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Coast Guard Licensing of Recreational Boaters
Roger Long wrote:
"claus" wrote The January 2008 issue of SAIL magazine has an editorial about a forthcoming Coast Guard mandatory license requirement for Recreational boaters. This is coming just as irresistably as the growth of the Chinese economy. (And no, Tom (whoever), I'm not advocating it.) It has absolutely nothing to do with boating safety. Homeland security wants to have a better idea who is on the water and be able to keep certain people off the water so show to the rest of the public that they are being protected. No, it's not terrorists they want to keep off the water, they know the terrorists won't bother to get a license before they drive a boat full of explosives into a tanker or ferry. They also know they can't really stop that kind of event but they need to assure the public that "bad guys" are being kept off the water. So, it doesn't even need to be bad guys. Any guys will do. Did anyone see the 60 minutes show with 14 of the 500 or so people who all had a common and thoroughly American name (something like, "Michael Herbert Smith") who suddenly discovered that they couldn't fly because the name somehow got on the No-Fly list. One of the DHS drones was saying, "Having a few thousand innocent people unable to fly on commercial airliners is a small price to pay for protecting our freedoms." Of course, he didn't say it quite that way but that's what it translates to in normal English. I guess being able to fly for business or personal reasons isn't a freedom. This will decimate the boating industry and be pretty painful to anyone who wants to sell a boat. The industry is so over developed and crowded that just a slowing in growth causes panic and a 10% drop in the number of boating households would be right up there with an asteroid wiping out Florida. How many people do you think would decide to take up some other recreational activity if they needed a license? This will fit very nicely with the DHS real agenda. If you are looking for the needle in a haystack of a terrorist in a pleasure craft, the fewer straws out there, the better. -- Roger Long What if we could get the asteroid to wipe out just Orlando? |
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