May TSA frisks you to deter others? -- female rape victim intimately frisked by MALE agent in Chicago -- what the Constitution says about it all

May TSA force you -- via $11,000 fine -- to submit to an admittedly no probable cause frisk to deter others from shopping airport checkpoints? May the Chicago police randomly frisk you in the neighborhood to deter others from carrying guns? The latter at least would yield a gigantic benefit – but the Constitution has some pointed things to say about both.

Rape survivor devastated by enhanced pat down by a male TSA agent at a Chicago airport. 30 years ago Chicago women drivers feared being taken to police stations for strip searching (were men watching?) for minor traffic violations. $50,000 settlements put an end to those violations. Every male/female TSA grope victim should be entitled to more.

http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/rape-survivor-devasted-by-tsa-enhanced-pat-down/

This rape survivor deserves justice – civil or even criminal. While law enforcement across the country hasn’t gotten around to recognizing non-emergency male/female frisking (genital groping probably uniquely in the TSA case) as a violent sexual felony (same sex frisk “only” policy) -- the FBI should at least investigate if there was any (recognizable felony?) collusion at the Chicago airport and every other place this sickness has happened (there are several news reports).

TSA chief John Pistole must be loudly asked if there is an absolute rule against cross sex frisking – as the only way to make sure there is an absolute rule at this stage of general law enforcement misjudgment.

If non-genital groping isn’t allowed (if a tempting thought) to make the most dangerous neighborhoods how can video strip searching (male/female impossible?) and genital groping be justified across the board even if it saves 200 lives a year.

It is actually possible that some half-hearted home-grown terrorist might not try to bring down a plane he would have because not organized enough to stuff his or her bomb where the sun don’t shine – or to recruit a 300 pound accomplice to tape same between the cheeks – or just fly out of country to fly back in (wonder if Al-Qaeda is organized enough to do that). You can argue about the practicality of extreme searching a billion people a year preventing that, but I think the Constitution has some pointed things to say about it.

PS. Passengers who opt out of flying to drive are getting killed at 10X the rate by drunken drivers.

Give your ticket back -- so little probable cause it fails the rational test -- attack of the 300 pound woman

Give your ticket back -- get your rights back. :-)

There is so little probable cause to hold a person for questioning because they refused to be electronically ogled or personally pawed at the airport (the $11,000 thing) that it probably violates the rational test. If you could not hold them without the rule -- because the Fourth Amendment says you could not. For the same reason you cannot make the rule to hold everybody for questioning to catch the one in a million bomber (who will never decide to leave because of privacy concerns -- who is leaving in any case; no imminent danger -- ergo, not even a rational relationship to a valid state objective: Fourteenth Amendment violation).

Which brings us to the partially depersonalized strip search or too private groping (most in public view! -- I've been on 150 prison visits with no aversion whatsoever to the most serious but normal, private parts free, frisking). You could not make such an invasive rule under the same one-in-a-million type risk situation anywhere else in life.

Don't like it, don't fly? Too easy; this is not 1950. Flying is as much a part of everyday 2010 American life (3 million passengers a day -- a billion passengers a year) as anything else. And what does it take to outflank the TSA's Fourth Amendment free 3,000 mile wide Maginot Line: one 300 pound women with enough room between her cheeks to hide a Thanksgiving dinner. :-)

Case closed: I think most people would take the risk level of driving (10X the danger of flying) if all other things could somehow be held equal (convenience, price) over living in the condition of perpetual prison convict humiliation.

Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping

Case closed: people who would rather drive -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping. Question: how many would rather risk driving -- if all other things (e.g., time and expense) could be equal -- to avoid intimate peeking or touching by strangers?

$11,000 fine for opting out of both and leaving the airport without waiting (who knows how long -- you are not missing a plane anymore) to be questioned (not that you have to answer questions :-]): way, way over the probable cause line (if they had probable cause they could hold you rule or no rule); imagine the same law in any other setting. Not like terrorists will not expect to be body searched.

Additionally the fine pressures (I believe the constitutional law phrase is "chills") Fourth Amendment rights to opt out of both experiences if you did not expect to be body searched -- or to be to repulsed by it.

Wonder how many cases -- more like what percentage -- of temporary sexual dysfunction are caused by too personal groping of women especially in public view, even because in view of family or friends?

