Because nothing says “we’d love to have you travel to the United States” like a $10 fee charged up front to the few remaining gullible fools who genuinely want to visit our little police state ‘twix the majestic oceans in spite of its morals and attitudes.
Seriously, this is such a blatant rip-off I can’t believe it didn’t cause more of an outcry from libertarians and people with half a brain. A “tourism promotion organization for the United States” — but of course; that’s surely all we need to offset the fact that America’s image as a tourist destination is right up there with a guided tour of the sewers of Lagos. Make no mistake, there are some amazing things to see and do here, but it’s not like we need to spend money telling potential tourists about the splendor of the Grand Canyon. They know that. They know about Disneyland and the New York skyline. My hunch is they’re not coming because they’re afraid they’ll get attacked for being foreigners, or caught up in some FBI sting operation intended to catch “Al Queda’s second in command in Holland” or some bullshit like that. Or maybe they just genuinely don’t want to spend their time and money in a country that appears to be run by Glenn Beck and his brownshirted minions. And at the very least is, in fact, run by complete asshats with little or no real concern for the current and future well-being of a once-great nation.
“This is a historic victory for the U.S. economy and one in eight American workers whose jobs depend on travel,” Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association, said in a statement, while trying hard to hide the tremendous hard-on he had from thinking about the $200 million that he will now help to blow annually on puffy advertising and pointless propaganda.
It really begs the question: what are they going to promote? I mean, you’d have to be a really ballsy copywriter to come up with an ad that says, “no worries, we only taser our school children, so you’ve got nothing to worry about”. Sadly, this appears to be yet another case of the kleptocrats in DC confirming that the only way they can deal with a challenge is to take our money away and make it theirs, giving us lip service in return.
