As IF Times

link Pushy fliers may show up on TSA’s radar – USATODAY.com.

Much ink has been spilt on the “egregious” new law in Arizona attempting to suppress the chaos and violence associated with the out of control illegal immigration problem in that state.  Impassioned pleas from opponents of the new measure insist that the new law is draconian and and nothing less than a full assault on human rights and promotes racism.  Politicians at the highest level are denouncing the new law even though it essentially mirrors a federal law already on the books.  Even actors and comedians, known of course for their broad intellectual grasp of major issues, are weighing in with their opposition to the new law.  If an intellectual heavyweight such as George Lopez thinks the law is unjust, well maybe we’d better rethink the whole immigration policy.

What a waste of time.  There are far greater numbers of troublemakers attempting to get on planes than trying to sneak across borders.  Why waste time, effort, money and possibly life on enforcing such unpopular things such as immigration law.  The efforts are much better expended on airport harassment.  The cost benefit analysis skews the results considerably towards airport security as a means of spotting criminal behaviour.  Rather than having to pay trained police officers armed with deadly weapons, we need only pay for minimum wage workers to screen for troublemakers.  Instead of facing potentially armed drug criminals, the TSA people need only face the unarmed young and elderly.  Naturally, with all the vocal groups protesting human rights violations, they would have to exclude Muslims, Blacks and Hispanics from special screening.

If you are part of a constituency that has never had a history of causing grief to the nation, well you’re in for special scrutiny.  The elderly, the very young, Whites, Asians, business people, all will be easier targets of intimidation because there is no fear of these groups protesting their mistreatment.

As it stands now in the U.S., police officers feel reluctant to ask for legitimate identification for fear of stirring racism and profiling concerns.  At airport security, there is no such reluctance.  Heck, citizens can even be asked to strip to a certain degree and be felt up like a package of Charmin tissue.   Any protests will instantly plop their names onto an official troublemaker list and voila, a permanent criminal suspect is created.  As time goes on, this list can only grow as the definition of pushy travellers gets fuzzier and fuzzier.  Statistics will soar on the TSA troublemaker database and will be justification to demand more money into their coffers to combat the rising incidences of disturbing airport behaviour.  Which of course, will lead to even more invasive and surly TSA procedures. It will be entirely logical to transfer the weapons from Border agents to arm the TSA staff.

Illegal entry across U.S. borders will cease to be an enforceable pursuit and movement there will be free and easy.  Just as long as they don’t attempt to fly in.

link Canada: A billion on summit security well worth it – Yahoo! News.

This may be patently obvious, but if a country needs to spend a billion on security for a summit, maybe the summit should be held somewhere that’s more easily secured, perhaps Labrador or Iqaluit in the Northwest Territories.   If the whole point of gathering exalted poo-bahs and geniuses from all nations is for the face to face serious discussions on solving word hunger, yada yada yada, then why even hold it in a metropolitan area?

Spend the money on some infrasture in the vast and secure north of Canada and pump some money into that part of the world.  Get the army corp of engineers to build an instant conference room and contract out Starbucks for the coffee and banana bread.  The entire security budget can be reduced to the cost of shooing away curious moose.  Considering the Conservatives are supposed to be the party of fiscal responsibility and common sense, this is a great disappointment.  Heck if we wanted all kinds of wasteful boondoggle spending, we would have kept the Liberals in office.

The public safety minister Vince Toews states that this expenditure is “worth it”.  ??!!  Really? Why? At the core of the issue, the money will be spent to ensure the safety of notionally 20 some odd representatives and their aides and of course their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands or some combination thereof.  So if we generously give each entourage 50 people, then that makes security for 1000 people. But let’s really be gracious hosts and allow 100 people per country. That makes the total group count at near 2000 people.  Counting on my fingers rapidly, this breaks down into $500,000 per person for this extravaganza or $1,000,0000 per person if you use the smaller entourage figure. 

Naturally, this number doesn’t include food, tax or gratuities.  Vince Toews may want to qualify what is meant by “worth it”.  Is it worth it to spend a billion dollars on cops and dogs when you could probably achieve the same result by having a hundred or so army staff secure a Holiday Inn in St. John’s Newfoundland?

We all know the answer to that, but as has been mentioned in an earlier post, the real reason that the exalted summit is being held in Toronto, is….shopping!  Yes, the spouses had to be enticed to go along and the only way to do this was if the destination had some decent shopping.  Toronto isn’t Hong Kong or Milan, but, hey, you have to keep up the appearance off belt tightening.  As far as Labrador, well, how many sealskins can you buy?

link Arizona immigration law will boost crime in U.S. cities, police chiefs say.

This from people supposedly hired to protect citizens from crime and enforce the law. If the notion that enforcing the law will actually boost crime, then what about the corollary?  What if we didn’t enforce laws at all, would crimes then decline?  This seems to be the brilliant conclusion pushed by certain police chiefs, among them those from the famously crime free meccas of  L.A., Houston and Philadelphia.

This is somewhat related to the raging argument about dealing with the crime associated with drugs.  The bleat you hear often is that the war on drugs doesn’t work; why criminalize many for small indiscretions which don’ t harm anybody but the user.  This in itself is a debate which can be discussed by passionate champions on both sides and we won’t do it now.  But the theme that’s common to both of these issues is that the problems have been allowed to get so large that people now have trouble dealing with it.   Both can be traced back to waffling and uncommitted responses at the outset.  In the case of Arizona’s immigration law, the opposition is not based on capacity to enforce, it is mired in political haymaking which has everything to do with votes and nothing to do with efficacy.

What if people got away with murdering people who annoyed them?  What if people began stealing from neighbours because they had better stuff?  If these incidences got to large enough numbers, would police throw up their hands and say that to enforce laws against this behaviour would only drive a wedge between the police and would be criminals? It’s not just absurd, it’s irresponsible and stupid.  If police think that policies are politically wrong, then like everyone else, vote for someone who better reflects your opinion, or better yet, run for office. 

Cops should be in the police business, not in the policy business.  It can only be a matter of time before they decide that enforcing traffic violations will only drive a wedge between motorists and police officers.  Actually, if you eliminated all the policing activities that would create divisions and drive wedges into society, you probably wouldn’t even need police officers.  That sure would help most city budgets.  All I can think of that’s left  for them to do is responding to barking dog complaints.  That’s safe, I mean what do we care if we disenfranchise dogs.