TSA and the 4th Amendment

It seems there is a story daily this week about TSA abuses in airports. I began wondering at what point the 4th amendment steps in to protect you against TSA harassment. After some research, it turns out, apparently some 1973 court ruling said you have essentially no 4th amendment rights in airports. Yes unbelievably, zones exist where your unalienable rights can be suspended. It's amazing small rulings like this with potentially huge ramifications go unnoticed by the general public, and how a ruling made decades before the existence of the TSA can justify their illegal behavior. Their response, "passengers may avoid the search by electing not to fly."

Chase Overdraft Coverage

Chase bank has been bombarding me with ads and documentation to renew my overdraft coverage. Which means that even if I have no money in the account, my card is still accepted. But I'm hit with a big fee. That's their scam. They make a lot of money from that program. If I don't have any money my card should get declined!

Almost everyday they've sent me a letter about it. It is getting to the point in annoyance of me calling them up. In these letters, there is always new copy too. Always presented differently, with some new angle.

They charge a $34 fee each time you use your card, with insufficient funds (yet your card is still accepted everywhere). You could unknowingly, which is what they want, buy some gas, a pizza, and a water bottle some place else, and end up paying over a hundred dollars in fees alone.

I remember, I brought that up to a friend, who is a Chase employee, a while ago. He said "it's only 34 dollars". Yes, $34 per transaction. You buy a bus ticket and a hamburger, get slapped with a $68 fee, that doesn't include other charges. How is that not a scam.

I'm not only getting tired of Chase spamming me with this BS. But I know thousands of their customers are falling for their misleading letters. My bank, or any bank, should not try to devise these tricks, scams, and misleading programs to extort money from its customers.

USA bailing out Greece? Yes

Americans like to think of the Greek financial fiasco as a European problem. What a majority probably don't know is that they are going to help foot the bill. The United States supplies 20% of IMF funding. This means that US taxpayers will be providing around $8 billion dollars of the $145 billion package to rescue Greece from default. The scam doesn't stop there.

It also looks like the IMF loan is being made "junior" to existing Greek debt. Instead of how in normal finance, the last lender is usually "senior". This means it should get the money back first. Not the case here. Greece is going to pay first, with the new money, the seedy unscrupulous bankers who loaned it the money to get into this mess in the first place. Then when the cash runs out again, and it looks like it will, most analysts only calling this package a "band-aid", Greece will have nothing to pay back the countries, e.g Germany, the US, that have bailed it out. Our loan is never going to be paid back.

This is yet another example of the recent trend of bailing out and rescuing companies that have made bad choices. It is not the responsibility, in any way, of taxpayers or governments to pay companies for making bad investment and lending choices. What happened to risk? These companies and banks have gotten so big and important, "too big to fail" through fraud, that not bailing them out would be disastrous. How long can we keep subsidizing incompetent crooked companies?

Full Body Scanner Doesn't Find Bomb

Ever since the "December Bomber" attack, full body scans at airport checkpoints have been pushed as a security solution. In this German video, the scanner finds the fat man's cell phone and microphone, but failed to find the bomb making materials he simply hid, in his suit and pants pockets, his mouth, and his socks. The scanners don't work. Full body scanners are yet another part of the performance of national security at airports worldwide, meanwhile all these emerging scanner companies are set to make millions.