Rag Hand

By now we have all heard about the man from Nigeria who tried to blow-up a plane. He used PETN and other ingredients in the attempt, but got jumped by his fellow passengers.

Now the TSA has issued even more restrictive regulations, saying things like; nobody leaves their seats during the last hour of a flight, and anyone with carry-on bags will be subject to closer scrutiny. –They can strip search us at will as it is. What’s next? Cavity searches?

The TSA gave the job of security to untrained felons, their highly trained professionals thought a MacBook Air was some sort of evil device, their experts are known for following the wrong people and even pulling them off flights, and now they let someone on the terrorist watch-list on to a plane, and looked surprised when the passengers did the TSA’s job.

Why is it that Israel, a country with more active enemies than any country I can think of, doesn’t have all these problems?

Why is it that the only response the TSA can think of is more draconian regulations enforced by the very losers that let a suspected terrorist on the flight in the first place?

The answer is simple: The TSA is run by bureaucrats who got the job by knowing the right politicians and playing golf with the right partners.
They rushed out and hired hundreds of warm bodies, without vetting most of them. And they consider regulations enforced by brute force to be a substitute for common sense and proper training.

They are a police agency with almost no trained police officers and a set of regulations that have all been decided upon in full-on panic mode.

Instead of correcting the problems, with regulations that make sense and better training, the management at the TSA defends to the death the actions of poorly trained individuals, because that is how they justify their jobs.

Correction:
The would-be bomber was on a terrorist watch list, but not the TSA’s terrorist watch list. They knew about him, but there wasn’t enough “derogatory” information to put him on the no-fly list or to require special screening.

It sounds like he would have had to have had a history of blowing himself up before anyone would have run him through the full-body scanners the US paid for and installed in Nigeria and Amsterdam. Perhaps an I-heart-Osama t-shirt would have done the trick.

From the BBC –The heads of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may each receive pay packages of up to $6m (£3.7m) for 2009, depending on company performance.

The government has put $111bn of public money into the companies since taking them over and the awards go against moves to curb lavish pay packages.

But the regulator which decided the pay levels said the awards were 40% lower than before the government bailout.

Meanwhile back at the ranch: The folks at AIG not only are keeping the bonuses they promised to give back they say they are willing to sue to defend $198 million in retention bonuses due in March.

One former Financial Products executive said some of his colleagues had stayed with the company only because they expected to receive bonus payments this coming March. After that, he said, they will have “no reason at all” to stay. “There’s no more carrot,” he said.

Explain to me why this works the way it does:
As I understand it, if you run the company into the ground, the government gives them billions, and they in turn give you millions to keep you from leaving.

Now it’s come out that companies like Goldman Sachs bet against their own investors through the sales of CDOs -collateralized debt obligations- to their clients coupled with a bet against their success. Read About it Here.

These companies take the bailout money and the near 0% interest government money and profit at the expense of the American taxpayers all the while paying themselves enormous bonuses.

—–And the beat goes on.

Spiegel Online:

Production jobs have been moving out of Europe for years. But as the Daimler decision last week to move C-Class production to the US shows, the process is accelerating as the dollar becomes weaker. Companies from Airbus to ThyssenKrupp are opening factories in America to improve their bottom lines.

Workers at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Sindelfingen outside Munich aren’t usually the rebellious types. They are proud of their jobs and of the cars they build. But last Wednesday workers at the plant were nothing but angry.

After their foremen had informed them, shortly before 10 a.m., that the next generation of the company’s C-Class model series will no longer be produced in Sindelfingen, they walked out of the factory buildings en masse and headed for Building 1, where plant management has its offices. But the plant manager didn’t have the courage to face his employees, and even Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche chose to have a member of his staff inform them why assembly of the C-Class is being shifted to the company’s US plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Many of the German and other companies invest in forward exchange transactions, that, for a fee, guarantee a fixed exchange rate between the Euro and the Dollar. Unfortunately a steady decline in the value of the dollar over an extended period makes this insurance almost worthless.

On the other hand one of the reasons our government does so little to bolster the value of the dollar is that cheap currency makes it more profitable for a company like Mercedes to relocate to plants in this country. With the weakening of the dollar we once again are becoming exporters rather than importers, which helps the country stay solvent.

In a world run by soulless, multinational corporations, there seems to be some advantage to slipping into third world status.

The state’s top panel on ethics found Las Vegas City Councilmember Steve Ross violated ethics rules. –He is in the construction industry and voted on everything that came before the city council concerning that industry. He sees nothing wrong with what he did.

KVBC Las Vegas: — Ross will keep both of his jobs and he will not face any fines. Ross can choose to appeal the commission’s decision. He has 30 days to file an appeal. He can also ask for a judiciary review of the decision.

Then there is Sen. Roland Burris and his deal with the man who appointed him; former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

On Friday, the Select Committee on Ethics issued a Public Letter of Qualified Admonition to Burris after months of investigating the circumstances of his appointment by former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The problem with ethics committees is that they are run by and for the very people who stand to be judged by them.

Politics is a game of let’s-make-a-deal, and the only way any politician is even going to get a reprimand is if the press picks up on what’s happening, and many times not even then. —It’s all just one big dog and pony show.

“Crooked politician” — Redundant

Las Vegas Review Journal – The Nevada State Board of Nursing has opened a probe into the treatment of a pregnant Las Vegas woman who said she was ignored as she moaned and pleaded for help while waiting for six hours in University Medical Center’s emergency room. … Meanwhile, two other people in the waiting room on the night 25-year-old Roshunda Abney sought help backed up what she and her fiancé told the Review-Journal: When others in the waiting room asked a nursing assistant to aid Abney, they were told to mind their own business or they wouldn’t get a chance to see a physician.

I can understand how frustrations can build when they are perpetually shorthanded and they have to deal with whiners who go to the emergency room for the sniffles, or those people who speak a language the nursing assistant doesn’t understand in addition to people in pain.

But to ignore or verbally attack a person who is suffering or those that try to help them is contemptible. If this charge pans out they should not only fire the person on duty they should fire that person’s supervisor as well.

I deal with South West Medical. They don’t have the huge volume that UMC handles, but they are also shorthanded and overworked, and I know from experience that when there is an emergency, the staff starts doing what needs to be done immediately; not when they get around to it. –And I have never heard them be anything but polite.