rigorousintuition.ca

Yeah, really. You aren't surprised, are you? Of course they're three steps ahead of you, they're billionaires.

Short form: It looks like the Kochtopus organizations and Rep. Mica of Fl. hope to steer TSAoutrage to push use of private contractors.

Shorter form: The Xe/Blackwater security scan.


via the Nation: TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists...

I'm not really sure what this means, but it seems very un-Kock-like to care about "little guy" shit like this. After all, David "Don't Touch My Junk" Koch LOL doesn't fly 1st Class, he flies private jet. Anyway, the old Cui Bono helps out:

One person who seems to have the answer is Rep. John Mica, the Florida Republican who is set to chair the Transportation Committee. Mica co-wrote the bill establishing the TSA in 2001, just over a month after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. A little-known provision in that bill allowed airports to “opt out” from the federal agency’s security umbrella and to instead hire private contractors. As Media Matters pointed out recently, the whole reason why the TSA was formed was because private contractors paying airport security minimum wages were considered a big part of the reason why the 9/11 terror attacks were allowed to happen. Since the formation of the TSA, not a single terror attack originating from an American airport has taken place. But apparently that’s not nearly as relevant as the complaints of a few libertarians.

The links between Mica, the libertarians, the Kochs, and the TSA scandal are only now emerging, and we hope more journalists will dig deeper. So far, we have learned:

*Mica’s longtime chief of staff, Russell Roberts, lists the Koch-backed Mercatus Center as the top sponsor of Roberts’ privately-financed travel expenses, according to Congressional travel disclosure forms. Roberts stated in his form that he participated in discussions related to “transportation policy.”

*In 2005, Mica reportedly came out in favor of backscatter X-Ray machines, or “porn scan” body scanners, which he now opposes.

*Immediately after the launching of the “National Opt-Out Campaign” by Washington grassroots lobbyist and “ordinary citizen” Brian Sodergren, Rep. Mica sent out letters to the heads of at least 100 airports across America advising them to “opt out” of the government-funded TSA program and hand over the job to private contractors. One of the first airports to sign on to Rep. Mica’s privatization program, Orlando’s Sanford Airport, happens to lie in Rep. Mica’s district. The airport also happens to be a client of Rep. Mica’s daughter, D’Anne Mica, who is listed as a partner in two lobbying/PR firms consulted by Sanford Airport. One of Ms. Mica’s PR firms,“Grasshopper Media,” boasts of its “history of success in organizing strategic and comprehensive grassroots campaigns.” In other words: Astroturfing.

*According to a recent AP article, “Companies that could gain business if airports heed Mica's call have helped fill his campaign coffers. In the past 13 years, Mica has received almost $81,000 in campaign donations from political action committees and executives connected to some of the private contractors already at 16 U.S. airports.” (“Airports Consider Congressman’s Call to Ditch the TSA”)

While so far there is no “smoking gun” linking Rep. Mica to the anti-TSA campaign, there is clearly enough evidence to call into question the official version of events as a “spontaneous” outbreak of anti-TSA hysteria carried out by “ordinary guys” that it claims to be. Instead, there is plenty of evidence of a coordinated campaign for purposes that are only just beginning to emerge—a campaign with a profit motive and a political objective. What we should not do is assume that, in the midst of the worst recession in decades, when untold thousands of families are being thrown out of their homes in fraudulent foreclosures, that the biggest most pressing issue facing Americans is the “porn scan” at airports.

I almost forgot. This is obviously a KWH: TSA feel-up pat-downs. Kochs.

Throw a rock hit a Koch brother... Pshaw. Can't Glenn Beck get his crack staff working on this? Oh sorry they are on crack, haha.

Boy, a catchy salacious buzz phrase does it every time. We need to use this in countering PTB misinformation I think. We can't put ourselves above all of it -- we have to meet people where they are.

"Oh, I have to cooperate, 'cause otherwise my friends will all think that I'm a Tea Partier!"

(If the thinking of your "friends" is that shallow, who the hell cares what they "think"?)

The Kochs are playing 12 dimensional chess so the right play is to accept the body scanners/pat downs? It sounds more like the writers are concerned that citizens' objections will make the Democrats look bad (as in fascist). Thus they attempt to associate TSA dissent with the Kochs/tea baggers.

thatsmystory wrote:It sounds more like the writers are concerned that citizens' objections will make the Democrats look bad (as in fascist). Thus they attempt to associate TSA dissent with the Kochs/tea baggers.

Definitely this: "the complaints of a few libertarians", etc. Does this kind of writer really have a problem with a surveillance state? Apparently not.

Something I've missed: what specifically prompted this ball-squeezing procedure? I'm sure it's recent, but is it a new directive from Congress, something from the Presidency, or something issued by the TSA?

