© 2012, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

The Obama GrabTM

Everyone surely knows the whole body naked-scanning machines that TSA rushed into service at airports around the country immediately after the mid-term elections. These days they are impossible to miss while traveling.

If one were to wonder if safety was forgotten in the rush to field the machines as quickly as possible, here’s some food for thought:

• Boston TSA employees seem to be experiencing a higher than average rate of skin cancer¹
• FDA has not tested the full body scanners for safety²
• NIST has not tested the full body scanners for safety³
• additional action was recommended by the Johns Hopkins University to avoid exceeding the general public dose recommendation of 100 mrem per year⁴
• the units have areas where beam overshoot will expose bystanders to repeated doses; protective shields were recommended, but seem to not have been implemented⁵
• the systems were never studied for their cancer inducing properties using standard methods such as mutant mice⁶
• the often quoted comparison between cosmic background radiation received during flight and the scanning machines is inaccurate, because the energy levels of the radiation are orders of magnitude different⁷
• the dose estimations are likely to be inaccurate (too low), because the energy levels used concentrate more of the radiation in and near the skin, causing localized doses much higher than the “full body average”⁸

To be fair, the FDA responded to some of these issues⁹. Strangely, in the lengthy response nowhere does the FDA state that it studied the systems itself, or that the FDA has determined the systems to be safe. The response made reference to third party safety studies, but not only were these studies not performed on behalf of the FDA on the systems themselves, some of them pointed out issues that had not been addressed by the TSA¹⁰.

Further, a key study made by JHU was heavily redacted, making independent verification impossible. Not to mention that the characterization of the third party evaluations was at best questionable, as the FDA claimed NIST had provided “safety data”, when NIST states that it didn’t test the units for safety¹¹.

And last but not least, in a response to the FDA, it seems that the JHU report was inconsistent and in fact implies that the primary radiation was measured in a manner that provided a lower than actual reading¹².

Perhaps we should all just drive a car or resign ourselves to the Obama Grab^TM until we can all vote out the Dear Leader and his gang that brought us this multi-billion dollar skin cancer experiment.

© 2011, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Obama Motion - Uncovered

The corruption case for former Illinois governor Blagojevich is getting more interesting thanks to a PDF file snafu with a defense motion document.

While the judge has ordered certain topics to be kept under seal, it seems that someone chose to redact text ¹ by changing the background color of the text, rather than completely erasing the text.

Anyone with some experience with Adobe Acrobat can easily uncover the text, either by cutting and pasting it to another document, or by changing the text color back to what it would normally be.

We have attached a version of the PDF that shows the previously hidden parts of the document. However, we wanted to highlight the parts that had been erased, and instead of changing the document so that the previously hidden text looks normal, we chose to change the text color such that the redacted portion appear white on a black background.²

A revelation in the previously hidden parts of the document is that Blago alleges that he talked to Obama about the Senator seat shopping that landed him in his current predicament, in addition to other corrupt topics. Further, Blago claims that tapes and documents the government doesn’t want to produce to the defense prove his case.

What makes this interesting, is that if the tapes and documents are as damaging as Blago alleges, then Obama might be caught in a lie when he claimed to never have spoken with Blago about such topics.

It would be very interesting indeed, if Blago’s defense will turn into Obama’s version of the blue dress with spots.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

A shortened version:

1. It will cost $750 annually to go without health insurance, even if you are young and healthy. (Section 1501)

2. You won’t be able to get health insurance premiums that reflect your (presumably good) lifestyle. (Section 2701).

3. You won’t be able to bargain for lower health insurance costs by agreeing to certain coverage limits. (Section 2711).

4. You won’t be able to save by choosing a policy that doesn’t cover some preventive care. (Section 2712).

5. You won’t be able to offer cheaper insurance to employees by limiting the definition of “children” to something less than 26 years of age. (Section 2714).

6. “You must buy a policy that covers ambulatory patient services, emergency services, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; laboratory services; preventive and wellness services; chronic disease management; and pediatric services, including oral and vision care.” Regardless of if you need such services or not. (Section 1302).

