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.
I suggest folks vote for the Libertarian Party candidate for Prez. Pretty sure they will “reform” TSA. What a FIN waste of time and $$$.
We interrupt this program.
The nation’s air traffic is in near shutdown..
Dateline: Chicago O’Hare
Thousands break through TSA bottleneck and head for their flights. The whole of OHare is shutdown. Aircraft are idled at the major hub as well as other connecting hubs. National Guard is called to restore order. With Twitter feeds in play, the would be passengers respond and sit in place.. Police forces from surrounding cities are called for assistance.
Nearly all Social media accounts are broadcasting updates and instructions.
Late breaking update: civilian helicopters are seen dropping food and water to groups on tarmac.
National Guard H-60 lands but is overwhelmed as crowds move in and overload aircraft. Then sick and others desiring to leave are loaded and allowed to leave.
White House Cabinet in emergency session.
News at 11.
Drive your car if the end point is less than 1200 miles. If you fly, carry light. Miller Light.
The beatings will continue until morale is crushed.
The TSA is not authorized in the Constitution, it is therefore ILLEGAL.
Consequently it should be dismantled ASAP.
How do they manage to avoid these endless delays and pointless lines in, say, Western Europe?
xenonman – in Western Europe they don’t hire our TSA agents.
If the TSA were privatized it would cost ten times as much; CEOs and other high management would be taking $10 million annual salaries; they would be donating millions to Congressional candidates to ensure that the money kept flowing to the private entity(ies), and they would still pay learning disordered workers minimum wage and the wait would be much longer. That’s what happens every time a government entity is privatized. The service/product gets much worse and costs much more.
The best solution — stop traveling. There’s no need for it. Use Skype to visit with friends and relatives, watch documentaries and YouTube. On YouTube you can drive down the main arterials of most cities, see how to make chocolate candy from cocoa pods growing on a tree in Costa Rica, watch a mom and dad eagle feed their newly hatched babies, and that was just in the first hour after I got online. You can see far more on YouTube and in documentaries than you’ll ever see traveling to any location, including the highest peaks, the bottom of the ocean, equatorial Africa, Antartica, Galopagos, Machu Pichu, etc.
Well, someone might get lucky and be groped in the groin by a female TSA “inspector”. (yes, that actually did happen — in Denver, I believe)
First, none of this should be a surprise to any thinking person. The government is not a business. It was designed to be inefficient except in times of emergency. Such an emergency would reduce the travelers to a level that is manageable.
I am sure that we could insert chips in people for pre-approval purposes, but that violates certain rights under the Constitution.
TSA = Thousands Standing Around!
Forgot to add my story:
Once, in LAX, a whole line was not moving for some time. I had the normal reaction , but to the TSA folks on duty the temerity to ask them what was going on. Nothing obvious was holding up the line… it looked like a coffee break in real time.
I moved to a diff line, and getting through the first screen was instructed to go into this little holding box… it was about 3×6 and about head high… I didn’t get it till I was in and noticed that it was now locked on the back, and a locked door on the front.
All my stuff was pulled out and taken aside for detail scrutiny. As a photographer, I had all my gear, which amounted to about 15 – 20 pieces plus normal luggage.
I was let out and led to the table where the agent started , as slowly as possible , to take apart everything I had trying to find some violation. I think there was a toothpaste tube that was deemed to large …
But the real work was a meticulous swabbing and testing for residue of each and every piece of equipment , lens, filters, etc. in my bag, and then my books and etc.
Over all it took 45m-hour. It was clear the fellow was trying to make me late for my flight. A number of comments were made by the TSA officer explicitly suggesting I should just go w the program , and not make problems.
For my part, I was asking my questions to which he threatened me w being taken to the back room and to meet with the chief officer… “that will take a few hours…do you want that?”.
We parlayed until he finally got done….
Putting all my stuff back in order, he clearly was smug and satisfied that I had missed my flight and learned my lesson. it was the first time in a long time that I had been 3hrs early for a flight … I just had nothing else to do so I thought to get a lunch before the flight… Instead all the time was spent there …In the end I did not miss my flight.
As I was putting stuff away I did make one last question… I asked “At what point when you were testing each piece of my gear did you know that there was no problem and yet continued to test anyway.”…
If steam could come out of peoples ears when they are mad, I would have seen it then. The game was up, no more viable threats or actions could be made. I told him thanks, and that I did not miss my flight after all… and walked away.
Reviewing this situation later I realized two things:
1. that in this period of time there still was room to have even that level of challenge. I was clearly out of bounds with the plan; I was supposed to be part of the passive masses. He took me to the brink of his ability to mess with me but it made me think about a time and a newer time when any challenge at all will be grounds for being taken out and taken care of.
One characteristic you read about in all the literature of authoritarian regimes is that the citizen is expected to keep their head down, eyes demur and not look.
2. The other was a confirmation again, as if I needed another one, that most of what goes on in a TSA line is utterly useless. It does not meet a need, nor address a real problem. This is not to say there are not real problems and needs. But whatever TSA is doing, and their procedures is , to be most generous, is the most inept way of going about it.
It is hard to believe, as others here seem to think, that it is all bureaucratic bungling. Maybe a little, and maybe for awhile… but for it to persist like this takes conscious thought and purpose… At least that is how it seems to me..
What would this system look like if it were designed around actually meeting the need of security rather than the work of cowing a public into the passive rage that JT speaks about?
I remember several years ago at O’Hare airport seeing a large workman thermos sitting way at the end of a row of seats. It was right at the gate area where we were waiting to board our plane. We reported it to TSA 4 times during an hour and a half time frame. They never came to investigate. So much for concern for our safety. Lipstick on a pig group used to pacify people into a false sense of government doing its job.
You want to be in a longer line at the TSA screen, permanently?
Complain about the TSA..
You ask why there is not public outcry?
It would be useful if you put some possible action items in your post. Whatever writing, posting I have done on TSA sites and Congress have been my 2 drops of water in the bucket…
What else?
The “real reason” (IMHO) for TSA is a more malicious version of your conclusion about a passive public…I am not convinced it is not on purpose, rather than just incompetence.
This proposition is an essay of its own. It is hard to do and avoid the useless trap of the histrionics of too much of the anti-gov crowd… So saying there is something that does not add up.
Global entry is a joke too. Don’t waste your money, it won’t save you any time or any aggravation since TSA is clueless how it works. They get pissy if you respectfully point out the regs on how its “supposed to work.’
The idiocy is we all know these checkpoints are just Kabuki theater,
Thank you, Barack!
You need a proofreader.
The TSA is essentially a joke. Its mission is one of appearance, not function, and its biggest fear is being inspected by TSA inspectors who haven’t a clue as to what they are doing. Typical government ineptness
We have low (but still optimistic) expectations about government service, Washington ignores our complaints, and you will pay if you bitch too much in line.
Why on earth do we keep listening to liberals who say that the answer to incompetent government is larger government – didn’t Von Clausewitz warn against reinforcing defeat?