War With Drugs

It was recently reported that some Amtrak employees were acting as confidential informants for the DEA funneling passenger information to our government's drug overlords on the sly. Upon learning of this executives at Amtrak were furious. Just not for the reasons you might think.

Amtrak has always been a Jekyll-Hyde organization claiming to be either an independent business operation or a government bureaucracy whenever the situation best suits their agenda. In this case they wanted to be more government and less business. That's because what incensed them about the CI's on their payroll wasn't that it compromised passenger privacy and in so doing impugned the organization's reputation and damaged its brand--oh no--what had them upset was that the DEA did not come to them with an IGA--inter governmental agreement. Why is that such a big deal? Because had the DEA entered into an IGA that would have given Amtrak a portion of the money from DEA assets confiscated from Amtrak passengers.

What we have done in this country is allowed the government, at all levels and in all areas, to declare a made-up war on a social calamity, create criminals where there were none before and create a revenue stream that would make Mexican Cartels jealous. Government confiscation of Americans' assets has become big business and as everyone in business knows business must either grow or die. This one is growing like a cancer.