Mrs. Clinton, Would You Submit To A Pat Down?

From the Huffington Post –

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she thought “everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public.” She told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “striking the right balance is what this is about.”

However, when asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” if she would submit to a pat-down, Clinton responded: “Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”

Do you think that the White House may have miscalculated in bringing her into the discussion?

She doesn’t sound like the President’s emasculated staff. It adds credence to recent comments as to who has balls.

She said what she thought.

Let this be our meek but vital battle cry against the TSA – “NOT IF I COULD AVOID IT. NO. I MEAN, WHO WOULD?”

James Pilant

President Obama Understands Your Frustrations!

From Huffington Post -

President Barack Obama has asked security officials whether there’s a less intrusive way to screen U.S. airline passengers than the pat-downs and body scans causing a holiday-season uproar.

That is not what he asked. Further down in the article, they say what he actually asked, which was, “Is there another way to catch a bomber like the Nigerian man who had explosives in his underwear?” And his experts said no.

For now, they’ve told him there isn’t one, the president said Saturday in response to a question at the NATO summit in Lisbon.

But there are some other questions, President Obama could be asking. For instance, should the American security establishment always focus on the last attack? Since that enables terrorists to literally “call the tune.” They decide what security we deploy. You think that’s overstated?

Let me try it out on you. I take a toothbrush into the lavatory and with the sharpened decorative star off my cowboy boots cut it into a makeshift but entirely effective shiv. I then cart this thing back into the plane and get caught. Do you think you’ll be carrying a toothbrush onto an American plane for the foreseeable future? Don’t get me started on the cowboy boots.

I want you to picture five guys, Middle Eastern or not, having those kinds of discussions, not what will succeed in harming an aircraft but what will make the Americans do stupid things ceaselessly demeaning their citizens.

“I understand people’s frustrations,” Obama said, while acknowledging that he’s never had to undergo the stepped-up screening methods.

He feels your pain but not directly.

Passengers at some U.S. airports must pass through full-body scanners that produce a virtually naked image. If travelers refuse, they can be forced to undergo time-consuming fingertip examinations, including of clothed genital areas and breasts, by inspectors of the same sex as the passenger.

My general perception is that body cavity searches are the one frontier left for the intrepid explorers of the TSA.

Obama said he’s told the U.S. Transportation Security Administration: “You have to constantly refine and measure whether what we’re doing is the only way to assure the American people’s safety. And you also have to think through, are there ways of doing it that are less intrusive.”

He implied to them that they should make it better.

At this point, that agency and counterterrorism experts have told him that the current procedures are the only ones that they think can effectively guard against threats such as last year’s attempted Christmas-day bombing. A Nigerian man is accused of trying to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear aboard a flight from Amsterdam with nearly 300 people aboard.

So, let me get this straight, we have organized our entire TSA screening process as if another person was going to wear a bomb in his underwear?

Obama said that in weekly meetings with his counterterrorism team, “I’m constantly asking them whether is what we’re doing absolutely necessary, have we thought it through, are there other ways of accomplishing it that meet the same objectives.”

For now it sounds like there aren’t, and travelers will face potential pat-downs and scans.

“One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

No, you are creating a vast security apparatus and you’re not asking the right questions, just the conventional ones.

The President has the power to say, stop. The President has the power to say, “This is one step too far. We don’t have to sacrifice our dignity and our honor to our fear.”

Don’t hold your breath for that one.
James Pilant

The Ethics Sage Comments On The Post – Who Owns Your Mortgage? Or Anybody’s For That Matter!

By the Ethics Sage –

Dan’s flow chart is both masterful and scary at the same time. It makes you wonder whether anyone really knows who owns a mortgage. When one party sells it to another as a securitized asset, it transfers the risk to that party. Given that the original holder of the mortgage no longer bears the risk of default, it can make unsupportable mortgages to undeserving parties and not worry about the probability of repayment. Multiply that by the number of times a mortgage is sold and you have a chaotic system that encourages bad behavior.

(The “Ethics Sage,” aka Steven Mintz, has been writing, speaking out, and blogging about a lack of ethics in business and society by attacking the decline of moral values in society, a vanishing work ethic, pursuit of self-interests mentality, and a tone at the top of organizations that tolerates and even encourages wrongdoing.

Dr. Mintz enjoys an international reputation for research, teaching, and speaking on ethics in business and accounting. He has published two textbooks and dozens of research papers on business and accounting ethics, and corporate governance. He teaches a course on accounting ethics at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.

Dr. Mintz is a widely sought out speaker at ethics, professional and academic meetings. He has presented at: The Board of Director and Corporate Governance Research Conference in Henley, England; Global Finance & Research Conference in London; The Institute of Chartered Accountants in Trinidad & Tobago; Association of Asian-Pacific Accountants in Bangkok, Thailand; and the Asian International Business Association in Shanghai, China.

Dr. Mintz has his own blog on ethics issues under the name of Ethics Sage. The website address is: http://www.ethicssage.com.)