See Something, Say Something, Do Nothing

Leviathan is a critter of many talents, chief among them mass-murder, pathological lying, and kleptomania. The beast is also unparalleled at wasting resources—but only ours since it has none of its own.

To wit, various bureaucracies have frittered away countless billions of our taxes on that obnoxious order to “See Something, Say Something.” (New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority “has spent $2 million to $3 million a year” from 2002 until at least 2011, by which time it had also  “licensed the tagline to ‘54 domestic and international transportation providers and government agencies for use in their own anti-terrorism campaigns.’” I did not find a cumulative sum for what Amerikan governments at all levels have squandered on this propaganda. And good gracious, I recently passed an elementary school with “S.S.,S.S.” [oh, such an appropriate abbreviation!] on its marquee. I’m not a mother, but aren’t kids natural tattletales? I should think any parent trying to cure Little Lyle and Small Sarah of that vice would deeply resent the school’s efforts to the contrary.)

So after lavishing all that money and the last 17 years on recruiting us as snitches, what does the State do when a volunteer approaches it with valuable intel that could save the ol’ Homeland? Nothing:

When a lone man pulled up in a rental truck behind her at the Albany[, NY] airport terminal and got out, Capital Region resident Laura Bradigan became suspicious.

She was there to pick up a cousin, but in the post-9/11 era of “See Something, Say Something,” when the man began asking people if he could borrow their cell phones, Bradigan alerted authorities.

…she rushed to a Transportation Security Administration agent standing nearby. What happened next is in dispute.

“I said, ‘I’m really concerned,'” Bradigan said she told him. The driver, she recalled, appeared to be of “Middle Eastern” descent.

She said the agent responded, “I’m on break.”

When she repeated her concern, she said, he told her, “Did you hear me? I said, ‘I’m on break.'”

Love it! And doesn’t the harping about his break send this right over the top? Thank God for bureaucrats’ sloth, apathy, and ineptitude, or we’d all land in the poky, courtesy of Alert Citizens such as the fearless Ms. Bradigan.

Eventually, after more hemming and hawing, the TSA’s goon found a cop—despite their pretensions, the Thieves and Sexual Assailants have no authority to arrest, so they’re useless should a non-blue-gloved terrorist ever set foot in an airport (so highly unlikely it’s nigh impossible)—but by that time, “the man had got back in the truck and driven away.

Naturally, the TSA had its “We did everything we should have, and by the book, too” boilerplate ready, and with its usual eloquence, too:

“We were made aware of the suspicious activity report made by a citizen to one the TSA Officers assigned to Albany International Airport,” said Bart Johnson, the federal security director at the airport. “The matter was reported to law enforcement according to our established protocols and law enforcement handled it.

By the way, Fearless Bradigan is a classic example of why amateur snitching not only doesn’t work but clogs the State’s machinery. So I say bring more of it on! You go, Fearless!

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7:29 am on July 18, 2018