7. Trying to balance cost of the plan with what percentage the plan covers is limited. (Section 1302 (d) (1) (A))

8. You can’t offer (or buy) policies with higher deductibles than $2,000/$4,000 in exchange for a lower premium. (Section 1302 (c) (2) (A).

9. It will cost an employer with more than 101 employees $750 (or $2,000 to $3,000, depending on what comes out of the closed door meetings) not to offer insurance. (Section 1513).

10. You can’t place more than $2,500 into a Flexible Health Spending Account. (Section 9005 (i)).

11. Physicians will be pressured into limiting the services they use through government monitoring. (Section 3003 (i))

12. A physician won’t be able to own a hospital. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (A))

13. A current physician owner of a hospital won’t be able to expand the hospital, except in limited circumstances, and even then the expansion is very limited. (Section 6001 (i) (1) (B), Section 6601 (i) (3) (E) and Section 6001 (i) (3) (C)).

14. The government will control premium increases. (Section 1003)

15. The government will take $2.3 billion or more every year from the pharmaceutical industry. (Section 1404, and Section 9008 (b))

16. The government will take $2 billion or more every year from medical device makers. (Section 9009 (b), and Section 1405).

17. The government will take $6.7 billion or more every year from insurance companies. (Section 1406, and Section 9010 (b) (1) (A and B))

18. Insurance companies will be limited in what kind of talent they can hire as CEOs, as deferred compensation is limited to $500,000. (Section 9014).

19. You will face a marriage penalty in that you will pay an additional 0.5% tax, or perhaps as much as 3.8%, on income over $250,000 if you file a joint return and $200,000 if you file an individual return. (Section 9015, and Section 1402)

20. Cosmetic surgery, or whatever is defined as such by the government, has a 5% tax on it. (Section 9017).

We won’t even begin with the many Constitutional problems this bill poses. Hope and change, Komrade.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Paul Revere in the 1790 Census

A recurring topic these days is the 2010 US Census, and what exactly one has to do in response to the tri-fold form currently being mailed to every known “home” in the United States.

Information, misinformation, believes, and rumors abound, and the situation isn’t helped by somewhat misleading information provided by the Census itself. (This will be discussed below.)

It isn’t our intention to interpret law or provide legal advice, but it seems to us that one could take a few different positions on the Census:

1. Respond in full, perhaps using the form as requested, or waiting for a door-to-door Census worker to pay a visit;
2. Not respond at all, and waiting to see if a door-to-door Census worker appears;
3. Respond in full or in part, but making some inaccurate or misleading statements on the form; or
4. Respond only to the part that is required for the Census to perform its Constitutional function.

The Census tries to scare people into responding by implying that the maximum fine for not responding is $5,000¹, but it seems that this is misleading at a minimum. A review of the related US Code sections implies that the $5,000 applies only if an individual committed a crime against the Census, which is an act far beyond simply refusing to respond.²

The related US code section is far clearer about specific limits for fines that can be imposed on individuals who don’t respond, or respond with false information. The fines are set at no more than $100 for no response, and $500 for misleading responses.³

For those who choose not to respond, it’s quite likely that a Census worker will appear at the door. If that happens, it’s worth noting that it would be unusual if one were to be required to interrupt anything and everything just to respond to Census inquiries. It is not unreasonable to ask the Census worker to come back some other time. In fact, the Census mentions that they will make up to 3 attempts to get a response, perhaps implying that a fourth won’t be made.⁴ In any case, Census workers are not entitled to enter ones dwelling, and they certainly aren’t entitled to a telephone number, or to set up an appointment, regardless of how hard they might try to obtain these.

With this in mind, what should one respond with?

Not responding to the Census doesn’t help one’s State, because the Census count is used to apportion pork and kickbacks, also known as Federal grants and programs. In addition, the Census data is used to redistrict areas and to assign new Representatives to Congress for States that grow their population faster than others. This brings with it more political power in D.C.