The attraction of child molestation may be molestation itself

FWIW, it has finally occurred to me (not trained in psychology -- I don't even know if they even know this) that the attraction of molestation is molestation itself; exactly as rape is about power not sex. Always wondered why all these priests were molesting boys when the gay priests and the gay alter boys (one out of ten, believe me -- and that doesn't even count AC/DCs for what ever the latter is worth; the latter mostly not interested, even fear, sex with adults in my observations) are always going to know who each other are.

Michael Jackson didn't need to force himself on anybody. If 3000 boys were going though "Neverland" every year, 150-300 were gay and heavily in the closet. The real problem with gay priests is probably that both they and the gay alter boys are going to be right back in irresistible temptation-land like the seminary,

Got this idea after reading (about half of) Scout's Honor by Patrick Boyle (http://www.amazon.com/Scouts-Honor-Americas-Trusted-Institution/dp/0761500243/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290278076&sr=8-1). It appears that the majority of offenses are by failed heterosexuals many of whom have even been married. Why boys instead of girls? My guess, it may be just logistics. Easier to hang around with lots of boys without too many questions. Maybe if they were with girls they would do it to them.

"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor. NOT!

I went on hundreds of prison visits in New York State in the late '70's (Rikers Island, Elmira, Fishkill, Coxsaki, Camp Monterey and Hudson) and the metal detectors were set so sensitively the brass rivets in your plastic eyeglass frames would make them go off (take them off and go through again) -- but the frisks never touched anyone's genitals, male or female.
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"By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights," countered the TSA supervisor.
You cannot give up your First Amendment rights by buying a ticket -- nor your right to due process; going to jail without trial. You cannot give up your rights not to have the private areas of your body groped. The latter becomes especially egregious when the TSA, according to some stories, presents a male agent to intimately frisk a female flyer on the excuse of no female agent available (one of the first stories on Drudge I believe) for a RANDOM AIRPORT (as in on the ground) check -- not a bomb threat at 35,000 feet.
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I just finished reading about prosecution for leaving the pat-down area without permission: once you enter the pat down area you have to allow it (unless you get "permission" ???). NO RATIONAL RELATIONSHIP TO A VALID STATE INTEREST -- shamelessly violates 14th amendment RATIONAL TEST." You are forced to allow someone to grope your private parts because a terrorist might want to look at the no-tech, empty room (and leave unfrisked?). Even if it were high-tech, pat-down room what difference could being padded-down or not make? Someone at TSA has a serious skull full of mush.

The supposed letter of the law (check out the way law enforcement sees the strict legality of men frisking women as opposed to mere, if almost universal outside TSA stories, policy prohibitions) means that even if only a man is available a woman has to submit.
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Touching private parts could be considered a felony criminal law violation if used as part of random checks before entering a disco. You cannot agree to allow yourself to be assaulted.

When the government is the main -- only -- actor setting policy the Fourth Amendment may be invoked under the same kind of rationale that finds some so-called private contractors (e.g., leasing limo drivers) to be employees because all their job activities are governed by management.
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For the last word on pointless passenger over-focus check out: http://www.bnet.com/blog/travel-detective/why-not-pat-down-the-cargo-that-8217s-the-real-security-threat/101?promo=661&tag=nl.e661
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For the very last word (mine in this case) read: Case closed: people who would rather drive than fly -- at 10X the risk -- than fly after TSA groping at http://ontodayspage.blogspot.com/2010/11/case-closed-people-who-would-rather.html

"Socialism"? -- I call it "Roman Catholic social democracy"

Rebups always screech about supposed crackpot results of "socialism" in Europe (hereinafter referred to by me as "Roman Catholic social democracy" -- having read Tom Geoghegan's latest book "Were You Born On The Wrong Continent?"):

English overwhelming welfare state for perpetual drunks and violent misbehavers while out of work folks are left to sleep in the street (see the book "Our Culture, What's Left Of It") -- nothing to do with us.
French "riots" from the folks who brought you the French Revolution -- their labor market practice is backwards; they strike first, then negotiate! -- nothing to do with us.
Belgian 20% of labor force on permanent disability -- nothing to do with us.
Italian organized assassination of Prime Minister's friend who merely suggested making it easier for employers to fire workers -- remnant of crazed communist history -- nothing to do with us.

German BEST LABOR RELATIONS IN EUROPE -- German most all pervasive Roman Catholic social democracy (originated by West German Catholics, think Adenauer, in the 1950s). Also German best disciplined -- along with Northern Italy and Japan -- production line workers in the world.

