What Are We Waiting For

Some days ya just can't find good blogable information to grab on to and run with. There are so many of us bloggers who are on the same page, in the ideology department, that most good stories have already been blogged and commented on several times over, on several different blog sites. Sure makes it difficult to show some originality. Most recently, there have been a few stories that demand attention; two have been blogged over like Turkey Buzzards on fresh roadkill. A third allows me the opportunity to be somewhatly original.

Story One: The past couple of days I have poked a little fun at the folks over at the TSA. Not original but I believe needed in order to keep poking a stick at the hornet's nest that I hope is the American people.

There is hardly a day passing where we don't learn of some new and outrageous degradation forced upon an unsuspecting member of society by the jackbooted bastards assigned to "secure" our air travel. The latest indignation comes in the form of a young mother who objected to a container of her breast milk being sent through an x-ray scanner, and her being held in a glass cell for an hour, in full view of the public, for making that objection. This was a clear cut case of false imprisonment considering TSA policy allows this exact situation to be a reasonable cause for objection by a passenger, and the scanning omitted.

I can't rationalize this. Are the powers that be, within the TSA, getting off on the tyrannical acts heaped against us members of the peon class, or are they working ever so diligently to destroy the air travel industry by making more of us look at other means of travel not currently under their authority to grope or imprison, or both?

Are the folks who have the "hands on" jobs with the TSA too mentally weak to take a stand against a system that permits these acts or are they too getting off on the power trip they are afforded? Personally, I'd rather take my chances in the cold, cruel world by walking off the job than willfully screwing over folks and getting paid for it.

John Ross, in his novel "Unintended Consequences," presented a solution for tax feeders who took pleasure in biting on the hands that feed them. What are we waiting for?

Story Two: In a word... WikiLeaks.

In one of his recent radio broadcasts, Glenn Beck claims to have tracked a financial connection between WikiLeaks and George Soros. (I wouldn't doubt that a little more tracking would uncover a "direct connection" between WikiLeaks' Julian Assange and U.S. politician Barney Frank.)

Whether all true or not, WikiLeaks, in my opinion, has crossed the threshold from the online equivalent of the National Inquirer to a foreign espionage / propaganda agency that is out to help destroy America. To expand on the John Ross idea a tad, I feel a drone launched missile strike on Assange is a reasonable solution to the problem. For that fact, let's send one for Soros while we're at it. Better yet, one launch three hits, on a menage a trois of Assange, Soros and Frank. What are we waiting for?

Story Three: The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that using another person's social security number is not an identity theft crime... as long as that person doesn't use your name along with your SSN.

The case is in regards to an immigrant who used a false social security number to get a job. Advocates say that undocumented workers are fundamentally different from identity theft criminals trying to steal credit. According to Chuck Roth, litigation director at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago, "An immigrant who uses a false SSN to obtain a job doesn't intend to harm anyone, and it makes no sense to spend our tax dollars to imprison them for two years."

The U.S. Supreme Court came to a unanimous decision on the matter. The justices found that a person using an unknown person's SSN to obtain work authorization did not "knowingly" use information that belonged to that other person, as required by the identity theft statute.

The Identity Theft Resource Center argues that immigrants who use false SSNs to get employment often end up using the numbers to obtain credit cards or car loans that can ultimately become blended in with the credit history of the rightful holder of the SSN, all too frequently with disastrous results. The ITRC says this is a dangerous precedent that has now been established and which could permit abuses of the system designed to protect innocent bystanders from fraud.

The way I see it, if an immigrant (of illegal status, no doubt) illegally obtains or just grabs nine numbers out of thin air to get a job, and those numbers happen to be the same numbers officially assigned to you, and said immigrant fails to file a tax return; guess who the IRS will come looking for? And guess who will not be understanding or sympathetic to your situation when you look at them and say you haven't a clue as to how their figures indicate you made a few thousand dollars more this year than what you claimed?

Regardless of whether it's private creditors or government tax agents coming after you, they do not care who, or how many, might be using the information that was assigned to you. And they do not care in what way your identity may suffer. And the courts have given them free reign to stick it to you while the person actually responsible is absolved of any culpability by merely claiming they didn't knowing do it to harm you. (But what happened to the other three standards of culpability; purposefully, recklessly or negligently?)

If we don't do something soon, there won't be anything left to do anything for. So what are we waiting for?

MikeH.