrilled by any and all of this, yet my three choices remain. I didn’t vote for the TSA. I have a big problem with what it is they are doing. They are a government entity doing something that would get everyone but them arrested for sexual assault, yet I have no choice but to submit. I have no recourse to being wronged.

Yeah, this is why I feel disenfranchised.

So look for me at the airport, I’ll be the one feeling much, much safer and making things very awkward for the TSA agent who’s touching my balls. I’ll also be the one contacting members of congress and demanding they stop this bullshit money grab for yet another company in the name of (fear) safety.

Check out National Opt-Out Day, November 24th where a large number of people plan to skip the scanners and demand pat-downs, keeping the pressure where it should be, on the TSA.

Have a nice day.