Repubs like to cherry pick the idiosyncrasies of each and every economy and package them together as the depredations of "socialism." Germany now says its biggest export to other European nations is (even more pervasive, Roman Catholic) social democracy -- think about it America (if you ever wake up and smell a better life).

http://www.amazon.com/Were-You-Born-Wrong-Continent/dp/159558403X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288358513&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Our-Culture-Whats-Left-Mandarins/dp/156663721X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288358342&sr=8-1

"Domestication" and DADT

When I was a young teenager my fellow geek best friend complained while I was sitting on a park swing that I “wanted a playmate not a companion.” Which young friend from reports 10 years after seems was gay. I don’t know if it made me feel “shallow” at the time but for a heterosexual male I was operating according to (innate) plan.

You can call the evolution of animal behavior by a fancy name, “sociobiology”, or you can just say human animals are “domesticated” to live with each other according to prescribed practical patterns – with simple interfaces that can be clunky (a million lawyers rise for the judge but never think: I don’t have to salute the flag :-]).

Straight male camaraderie with males is based on what gay males might think of as very one-dimensional: on mutual interest only. The chief gay male interest in males is the same as the chief straight male interest in females – getting into their pants. This very non-mutual interest may be easy to ignore -- or even have fun to kidding about -- in a civilian workplace but can automatically obstruct the kind of (innate-straight) all-for-one and one-for-all fellowship that combat arms operate optimally with (“saves lives”).

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The sexual harassment to be feared from gay males living openly in the non-privacy of armed forces life is as multi-dimensional as male sexual harassment itself.

Straight males pester women on sex and everything else because our social perceptions have evolved blind to anything like the “overweening male ego” in females. I know this from observing the exact behavior in reverse from gays of both sexes. I often have to cut them slack for “taking me much too lightly” – they are incapable of learning “what they are up against”: my extremely self-important self (they would laugh -- this key trait may have evolved to get human males into child raising: monogamy – read “Lucy”). Expect endless trouble once pestering (especially – sneaky? – sexual type) gets type casted with gay – for their part they will never learn.

One more odd concept: gays do not understand why straight males and females are afraid of men because they are not afraid of men – they are afraid of women.

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I sincerely hope that Obama’s accepting gay recruits just two weeks before elections doesn’t make a hole in the Democratic Party the way school busing harmed the Democratic Party of the 70s. For fence sitting (what I would call) moderates, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for many.

Giving in to one federal judge’s ruling to overturn Congress seems to pave the way (it may have been paved thus already and I didn’t know about it) for a two-branch, executive/judicial-veto/government. The executive now seems to just need any lone federal judge to claim a law unconstitutional and it can claim the administration must follow the judge – no need to fight all the way to Supreme Court: as much as it thinks nobody notices.

Still think coming out in the armed services should not pose any fundamental social upset that cannot be overcome by a modest slice or two of practical indoctrination? If you had a 12 year old gay son or daughter would you advise them not to worry too much about coming out in grammar school?

Today's minimum wage SHOUT!

If average output (income, same thing) grows why does the economics profession not understand that the minimum wage should grow along with it (as well as inflation) -- instead of being joined at the hip with the concern -- seemingly their only concern -- that a minimum wage raise may cause a rise in unemployment? Why should it cause a rise as long as the wage goes up in step with inflation AND OVERALL PRODUCTIVITY GAINS?!

Other nations -- sane nations -- the minimum wage is raised in step with inflation AND PRODUCTIVITY!!!

In the insane nation -- what 1968 Americans would call early 2007 US -- our federal minimum wage dropped almost in half (in constant dollars) while average income (output, whatever) doubled.

HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

EUREKA! EUREKA! ARCHIMEDES MOMENT! FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO PROVE HOW FAR OFF ALL THESE SEEMINGLY INFORMED (OVER INFORMED), INTELLIGENT (OVER INTELLIGENT) MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS TRULY ARE!

HOLD BOTTOM 50 PERCENTILE WAGES WHERE THEY ARE -- MULTIPLY TOP 50 PERCENTILE WAGES 10X: ECONOMISTS WOULD STILL BE HOLDING EXACTLY THE SAME OVER INFORMED, OVER INTELLIGENT MINIMUM WAGE DISCUSSIONS; EXACTLY THE SAME -- WORD FOR WORD.

These discussions could be relevant for price movements at the margin. When the federal minimum wage drops in half from 1968 to early 2007 -- and the American median wage grows only 25% -- while average income doubles, then, the folks at the bottom are getting something like an order of magnitude (not precisely the right measure, but you get the idea) less than they could be getting out of the (amazing, incredibly squeezing) American labor market. (Which wage super-shrinking America's over informed, over intelligent progressives from Obama on down never seem to catch on to.)

