ThePoliticalCat: National Security: Airport Workers Use Fake ID

Raw story reports that over 100 people with fake ID received security clearance to work at Chicago's O'Hare airport. The workers appear to be employees of a contractor, highlighting once again why privatizing the nation's security is a BAD idea.

The Republican leadership and the Misadministration have sought, over the past seven years, to privatize any function that can be privatized, and even some that cannot, pouring billions of taxpayer dollars from the public treasury directly into the pockets of scammers, cheats, and thieves. Like Neil Bush, for example, whose Ignite "educational" software is designed to teach "hunter/warriors," especially those requiring special education, how to use rhymes instead of learning math.

In their push for privatization, the Powers That (Used To) Be have deliberately obfuscated the fact that private businesses operate for the profit of their investors and shareholders. Public servants have a duty to the people. This crucial fact leads to private services being inferior when it comes to providing for the health, security, and well-being of the people. Their duty is not to the people. Their duty is to a subset of the people known as stockholders and stakeholders. The article states, in part:

... 110 employees of one contractor on site used social security numbers which either did not exist or belonged to other people, some of whom were dead, according to a criminal complaint.

One undocumented worker looking for work at the airport, who was actually a government informer, was told to look through a box with about 20 airport security badges and "pick one with a picture that most closely resembled his own likeness" the complaint said.

Lovely. Doesn't that make you feel a lot better? Safer? More secure?

How in the name of all that's holy did the Republicans get elected on a platform of keeping the nation safe? All they've done for the past seven years is loot the treasury, give their incompetent friends jobs with big titles and lots of money, divert needed monies to scams which enrich a few select people while leaving most of us worse off, and engage in corruption that endangers the whole nation.

The only good news in the article is that Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is in charge of prosecuting the case. He has a reputation for honesty, fairness, devotion to the truth and damn the consequences, and a legendary tenacity. These creeps will not get away with their acts.