The Cato Institute, considered one of the leading voices for libertarianism, publishes scathing attacks on public transit, claiming that private car transit is cheaper and therefore better, and that public transit is simply a waste of tax money. Libertarians have in recent years even begun to attack the very concept of public eduction, which as always been run locally, by pushing for tax credits that can be spent at private schools. Again, the common them is that government is controlling, liberty-denying and incompetent. To say that it is simply “too big” at the federal level is missing their agenda entirely.

I challenge others to cite contemporary examples of libertarians who promote spending on public transit or public education. Good luck!

Source: Radiation dose comparisons from the Health Physics Society (http://hps.org/documents/WholeBodyScanners.pdf) and other safety experts (http://www.cbsnews.com/2300-204_162-10005685-3.html).

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/01/06/us-security-airlines-scanners-idUSTRE60553920100106

1. Eating a banana exposes you to twice as much radiation as the backscatter x-ray machine (the other device used, the millimeter wavelength imager, does not expose you to ionizing radiation).

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-4.04.43-PM.png

2. The airplane that you pass through the scanner to fly on exposes you to as much radiation in every two minutes of flight as does the backscatter scanner.

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2011/02/Screen-shot-2011-02-28-at-4.04.43-PM.png

“The radiation levels are well below the threshold that could be considered a risk to an individual’s health, said Dr. James Thrall of the American College of Radiology and chief of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.”

If the concern is really safety, then parents shouldn’t let their kids fly on airplanes because of the in-flight radiation exposure. And they shouldn’t let them eat bananas for that matter.