Airports Grind To Halt As TSA Again Fails Most Basic Test of Competence

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.