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Anthony, I agree with much you say, and while I did not vote for Bush, we all have to stand behind him now. His big problems are his so called advisors, NSA advisor should have all of the lower branches doing their jobs. The DOT did not push the FAA to make airlines and large airports to comply with safety laws already incited on. CIA failed bad at information gathering and have the FBI start picking these guys up before Sept. 11, 2001. The INS knew these guys were in our country illegally and did nothing about. They could not find them. How the heck did they find all of their friends after the terrorist are dead? They need a scape goat, so it is all the little guys fault, at the security gates. Then the people who were really at fault get $15,000,000.00 to bail them out. How much of that will us small operators get for being grounded because of the big boys short comings? Next thing they will tap the aviation fund which is put there primarily by GA (not airlines) to give the FAA raises, when they should just make them work 8 hours a day. First of morning 3 hour coffee break Second 2 hour lunch break Third Internet Sex Sites 1.5 hours Fourth 1.0 hour afternoon coffee break Fifth .5 hour read the news paper Sixth Oh, hell I forgot to wipe the coffee off the desk, so they stay 1 hour overtime to clean the desk. I wrote the President, both my Senators and three different House Members, for all of the good it did. They at least know my feelings. Also, wrote the Washington Post and that nut J.A. Kinney. Did get a couple replies from Kinney. He,at least did reply. I do not think we have heard the last of being imposed upon, in GA. Bob Parker Mena, AR. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Timm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Alon (E-mail)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 4:00 PM Subject: [COUPERS] Enough is enough! | ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- | | | Enough is enough. We've been watching closely since September 11, and things | just keep | getting more stupid. Here are a few examples. Some statements are right; | some aren't.. | | Federalize everything in sight: | Politicians are calling for federalization of airport security, saying | things like, "Security at | airports is handled by people who make less than the McDonald's employees at | the | terminals they are supposed to protect." That is insulting to the security | people, for | one thing -- how much they make doesn't necessarily reflect on | their intelligence or dedication -- it just reflects on the level of | supervision they need. | Secondly, these folks are being beaten up by politicians that think that the | security people | did something wrong, something which can only be remedied by a bunch more | taxpayer | expense (shifting the expense from those who use air travel, to those who | don't), and | federal supervision. Patronage, in other words -- the same program that gave | us the great | surveillance and intelligence the FBI and CIA and INS used, to identify and | track the | hijackers -- all the way onto the planes. | | The airport security people didn't do anything wrong: | The people who screened the hijackers didn't do anything wrong; they | followed the federal | and airline guidelines in place at the time, guidelines effective only in | disarming people | who could have helped short-circuit the hijackings. The hijackers apparently | didn't break | any laws in the airports, at all. Think about this: if 200 passengers have, | say, knives, and | five hijackers have knives, who wins? On the other hand, if 200 people have | nothing, and | five hijackers have knives, who wins? | | We're getting military involved in airport security: | Strangely enough, we don't have enough military to patrol the borders and | check other | ports of entry, to keep illegals from entering the country; but we have | plenty of military, to put | them in charge of supervising the legal activities of citizens in our | airports. | | We want student pilots to pay for their own background checks: | This is somehow supposed to make a difference. As we've detailed ("Knee | Jerks: Student | Pilot Background Check Bill,"09-27-01; "Knee Jerks: Another | Anti-Flight-Training Bill," | 09-28-01, ANN), some in Congress are saying that student pilots, before they | start | training, should pay to have their own backgrounds investigated -- by the | CIA and FBI, | through the FAA. Not only is this impossible to do, an any timely way; but | the FAA can | already make student pilot applications available to the FBI or CIA whenever | the snoop | agencies want them. How much should such a background check cost? How much, | and | what kind, of information, would be assembled? Why finger student pilots? | (How about | doing to same for, say, truck drivers, or just regular drivers? Does | anyone's presumption of | innocence still hold? Shouldn't we require this every year or so --... ) | When will we start requiring invasive psychological testing for the | military, who could really | do damage, if they got out of hand? [If that sounds unreasonable, why, then, | would testing | civilians --who don't have ready access to