Culture Vulture

It's big-time tourist season here in Manchester and around the rest of Vermont, a perfect time to vent on a subject raised by Thomas Friedman in an excellent column he recently authored for the New York Times.
A state like Vermont might want to keep sending a message to its Congressional delegation — one that has already gotten on their radar screens but is important enough to be re-emphasized as often as possible — that a Department of Homeland Security run amok is doing us no favors.
The United States should currently be on the receiving end of the upside of a weaker currency relative to those of other nations. It may be a source of pride and better in general for a country’s currency to be stronger rather than weaker, there is, like everything else a benefit both ways. For one thing, it’s a lot less expensive for foreign visitors to come here when our currency values are weaker.
The United States is one of the few nations in the world that is losing volume among travelers in major countries, according to a recent column in The New York Times written by Thomas Friedman. in that piece, the head of the private, non-profit Travel Industry Association, an industry advocacy group, describes that as an unheard of situation, and especially when we’re such a bargain.
The mishandled war in Iraq and bad publicity about torturing suspected Islamic terrorists are part of it, but what’s worse are the horror stories seeping back across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans about what legitimate visitors to this country have to go through just to make it out of the airport.
Periodically one hears about security officials getting it and making this process more easy and rational, but we’ve got a long way to go before we undo the damage of over-the-top over-reaction in the months and years following 9/11. Sure, it’s a different world. Yes, we have a legitimate concern about terrorism and it’s a tough job to sort out the good guys from the bad guys. Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot either.
Visitors to the U.S. are some of our best ambassadors. When they see what America is really like, the story is a pretty positive one. But instead, our security people seem to try to make it impossible for them to tell it to the folks back home.
It’s not just about good relations and common sense, it’s about money too. Those missing foreign travelers — and that includes Canadians — have money that’s just as good as anyone else. We should be encouraging them to come. There’s a lot of money being left, needlessly, on the table.