However, it’s also obvious that the vast majority of the Census questions go well beyond the original purpose for which the Census was established in the Constitution, namely that of counting the number of people in any particular area.

On the 2010 “simplified” and “shortened” form, questions range from name, date of birth, sex and race to a telephone number. None of these are necessary for the Constitutional function of the Census, and are probably seen as an invasion of privacy by many if not most Americans.⁵

This is also a far cry from the questions posed on the first Census in 1790, which only inquired:⁶

1. Name of the head of each household.
2. How many free white males age 16 and older.
3. How many free white males under age 16.
4. How many free white females.
5. How many of all other free persons.
6. How many slaves.

The Census tries to set respondents at ease by promising that “the penalty for unlawful disclosure is a fine of up to $250,000“.⁷ However, such statements are not really honest in describing the real protection afforded to personal data collected by the Census. Excepting weasel clauses that allow sharing of Census data with other Federal agencies, it appears that the actual maximum fine is a paltry $5,000.⁸

Interestingly a flier that comes with the Census form doesn’t focus on the fines for releases of personal information, but instead discusses at length that no information will be given to law enforcement or tax collection agencies. This is clearly intended to encourage a response from those who live at the edges or beyond the legal society, allowing one to comment that seemingly the Census cares more for the privacy of illegal immigrants than that of Citizens.

Making a decision as to how to respond doesn’t need to be difficult. The Census form itself highlights one question out of the dozens that are on it. This question is also the one that the Constitution directly requires the Federal government to determine every 10 years, and it might be no coincidence that the form applies an encouraging statement “Start here” to it:

1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2010? Number of people = [blank]

Perhaps that’s the only question one should respond to.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

© 2010, Pontificus. All rights reserved.

Central Intelligence Agency

The unintentional release of a confidential Transportation Security Administration (TSA) document by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “outed” a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program known as Worldwide Operations Meet and Assist Program (WOMAP) less than two weeks ago.¹

WOMAP is an interesting program, as it was not publicly known before the release. For example, Google showed no CIA related hits for WOMAP prior to the unintentional release.

Naturally over the past two weeks a large number of amateur and professional “investigators” have attempted to figure out what WOMAP really means.² As would be expected in the era of Google searching, without Internet leads little new information has been forthcoming.

While the CIA has not acknowledged WOMAP, and obviously is not responding to any inquiries, here are a few known facts and theories:

Q: What is WOMAP?

A: Unknown.

The program description in the TSA document includes terminology such as “foreign dignitaries” and their families.

It stands to reason that since this program allows bypassing of security by CIA personnel and whoever they may be with, it is a method for moving individuals by commercial transport in and out of the country without leaving an ordinary trace of the event when completing immigration and customs formalities. This also allows WOMAP participants to carry articles with them that might otherwise be prohibited.

Since the CIA also needs to accomplish the same goals when using private aircraft, it’s plausible that immigration and customs agencies have similar WOMAP-exception instructions, both for arrivals and departures.

A tongue in cheek interpretation of the WOMAP program is that it’s designed to allow US visits for Afghan warlords who might otherwise refuse to do so, as they ordinarily could not bring their favorite AK47 to sleep with at night.

Q: How long has WOMAP been in existence?

A: Unknown.

The apparent nature of the program doesn’t seem to dictate any particular time when it was created, however the tightening of border security after September 11 encourages the interpretation that it was launched to provide an official framework for bypassing security after September 11. Assuming WOMAP was not in place until September 11, it would mean that prior to that time an informal WOMAP-like program was utilized.

Q: What agency is involved with WOMAP?

A: According to the TSA documents, only CIA personnel is authorized for WOMAP transactions with the TSA.

Q: How does WOMAP work?

A: The TSA document states that CIA must notify TSA by email prior to a screening event, unless there’s less than 24 hours notice, in which case “verbal” (presumably this means “oral”) permission is acceptable. TSA is required to check the CIA badge and driver’s license (or other government issued ID) of the CIA escort.

We’ll provide additional details as they become available.

© 2009, Pontificus. All rights reserved.