Ames and Levine make a strong case, and nobody's shown any of it to be false, but they're taking heat from all sides anyway. Strange. At this rate they'll wind up apologizing for something they didn't do and the popular perception will be that they made some journalistic faux pas, when nothing could be further from the truth. In this respect this story looks like Rathergate redux -- no one ever showed Mapes and Rather's docs to be false, but the the sandman sprinkled his magic dust and now the popular perception is that they were. Anyway here's what Greenwald, Scahill, and now Larisa A aren't mentioning:

Strangely enough, just a few days before Tyner's episode, another self-described "libertarian," Meg McLain, went online telling almost the exact same story of oppression and attempted sexual molestation at the hands of TSA agents. McLain is an occasional co-host of a libertarian radio show out of a libertarian quasi-commune located in Keene, New Hampshire. As reported in the Washington City Paper, the libertarian "Free Keene" movement where McLain makes her home is yet another libertarian project tied to the billionaire Koch brothers, the prime backers of the Tea Party campaign, through the Koch-funded Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Meg McLain almost became a national celebrity as the first victim of the body scanner/TSA molesters. On November 8, McLain was preparing to fly out of the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, airport, when she claimed to have been the victim of invasive TSA molestation. According to McLain, when she refused to have her body scanned, the TSA agents supposedly started screaming "Opt out! Opt out!" and pulled her aside and "molested" her—specifically, they "squeezed and twisted" her breasts so hard that "it hurt." (etc.etc., omitting predicatable details)

There was only one problem with McLain's story: she made it up. The TSA released video evidence showing that McLain wasn't molested, wasn't screamed at and wasn't attacked by a dozen cops and half a dozen TSA agents. In fact, other passengers don't seem to notice her, although a TSA agent does seem to be trying to comfort McLain, offering her tissues as the libertarian rebel breaks out crying.

By her own account, McLain was down in Florida visiting a pair of traveling libertarians who were spreading the word of libertarianism in what they billed as "Liberty On Tour," funded at least partly by Koch-backed organizations like "Students for Liberty." One of the libertarians that McLain met with, Peter Eyre, has spent much of the past five years on a variety of Koch payrolls: as an intern at the Koch-founded Cato Institute, a "Koch Fellow" at the Drug Policy Alliance and nearly three years as director for the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University, home also to the Koch-funded Mercatus Center.

George Donnelly, a libertarian colleague of McLain's who writes that he "loves" her traveling libertarian friends in Florida and "learned a lot" from them, also happens to be one of two men behind the WeWontFly.com, one of the main websites pushing the "National Opt-Out Day" movement. The domain was registered on November 3, 2010, five days before McLain's fake airport incident. Donnelly provided McLain with the funds to return back to her libertarian commune in Keene, New Hampshire, after the (fake) incident.

http://www.thenation.com/article/156647 ... 1#comments

As for Tyner I figured out his game as soon as I heard the line, noble defenses notwithstanding. Not to say that TSA kabuki and the rest of the DHS aren't monstrous but we've known that for eight years.

So... The implication here is that the Koch's intent is entirely to badjacket sincere privacy activism?

psynapz wrote:So... The implication here is that the Koch's intent is entirely to badjacket sincere privacy activism?

Possibly but I don't see the profit in that. What's going on more likely is a push to a) privatize the TSA, i.e. give those $multi-billion airport contracts to outfits like Wackenhut; b) get in front of AFSCME organization of TSA workers, and c) direct 8 years of resentment against Patriot Act scams like this one toward the Obama admin, which, earnest rubes they are, they stuck their heads out and got gobsmacked with.

And then there's this, from the Koch-funded Cato institute:

Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off
by Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald, a contributing writer to Salon, is the author of the Cato Institute study "Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12476

Say it ain't so Glenn..

lupercal wrote:And then there's this, from the Koch-funded Cato institute:

Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off
by Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald, a contributing writer to Salon, is the author of the Cato Institute study "Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies."

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12476

Say it ain't so Glenn..

Well, that's interesting. I want to know more about that.

Thanks for the heads up, Lupercal.

Not so fast my friends. RawStory's own...

at-Largely
by Larisa Alexandrovna
November 25, 2010
Journalism Interrupted: The Nation Fail

The Nation has been a true and trusted friend of mine for years. I know the editors and many of the writers and have nothing but respect for their work. Most importantly, I have great respect for their consistent adherence to the highest journalistic standards.

Yesterday, however, The Nation ran a piece that is nothing short of character assassination, serving no newsworthy purpose, and rightfully criticized by others as a barely disguised political hit-piece.

The article, entitled "TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal" by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine essentially implies that the entire libertarian movement is nothing more than a front for the billionaire Koch brothers and their corporatist allies -- and by extension that libertarian protesters and groping victims are all hired pawns representing these interests. But do Ames and Levine implicate the American Civil Liberties Union in this project as well? After all, the David and Charles Koch each donated $10 million to the ACLU, an organization which is also opposing the TSA's nude scanners and full body frisks.