America's amazing, incredibly squeezing labor market

My reply on Economist's View today:
US per capita GDP is 150% of typical OECD GDPs. 17% of 150% equals 25% -- presumably leaving 125% of our uniquely bulging GDP to pay for everything else. What's the problem paying?

Same problem that causes every other social disaster in this country: our amazing, incredibly squeezing US labor market.

Rare labor lawyer Thomas Geoghegan on what rare pro-labor (do I use "pro-labor" just because he focuses on labor -- which is so rare?) economist Richard B. Freeman said in his book "America Works" (right at the top of p. 266 in Geoghegan's new book "WERE YOU BORN ON THE WRONG CONTINENT":
"... if real wages had risen with productivity in roughly the same way it did in Germany and other countries, then the American worker would have been making $25 an hour ($28.12 in 2010 dollars) on the average in 2005 instead of just $16."
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I have just figured out that the Gini coefficient may no longer be a valid measure of American so-called "inequality" (I prefer "Great Wage Depression" or at least "shanghaied") because 90 percentile income share did not balloon any behind the 15% shift in income share to the top -- that begins above 97 percentile -- AND the 10 percentile figure leaves the gutting of the 50 percentile unreported and probably unnoticed by most who read the Gini ratio (who mostly presume 50 percentile share to be more or less where it should be -- true enough in Europe and 40 years ago here).

Not an economist (I do labor -- not rare for a cab driver) but I suspect a new ratio should be added to current "inequality" measures which would compare 50 percentile income to average income in the different economies -- only way I can think of to squeeze that missing AMERICAN 15% in -- but maybe the rare pro-labor economist can come up with a better one (maybe not: markets are not rocket science; just buying and selling).

The term "inequality" is like pointing to the tip of the iceberg

In 1991, Nicholas Scheele, the head of the Ford Motor Company in Mexico . . . said, "But is there any other country in the world where the working class . . . took a hit in their purchasing power of in excess of 50 percent over an eight-year period and you didn't have a social revolution?" [http://dieoff.org/page77.htm]

I don’t think anyone would call that kind of wage gouge by the weak, wan term “inequality.”

US average income doubled since 1968 while the median hourly wage grew 20%: from $12.50 to $15 – instead of a potential $25. Could that be a hidden gouge of 40%?

No need for “hidden loss” to describe the US federal minimum wage hit – as average income doubled. Between 1968 and early 2007 the minimum hourly dropped from $10 ($1.60 adjusted) to $5.50 – as average income doubled.

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From 1966 to 1968 I lived in an East Village Manhattan apartment which featured year ‘round rats, gas jets (inoperable) in wall that once provided light and windows overlooking a long park along which we could watch every free police car in the precinct line up for every call – show of force – before returning to their normal beats.

If you wanted your car burned for the insurance you just removed your plates within sight of my block and within the hour the neighborhood kids would have it burned to the ground – no gratuity. One 16 year old told my 17 year old brother he could not wait to be 17 years old so he could go to Vietnam like his brother (it wasn’t patriotism)!

These days, drug gangs would contest a neighborhood like this. Back then, heroin was obtainable by the sorry few addicts – but supporting a neighborhood requires drugs with broader, especially suburban, appeal. Back then, the minimum hourly was 80% of, for its time, a much healthier median wage.

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Yesterday something caused me to look up the 90th-to-10th percentile income ratio in The State of Working America 2008-2009 (table 8.15 on p. 380). US ratio was approaching 5 while the average of other OECD nations was a tad over 3.

Suddenly it hit me the US ratio is more like the tip of the iceberg. It is true that 15% of US income share shifted from the bottom 90% to the top 10% [http://ontodayspagelinks.blogspot.com/2008/08/income-share.html] BUT the 90-97 percentile did not get the extra share – the 90-97 percentile managed to keep pace with doubling income but that was all – they still enjoy the same percentage share they got 40 years ago (that their predecessors got anyway).

If today’s median hourly income dropped from $15 back to $12.50 over the next eight years would the media report it as mere “inequality”? Supposed it dropped to $10 or all the way back to $7.50 – at what point would everybody come up with a phrase that communicates the disaster as something much worse than a rise in “inequality”?

