PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - Wow, I'm glad we federalized airport security!

crash9 · #6 12-17-2004, 12:58 PM

We are wasting a huge amount of money, or are being very dense about the potential. By not having a continuing series of events we’re being lulled into thinking we’re accomplishing something.
We lived on our boat in LA Harbor for a long time. This is not Marina del Rey - very seedy, but for actually living on a boat, it’s the best. In a weekenders marina you feel like you live in a fishbowl. Anyway, there has always been a large law enforcement presence, and I always assumed it was because of the drug traffic – it’s huge. They never seemed to do much to clean up that scene, and my thought was that it was just more of a control and contain type of deal. No – come to find out it was all about watching for terrorists – this is late eighties/mid-nineties. They’ve long realized the potential, but to really do anything about it means significantly reducing our privacy and freedom.
We’ve got to have a national ID card and a severe infringement on our privacy or we will not be safe. A paper passport is an antique. We’ve got to become involved and informed about the political process to control Big Brother, but we’ve also got to allow him in our life. We have a wildly inefficient way of wasting money now and an ID card could go a long way to halting that waste. This morning, since sunup, over twenty Border Patrol vehicles have driven by in new SUV’s, and I guarantee that they are just going through the motions, because they accomplish nothing! I’m in Mexico two or three times a week and the only time I’m ever checked is by the Mexicans. They (our team) recently got this big multi – bucks X-Ray truck that passes over a vehicle to see inside it. When they first got it they sent me along with about four other cars over to the area where they keep it – I had my less than friendly Chow Chow with me and no leash, big mess controlling him – but that was it! That thing is just setting there idle, every time I go across. They’ve not looked in my trunk in hundreds and hundreds of trips across the border – I’ve even joked with them about it.
I’m one of the most independent off the radar type persons you’ll ever meet, and I’ve long ago realized that my personal liberty is more a state of mind than a matter of how much information the government may have on me. If you’re not up to something you have nothing to fear if you’re even slightly bright about the paper trial you create of your life. Divorce attorneys have taught me this.
I’m just afraid that while China just sits back and watches us burn up our capital we’ll wait once again until it too late and have no ability to over react in our typically inefficient way.