You have likely been reading about the scandalous situation at our airports where TSA security points have created chokepoints due to a lack of planning and staffing in the latest failure of this agency. Thousands of passengers are missing their flights due to massive lines and the airports are now suggesting that people come THREE HOURS in advance. The reason is obvious incompetence in failing to plan for rising numbers of passengers and to properly staff security checkpoints. Yet, no one is being held accountable. The public is just again left paying billions to the government, which cannot meet the most basic obligations to the public. We no longer expect competence from our government.
The lines have long been predicted due to the failure to hire enough Transportation Security Administration screeners and new procedures slowing down security. There is also a failure to properly budget for security, though TSA has shown a level of incompetence through the years even with huge budgets.
TSA is saying that it is hired new officers but that is too late for this nightmarish summer. If TSA were a business, it would not last the month in a competitive market system. However, it is not just the lack of competition but the lack of any accountability for incompetent or poor-performing TSA officials.
At airports like Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina lines are now commonly three hours. It is a disgrace and, on one day, some 600 passengers missed their flights. That of course causes huge costs to the passengers and airlines in disruption. That brings us back to TSA which has become a perpetual incompetence machine. In the meantime, airport employees have been walking these lines (which look like something out of Soviet-era bread lines) with therapy dogs and snacks to sustain people.
Why isn’t there a public outcry? Where is the demand for congressional investigations and hearings? Because we have become accustomed to the lowest level of performance from the TSA and other federal agencies. It is the passivity of a public that no longer views itself as having any voice or expectation in good government. We just stand in lines of hours while paying billions for substandard government services.
If TSA agents don’t like the pay, there’s a simple solution–don’t work as a TSA agent. This is still a free country. They are not slaves. No one is forcing the employees to remain there. Don’t like it, leave. Quoting a salary of $29,000 is misleading in that it doesn’t account for all of the benefits that accompany that salary–benefits which are of significant value. Since those benefits have value, that value adds to the purported $29,000 salary.
TSA employees are paid $29,000 a year. That is basically minimum wage and that is the treatment we get. Maybe if you pay folks a little more, they would stay. There is no incentive to stay in an agency that makes you treat people like cattle, barking at us about taking all of most of our clothes off.
Several people have asked for “action items.” Here are a few:
“De profundis clamavi, or why we can talk till we’re blue in the face but until we put our money where our mouth is we won’t get rid of the TSA”
http://tsanewsblog.com/5431/news/de-profundis-clamavi-or-why-we-can-talk-till-were-blue-in-the-face-but-until-we-put-our-money-where-our-mouth-is-we-wont-get-rid-of-the-tsa/
“Why isn’t there a public outcry? Where is the demand for congressional investigations and hearings?”
We already tried that and got called terrorists for our troubles. Now we’re basking in the shadenfreude.
Well said RB and lets also have the 28 pages declassified maybe that will shed some light on why the Saudi bigwigs were paying Muhammad Atta the 9/11 ringleader and supposedly remain our “allies.”
Eventually we may find that it’s even worse. This evil plan was rejected by Jack Kennedy. Consider what it involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Every time I fly they give me a bigger and bigger hassle. Last time the guy was feeling around in my waistband. I always wear the same pair of comfortable pants when I fly and in the past years never had this kind of molestation. I was very uncomfortable with his fingers palpating my entire waistband area including grazing my upper pubic area right in front of everybody including my kids.
I also got a hassle because I had a hankerchief in my pocket. You would have thought it was plastique from the stern warnings I got to remove it and hold it out and so forth.
They’re utterly ridiculous.
http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/former-tsa-employee-airport-security-is-a-farce
actually I do fly for work
quit putting the blame TSA Officers and direct your anger and frustration towards TSA management instead
RB:
Supposedly the highly classified Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) by the CIA also contained various warnings of an imminent terrorist attack in the US! Of course, when all that intelligence data is so highly classified, it virtually never sees the light of day or gets acted upon!
I seriously doubt that you fly every day.