Profits Over Airport Security? - MSNBC w Cenk

Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) on MSNBC Live explains the profit motive behind certain security measures at airports.

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At what price? American rights.

Airport security? Right? Huh? Americans are losing rights and who is making money? The lobbyists. Members of Congress. Well, their campaign funds -- What's the difference? None. The body scanner industry with the help of lobbyists are heightened the scare, magnifying the threat. The threat is real, but is the body scanner industry's profit making reaction to it the solution?

K Street, that thick and wicked place, where the agents of darkness keep their hands deep into America's pocket, is behind the naked body scanner push. And who is surprised?

Reports USA Today -- "The companies with multimillion-dollar contracts to supply American airports with body-scanning machines more than doubled their spending on lobbying in the past five years and hired several high-profile former government officials to advance their causes in Washington, government records show. L-3 Communications, which has sold $39.7 million worth of the machines to the federal government, spent $4.3 million trying to influence Congress and federal agencies during the first nine months of this year, up from $2.1 million in 2005, lobbying data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show. Its lobbyists include Linda Daschle, a former Federal Aviation Administration official. Rapiscan Systems, meanwhile, has spent $271,500 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. It has faced criticism for hiring Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary, last year. Chertoff has been a prominent proponent of using scanners to foil terrorism. The government has spent $41.2 million with Rapiscan."

So there it is. The guys making the money from radiating every American, hired the guy who was the top Home Land Security official, and the gal who had a lot to say about commercial flying, to crank up the scare, to heighten the fear, to make Washington officialdom so fearful of terrorists.

And Washington became afraid not to say yes to naked body searches of airline passengers, and yes to the groping and to the molestation that followed.

Yes, again, the terrorist threat is real, but subjecting every one to what amounts to a strip search is going too far.