sophisticated weapons -- be | reasonable?] | | We're turning the threats around: | If the purpose of all these new actions by our military and police is to | prevent another | September 11, we might ask why the facts of September 11 have been | perverted. | Military base commanders are now closing civilian GA(General Aviation) | airports that are | "too close for comfort" ("Navy's Duplicity Kills Coastal Airport in | Georgia,"09-28-01, ANN). | Let's see: the commercial airliners were used to attack civilian targets | (the Pentagon was a | secondary target, we're told). Therefore, the paranoia goes, non-commercial, | small planes will | attack military targets. That's '180-degree reasoning,' in the name of | seizing more power, and | expressing the military's paranoia about being able to protect its submarine | bases against C-172s, | and allowingpoliticians like Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to kill Meigs | Field ahead of schedule | (because it's 'too close' to Navy Pier -- Hey, neither the airport nor the | pier has moved, Mr.Mayor!). | | We're asked to give more power to the entities that screwed up: | Far from asking why the INS and the FBI and the CIA (all of which knew | something of the | hijackers and their activities) didn't do anything about these terrorists, | we are asked to take | authority from the airlines and their contracted security firms (which | didn't make mistakes in | this series of events), and give even more discretion and power to the very | entities that | screwed up. If the FAA's rules for disarming passengers were insufficient, | why blame the | security people? If the rules weren't any good, why trust the people who | made them up? | | We want stronger cockpit doors: | The argument goes, that the cockpit doors need to be hijacker-proof ("ALPA's | President | Wants Stronger Doors, Even Stun Guns," 09-21-01, ANN). As far as we know, | the doors | weren't a problem; they were opened during the hijackings because of threats | of atrocities, | and actual atrocities being carried out in the cabins. They were also opened | because the | pilots had been trained, again by the FBI and FAA, to submit, rather than to | resist, when a | hijacking was in progress. If the FAA and FBI were so wrong in their | counterintuitive | mandates, what makes anyone think they'll be right the next time? | | We need more Air Marshals: | That's true. The FAA won't say how many Air Marshals were flying, on a | typical day, prior | to September 11; only that there was always an Air Marshal presence. Since | the FAA can | hide behind "security reasons," and not tell us -- or Congress, for that | matter -- how many | of these off-budget air police there were, it's a safe assumption that the | FAA, always | crying for more money for its regulators (but never for its engineers and | controller training, | it seems), was using every available penny of Air Marshal money to fund | other things. The | mere and obvious fact that the FAA is scrambling now to recruit and train so | many new Air | Marshals says there couldn't have been many to begin with. | | If you want to be safe, count on yourself: | The Air Marshals, had they actually existed, could have gone a long way | toward saving | planeloads of submissive pilots and disarmed passengers -- but they weren't | there, were they? | | Don't mistake Nationalism for Patriotism: | Patriotism is founded on understanding the things that make the nation | great, and a commitment to them. Things like religious freedom, the | sanctity of contracts, the protections against unwarranted searches and | seizures -- these are some of the principles on which the United States | of America was founded, and these are the things that Patriots support. They | love the | USA, and will stand for her, because they believe in the things she stands | for. | Nationalism, however, is a purely emotional phenomenon. It is a tool of | tyrants, and | counts on co-opting Patriotism, and perverting it, so that anything that | questions the | absolute power of the government, is viewed as treason. Nationalism | re-labels political | opposition, based on principle, based even on the Constitution, as | treasonous thought. | Nationalism turns free people into slaves in their own countries. | Nationalism represents | the end goal of centralized, unlimited power -- tyranny -- cloaked in the | name of | Patriotism. Let's not let our patriotic feelings be stampeded into | nationalistic programs. | | The lesson is clear: | The culture of submission is suicidal; the only protection you can count on, | is what you | provide, yourself. For the government, which screwed up in its regulations, | its training, its | intelligence, and its screening; its procedures, its engineering, and its | risk assessment, to | say, "Now, we'll protect you," is patently absurd. | Freedom, as they say, isn't free. A free society, if that is what America | still wants to be, | needs to remain vigilant; independent people cannot delegate their most | basic need -- | self-protection -- to a bureaucracy. | | | | ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?aVxiLm.aVzvvT Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
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