Pubdate: Sun, 04 Aug 2002
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2002 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Ed Quillen

WITH HOMELAND SECURITY, I FEEL SAFER ALREADY

Curious about how much safer I'd feel once President Bush got his new 
Department of Homeland Security, I called my favorite inside source: 
Ananias Ziegler, media relations director for the Committee That Really 
Runs America.

After I explained my mission, he was relieved. "I was afraid you were 
calling about the corporate accounting scandals and the bear market on Wall 
Street," he said, "and we haven't really prepared a statement on that."

Why was it important to make a statement? I wondered. After all, most 
people don't have any trouble figuring out what happened - there were 
people who could make big money by lying, and so they lied. They touted 
stocks that they knew were bad, or they cooked their books so the stock 
price would rise.

"Our problem is that we need to restore confidence in the markets," Ziegler 
said, "so that Americans will have the faith to continue to invest in 
enterprises they know nothing about, thereby ensuring that the supporters 
of the Committee have sufficient capital to continue our important work."

Besides, Ziegler continued, if stock prices had continued to rise the way 
they had during the "lax moral climate of the Clinton-Gore years," then the 
American way of life would have been threatened.

But I had thought a bull market was good for us, judging by what I read now 
about people who had planned to retire but now can't, etc.

"If lots of people retired, we'd lose some of our most productive workers," 
Ziegler explained. "And what do people do with their time when they retire? 
Some of them might start attending meetings and participating in public 
life and paying attention to how their senators and representatives vote, 
that sort of thing.

"They might start asking why, if America has the best health-care system in 
the world, no other country's politicians ever campaign on providing an 
American-style health-care system. The last thing we need is a bunch of 
informed people with time on their hands. Better to keep them toiling and 
commuting just to pay the bills."

I could see where there might be problems with too much citizen 
participation, but before I could respond, Ziegler continued.

"Another problem with the boom was that we had all these emerging 
zillionaires with nose rings and tattoos and purple hair. They might run 
for office, or support candidates who had sensible views about the 
expensive and unwinnable War on Drugs, or otherwise threaten the Committee 
and its work. Even if a lot of innocent people suffered in the market 
meltdown, we had to act to protect the American way as we know it."

So the Committee engineered the stock-market collapse?

"I wouldn't go that far," Ziegler cautioned. "Let's just say that it was 
not an unanticipated development, and leave it that.

"Now, what did you want to know about Homeland Security?"

Will it prevent future terrorist attacks?

"All Americans have already been warned that future attacks are inevitable, 
that it's a matter of when, not if," Ziegler intoned.

"So if it won't prevent future attacks, what good is it?" I wondered.

"For one thing, people will get to spend a lot more time standing in line 
at airports where their every word is monitored and even their shoes get 
inspected," Ziegler explained, "and that should help create a more docile 
population that will be easier to govern. And, surely, that represents an 
improvement in security, does it not?"

Such logic was hard to argue with, so I moved on. How does this new 
Operation TIPS work? I asked. Are there rewards for ratting on your 
neighbors if you see them interfering with our infrastructure, say by 
bootlegging a cable TV connection?

"It is my understanding that the cable companies offer their own rewards," 
Ziegler said. "And no, there won't be cash rewards. The idea is to have 
millions more people out there reporting suspicious activities."

You mean like those FBI agents in Minneapolis and Phoenix who noticed a 
pattern in flight-school registrations a year ago? That sure made a 
difference, didn't it? "Quit being sarcastic, Quillen. You wouldn't want to 
get arrested as an enemy combatant and get held incommunicado, would you?"

Of course not, so I got back to the Department of Homeland Security. The 
biggest threat to our sense of security in this homeland has been the 
wildfire-starting on federal lands. Certainly the new department would help 
there, right?

"But some of those fires were allegedly started by government employees," 
Ziegler pointed out. "So why would adding more of them necessarily help you?"

He had a point. But then something occurred to me. Why is it that the same 
Republicans who criticize inefficient government bureaucracies all the time 
are now trying to inflict a new one on us?

"It all depends on who controls the bureaucracy," Ziegler laughed, and said 
he had to take another call.
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MAP posted-by: Beth