Best prescription for statemanship ever -- on Lincoln

 

"In the President of the United States Providence has vouchsafed a leader whose moral perceptions are blinded neither by sophistry nor enthusiasm—who knows that permanent results must grow, and cannot be prematurely seized—a man who, whatever he has not, has that inestimable common sense which is the last best gift of Heaven to all who are clothed with great authority." 

 

[Finally dug this out of the internet -- after years. Saw it once in Sandburg's 1000 page, one book biography of Lincoln. Never could find the whole quote with the common sense ending anywhere again -- in the same book edition. ??? Best prescription for a statesman I have ever seen. Written by the editor of Harper's Weekly, May 3, 1862.]

GOOGLE search settings won't don't save -- 2 step fix

Two steps to reset search setting (this problem started yesterday, 9/10, when GOOGLE introduced instant search, apparently as default):

One: go into PREFERENCES and deselect "instant search" in favor of the old search -- THEN GET OUT.

Two: go BACK into PREFERENCES and reset your old preferences (if you try to do both at once it wont work -- "nice" ambush for troubleshooters).

WINNING ECONOMICS ISSUES FOR DUMMIES (meaning Democrats)

Economists – males most appropriately – suffer physics envy. Economic interactions are convoluted by government formulae. Distorting their look at those wheels within wheels are mostly unheard of male pack instincts along the well understood cultural biases (we have been "domesticated" to live with us for 100s of millennia).

Pack hunter midbrains channel groupthink – with a preference for on-the-spot doability: prey not tarrying while predators squabble. Wheels within wheels of groupthink: economic pros must in turn persuade mostly unknowing political and journalistic packs if they are actually going to cause any change. There seems walls within walls to innovation – to males.

Living too remotely from the day-to-day interactions – no pitfall in organic chemistry – can fuzz out crucial ifs, ands and buts. Economists of all stripes (most are progressive) start every minimum wage dialogue with ye ole first week supply and demand chart and mostly end there – skip selling fewer units (or hours) for more dollars – miss that a raise that increases teen unemployment may have attracted more trainable adults (labor price was too low) – forever blind to the missing American-born workers behind Chicago fast food counters where the state minimum wage recently reached Eisenhower's 1956 level, $8/hr – and even behind San Francisco counters where annual inflation adjustments will maintain the city minimum wage, at LBJ's 1968 level, $10/hr. $7.25/hr ($5.50/hr!): fuggedaboutit!

The first commandment of medical practitioners is making daily rounds to observe patients. Would it really take a "small army" of economists, as recently supposed, to plow enough data to explain income inequality (a wishy-washy phrase that sounds more like a shave than a haircut)? Or are everyday bad to worse American labor experiences enough to make the culprit perfectly plain: the almost total (but one-step undoable?) coast-to-coast blackout of labor bargaining power -- and political sway.

American unionized (!) labor hell: "Dr. Pepper Snapple Group made $555 million in profits last year. CEO Larry Young made $6.5 million but says Mott’s applesauce workers must take a $1.50 an hour pay cut" [see http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/09/07/motts-corporate-greed-rotten-to-the-core/]: specific fit to this specific occasion – where is the missing legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreement to neutralize management’s squawking about “above market pay”? Minimum wage hell: now $2.75/hr below LBJ's 1968 level, double the per capita income later: zero labor lobbying -- and going down.

The second commandment of medical practitioners is “studies show” -- even when they can’t pinpoint all contributory factors. Studies show that only legally mandated, sector-wide labor agreements (instituted originally along with welfare guarantees to contain labor costs to more quickly rebuild postwar Europe) have been proven effective in preventing the race to the wage and benefit bottom -- in decades of “trials” across first, second and third world labor markets.

Under sector-wide all employees in the same geographic locale doing the same work -- even for different employers – work under common collectively bargained contracts.

Card-check legislation would be to re-unionizing America what the $2.75/hr short-of-1968 hike was to restoring the minimum wage (in the poorest section of America, a $15/hr minimum would raise the price of: housing, medicine, transportation, food, clothing – what?). Today’s median wage is $15/hr – a teeny-tiny $2.50/hr more than the 1968 median. There appears no wholesome economic reason why the median could not have doubled to $25/hr as average income doubled. Is “shanghaied” be a better fit than “inequality”?

Will someone please shout out “sector-wide labor agreements” at their next crowded economic or political forum? They won’t cause a panicked stampede – except maybe from the outside-in. Supermarket workers and airline employees (for a start) are ready to kill (even vote) for mandatory sector-wide bargaining. 50 million voting age toilers out of 100 million say they want to be unionized – before any nationwide re-unionizing dialogue has even begun.