This article offers nothing in the way of proof for its allegations, but provides plenty of speculation and bizarre claims of guilt-by-association, beginning with the very first paragraph:

Does anyone else sense something strange is going on with the apparently spontaneous revolt against the TSA? This past week, the media turned an "ordinary guy," 31-year-old Californian John Tyner, who blogs under the pseudonym "Johnny Edge," into a national hero after he posted a cell phone video of himself defending his liberty against the evil government oppressors in charge of airport security.

The writers fail to grasp something basic about society it seems. When people are outraged, they tend to be galvanized very quickly. Many people who respects individual rights, regardless of political leanings, oppose the TSA's new and extremely invasive security policies.

Consider for a moment what the issue is. The government of "we the people" demanded that the "we" that it is supposed to represent give up our rights to our most sacrosanct property -- our bodies -- in order to have free passage across this supposed free nation.

MORE BELOW THE FOLD

In essence, my ability to travel in the United States of America is contingent on me allowing a government agent to either see me naked or feel me up. This outrages me. This outrages everyone I know. The level of invasiveness is the galvanizing factor. So no, I don't find it "strange" that there was a "spontaneous revolt against the TSA." I would find it strange if there was instead the sound of crickets in response to such clear and obscene acts of government overreach.

Ames and Levine are suspicious, but suspicions alone do not make for good journalism. Moreover, unfounded and unsupported suspicions -- like those on display in this piece -- do not even make for a good op-ed.

They continue:

While this issue is certainly important—and offensive—to Americans, we are nonetheless skeptical about how and why this story turned into a national movement. In fact, this whole campaign feels a bit like déjà-vu: As the first reporters to expose the Tea Party as an Astroturf PR campaign funded by FreedomWorks and Koch-related front groups back in February, 2009, we see many of the same elements driving the current "rebellion" against the TSA: Koch-related libertarians, Washington lobbyists and PR operatives posing as "ordinary citizens," and suspicious fake-grassroots outrage relentlessly promoted in the same old right-wing echo chamber.

Perhaps Ames and Levine took a dinner discussion they were having and simply assumed that it would make for good journalism. Not so. They ask and answer their own question and yet continue to express skepticism. They note that "the [TSA] issue" is "offensive to Americans" and then ask "how and why this story turned into a national movement" all in the same sentence.

Moreover, the implication that the genuine outrage of the populace over the TSA touch-and-feel scandal is somehow a mirage fabricated by special interests, devalues the real concern that people have about having their rights violated.

In any case, I am certain members of the Tea Party movement are indeed outraged over what the TSA is doing, but so are members of every political and ideological leaning. Liberals are outraged, but the national outrage and outcry is not a liberal creation. Conservatives are also outraged, but neither could they claim ownership of this national response. The common denominator here is individual rights, which as I noted earlier, most Americans feel strongly about. I am outraged, but hardly a member of the Tea Party movement.

All of that aside, how is this in any way journalism? It is suspicion first and speculation after, based on a straw-man of political origins and presented as solid news reporting. Yet The Nation published this? Why?

Then comes the character assassination:

So far, all we know about "ordinary guy" John Tyner III, the freedom fighter who took on the TSA agents, is that, according to a friendly hometown profile in the San Diego Union-Tribune, "he leans strongly libertarian and doesn't believe in voting. TSA security policy, he asserts 'isn't Republican and it isn't Democratic.' " [Emphasis added.]

Tyner attended private Christian schools in Southern California and lives in Oceanside, a Republican stronghold next to Camp Pendleton, the largest Marine Corps base on the West Coast.

So Tyner leans strongly libertarian -- and the point is? Tyner does not believe in voting -- and the point is? Then they go on to dig into his past, where he went to school (Gulp, Christian schools!) and note that he happens to live in a Republican stronghold. So? What is the point? What does this prove?

I lived in South Florida for many years, a state that bleeds red to the core and even had a Bush as governor. Does that make me a Bush loyalist or a Republican? Does my geography marry me to an ideology or a political movement? Florida happens to have several military installations as well. Does that somehow implicate me in something? What is the actual point here other than guilt-by geography?

What is Tyner's crime other than he is openly a libertarian (they still don't tell us if he is a member of any party)? This is a philosophy which values individual rights. Would it not make sense for him to be outraged by the TSA invasion of our bodies? Do his philosophical leanings somehow lessen his right to be outraged?

The bad journalism continues:

At least one local TSA administrator wondered if Tyner hadn't come to the airport prepared to create a scandal.

