Posted on 05/22/2016 11:34:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
This summer, air travel is for people who expect to go to hell and want to know what it will be like. Security lines have reached epic lengths in many airports. Thousands of travelers have missed flights. And the Transportation Security Administration now advises passengers to arrive two hours before departure for domestic flights -- and three in some places.
The agency in charge of aviation security has become a major problem. That's odd, because it was supposed to be a solution. Nearly 15 years after it was created, it's a case study of how firm, well-intentioned government intervention can produce an exploding cigar.
The agency came into being because of the 9/11 attacks, carried out by terrorists who commandeered airliners. A large share of the blame was heaped on airport security firms that didn't intercept the hijackers.
This lapse was not merely the failure of the workers manning the X-ray machines at the nation's airports. It was, we were told, a failure of the private sector, which was responsible for screening -- and the only reliable way to prevent future attacks was to turn security over to the federal government.
A few weeks after the attacks, House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt took the House floor to lament the existing system. "The companies that have been doing this have failed the American people," he declared. "We must put security in the hands of law enforcement officers."
His was a common sentiment. Private contractors, we were told, paid their screeners too little, hired employees without adequate background checks and sometimes missed weapons being taken through checkpoints. When Republicans argued for keeping these operators but monitoring them better, Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., scorned the idea: "We've had private contractors with government supervision in the past, and we ended up with 5,000 dead."
It wasn't exactly fair to blame the screeners for 9/11. The knives and box cutters reportedly used by the hijackers were not prohibited at the time. The 9/11 Commission faulted the Federal Aviation Administration because its policies "were aimed at keeping bombs out of baggage, not at keeping planes from being turned into guided missiles." Flight crews were trained not to resist hijackers -- which made it easy for the terrorists to take over the planes.
In spite of all that, Congress insisted on establishing the TSA, which today has some 55,000 employees, an annual budget of $7.44 billion and an aversion to self-criticism.
Explaining the recent mammoth delays, it said, "Individuals who come to the TSA checkpoint unprepared for a trip can have a negative impact on the time it takes to complete the screening process." Administrator Peter Neffenger said he was sorry about the people stranded in Chicago last weekend but added, "I won't apologize for doing our job well."
No need, since that accusation has not been heard. The delays would be easier to bear if screeners were relentlessly proving their value. But last year, in an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, undercover agents got banned items past screeners in 95 percent of their attempts.
"After spending over $540 million on baggage screening equipment and millions more on training, the failure rate today is higher than it was in 2007," complained Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "Something is not working."
Actually, more than one thing is not working. The agency's culture also undermines safety. "Dozens of Transportation Security Administration employees in recent years have been reassigned, demoted, investigated or fired for reporting lapses or misconduct by senior managers, charges that were later upheld by whistle-blower protection agencies," The New York Times reported last month.
One remedy the agency offers for the recent long lines is for the airlines to stop charging for checked bags, which would mean fewer carry-ons to be inspected. Nice of the TSA to suggest that someone forgo revenue for the greater good, but it hasn't proposed to do the same -- say, by waiving the $85 PreCheck fee to induce more people to sign up for expedited screening.
Even that option might not help, because the agency is already having trouble keeping up with applications. If you want an appointment at one of the Chicago-area sites, expect to wait until July.
One advantage of using private companies to do airport screening is that if they make a botch of it, you can fire them. What would it take for the TSA to get fired?
Big union move to consolidate power and get hefty pay raise - like “Blue Flu.”
TSA’s Union Power Grab: Thousands Slowing Down Airports
http://michellemalkin.com/2016/05/18/tsas-union-power-grab-thousands-slowing-down-airports/
But we have to make sacrifices to be secure. /sarc
Did Obama order a Go Slower at the TSA ?
Very happy that I haven’t flown since July 2001 and never will need to again.
Ronald Reagan.
Since he is dead, option B is Donald Trump.
Bad headline. The government didn’t fail us. They gave us what we wanted and we got it good and hard.
“You can’t professionalize unless you federalize” - Horseface
The last time I’ve flown was in April and May 2009 when I visited my daughter in Texas. The last time before that was in 1985 when my husband and I flew to Rochester, NY for a family reunion
No need to inspect 90% of passengers. Zero in on obvious terror suspects and lines will disappear. But the political crowd will not go along. Instead they will expand the bureaucracy, expand government employees.
“Nearly 15 years after it was created, it’s a case study of how firm, well-intentioned government intervention can produce an exploding cigar.”
Well-intentioned! I think not!
Well, so far there haven’t been fatalities while waiting in line, unlike the even sorrier government treatment of veterans, who have died. This bloated, paralyzed government, populated by affirmative action hires and crooks, couldn’t run a two car funeral procession.
Unions and Affirmative action in concert to make traveling akin to having hemorrhoids with diarrhea.
Bush’s fault,
The last time I flew was to the Turks and Caicos islands circa 2006 for a five minute fix on a phone system problem. Went to work on Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and got it fixed by 8:05. I didn’t leave till Sunday afternoon.
I had to tolerate the pool, endless (free) drinks, endless food and plenty of topless french canadian girls.
sigh...
Any business that operated like this would have been thrown out in the dust bin of history. The government is the only industry that can fail time and time again and they get more money and power to keep on failing. UPS, profitable. FEDEX, profitable. USPS, loses billions. Private security agents can get 10’s of thousands of people in to a ball game but TSA agents can’t get you on a plane in under 3 hours.
The TSA was a deal for the airlines to avoid liability, well now we have a first class FUBAR.
The TSA needs to be disbanded and the airlines responsible for their own security.
You are wrong. They could run a two car funeral procession but one of the vehicles would get lost, and the other would go to the wrong cemetery. And then because the union guys in the lost vehicle are the pallbearers the casket in the first vehicle would be returned to the funeral home where it would sit in the vehicle for at least three days until they get the lost vehicle back to the funeral home from where it was lost about 372 miles from the cemetery. And then the investigations and hearings would start. After 17 months of these proceedings they would try to take the casket to the correct cemetery. However in the meantime there would be public outcry that the number of minorities buried in that specific cemetery did not match the percentages of these minorities in the country and so the cemetery was condemed and covered with asphalt to hide the shame of it all.
To cover all this mess up the gubmint would blame global warming and demand that those above the pverty level pay at least 10% more in taxes as a punishment.
And the funeral home was found to have men and women bathrooms but no lesbian bathroom, no gay bathroom, and no tranny bathroom. So they would forced to close or pay a fine of at least $30,000 a day to recitfy the crime. This meant that the family of the poor individual in the casket would also have to pay a huge fine because of the imposition of their loved one's casket upon the workings of the local government. But of course they had all died by that time and so the city council created a monument to the wonderful workings of the govenrment in resolving the problem to the satisfaction of everybody in the world. And they hid the casket in the closest land fill.
I don’t think the TSA and government are failing us in any way. Other than the military and roads, the govt is almost always the worst to provide a service. Why would we expect them to do well at airport security? This is par.
Wonder what would happen if we all just stopped flying. Would any of them lose their jobs? Probably not.
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