At least one? Is that two, three, how many? What is the name of this "one" TSA agent? The anonymous TSA agent aside, their observation is telling in that it states the obvious. "Wondered"? The whole purpose of a protest or a show of civil disobedience is to create a scandal, is it not? So again, what is the point of this assertion and where are the specifics?

Ames and Levine then go on -- at length -- to describe another "libertarian" who also protested the TSA, which turned out to be a hoax apparently. Yet they fail to tie Tyner to this other person. The only connection -- if one can call it that -- is that Tyner and the other protester happen to be (and we don't even know this to be true) similar in their philosophical and/or political leanings. Again, guilt-by philosophical association and maybe not even. The point is? What is the point?

They spend an inordinate amount of time describing the travels of this other "libertarian" and her connections to -- yikes! -- yet other libertarians, without offering anything other than speculation, conjecture, and the implication that the libertarian movement is somehow involved in these dealings -- whatever these dealings are. In any case, let me re-state the obvious again: one would expect that a person who values individual rights would indeed be outraged by what the TSA is doing.

Ames and Levine conflate all libertarians with lobbyists and corporate interests, yet prove nothing that implicates anyone in the libertarian movement of being involved in any sort of dirty trickery on behalf of the powerful.

They attack a protester for his philosophical views (which actually are in line with his actions) and reduce him to a geographically contaminated paid shill. They assert, but fail to prove any substantive connection of anyone to anything. Most importantly, they seem to be defending the TSA from what they call "national hysteria."

Yes, I am part of that hysteria. What do my credentials have to be in order for my outrage to count as valid?

Finally, let me add something about the response that Ames and Levine published in answer to Glenn Greenwald's criticsim.

In general, the response offers nothing in support of their original allegations and attempts to re-write an article already written. If the original article needs to be explained with a second article, then clearly the original article is lacking.

My issue with their response is primarily with Ames' need to bring Levine's Soviet background into his defense from a valid criticism of their sloppy attack on those who would oppose the TSA:

My co-author, Yasha Levine—whose grandfather survived Stalin’s GULAGs-- fled the Soviet Union to America to escape anti-Semitism. So we believe that even Greenwald can understand what a gigantic bummer, for lack of a better word, it’s been for us to come back to America, and to find ourselves attacked and frankly slandered for being alleged government oppressors.

Defending the TSA in this case does in fact put Ames and Levine on the wrong side of an issue that defies party affiliations and is essentially a core principle of any free society. If they don't want to be seen as defenders of the TSA, then perhaps they should stop defending the TSA.

But what is most distasteful is that a criticism of the bad journalism on display in their original piece has somehow been made into an attack on a grandson of a Jewish Soviet refugee. Seriously? What does Levine's heritage have to do with a valid criticism of an article he wrote? Nothing. Relying on the victim card only further illustrates the lack of ethics on display here. The Nation owes Tyner an apology at the very least.

http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2010 ... -fail.html

Larisa writes:

Yes, I am part of that hysteria.

Strange that in a lengthy rant about "bad journalism" that and and the fact that she lived in Florida are the only fresh facts she adds to the discussion. I like Larisa so I'll leave it there.

Ames is a HST style journalist, though...I don't read The Exile for the well-documented scoops...does anyone? It is hateful, subjective and hugely entertaining. It is great writing, but it's not journalism.

I got my comment on Ames' follow-up defense piece deleted (because he's a Soviet like that) but it was only a simple point: The first seven paragraphs were the weakest part of the TSAstroturf article and it should have been edited out. There's a LOT of interesting meat in that Nation piece but it's all at the end. The intro really does make it sound like their focus is Tyner, but they've got nothing on him.

Less than nothing: a snarky speculative quote from an anonymous TSA official? Horseshit.

All the other material, on the other hand, was quite interesting stuff. It was more like an RI thread than an actual article, though -- just a bunch of possible links and obvious anomalies.

As it often (always?) the case, they just went to press too soon. Which, for what they do, is fine...perfect, even. But it happened to get published in The Nation, instead of their website.

Now, Greenwald's reaction was kind of sad and weird. And dumb. His best tactical move would have been to just ignore that shit...the poor man is only writing 100,000 words a day, I know, but surely he's got more important shit to focus on than some of the funniest bloggers on Earth getting published in the Nation.

I would also like to say: Tyner is a big boy, too and doesn't need a bunch of grown men in the media rushing to his defense. Tyner is an exceptionally eloquent mammal who is fully capable of fighting his own battles against...well, just about anybody, so far.

An interesting clusterfuck, but it's a small accident on a huge interstate that's mostly in flames.

Unlike the teabaggers the left (excluding Obama apologists) has been consistent in calling out corruption and police state policies.

The reason many on the left object to the article is because the authors come across as TSA apologists by focusing on a potential Koch brothers scheme while downplaying body scanners and intrusive pat downs.