They’ve been accused of rampant thievery, spending billions of dollars like drunken sailors, groping children and little old ladies, and making everyone take off their shoes. But the real job of the tens of thousands of screeners at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect Americans from a terrorist attack.
Yet a decade after the TSA was created following the September 11 attacks, the author of the legislation that established the massive agency grades its performance at “D-. The whole program has been hijacked by bureaucrats,” said Rep. John Mica (R.-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation Committee.
“It mushroomed into an army,” Mica said. “It’s gone from a couple-billion-dollar enterprise to close to $9 billion.”
As for keeping the American public safe, Mica says, “They’ve failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.”
“Everything they have done has been reactive. They take shoes off because of [shoe-bomber] Richard Reid, passengers are patted down because of the diaper bomber, and you can’t pack liquids because the British uncovered a plot using liquids,” Mica said.
“It’s an agency that is always one step out of step,” Mica said.
Actually the creator wants it PRIVATIZED!
Yeah, privatize that bullshit. Why pay 9 billion when you could pay twice as much for less!
/sarcasm
Republicans/Democrats – voting themselves your money, since December 23, 1913.
…and the liquid plot was just the Yard having watched one too many late-night made-for-TV agent thrillers (even their own chemists said that the idea was absurd and wouldn’t work properly in actuality).
If only.
But I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that this another waste of time (and money.)
The DHS knows about as much about keeping us safe as my aunt Fanny.
Should be managed by the other government jobs program, the DOD. Give them something to do when the wars are over and yet the budget continues to grow.
If we could find someone to try and turd bomb a plane, the TSA would react by requiring screeners to taste all passengers turds. Most of the screeners would quit and our problems would be solved.
Ahh yes, the TSA with their motto: “Always days late and dollars over budget”. Too bad we didn’t have a small government president in office to veto this enormous expansion of government instead of that darn Obama!!! Wait…. What??? Obama wasn’t president?? Who was? Tree? Shrub?
Talk amongst yourselves.
They should let the church run the TSA. We will bore the terrorists to death.
Sister MHG Re: #9… Holy Communion, now that would be interesting!!!
“Please kneel before me….. take this and eat of it, for it is the body of Christ”
#9 and everybody else.
#4 If you had a gallon of ammonia and a gallon of chlorine bleach and mixed them in a plastic bag the chlorine gas released might be enough to make some people seriously ill with permanent lung damage.
Of course a few ounces is just going to make it smell like a freshly cleaned bathroom.
#6 That is in part due to our beloved leader’s ability to continue old wars while seeking out new ones. I want my nephew out of Afghanistan. This is his fourth one year tour and things aren’t much better if at all than years ago. How long have we been their? Almost 10 years.
#11 – I agree. Bring our people home, nuke the middle east to sterile glass and the problems are solved. Then we can get back to driving 4x4s and sprawling our urbans.
Wow, it’s pretty amazing — if true — that the TSA has not detected one threat, despite all the billions.
How could that be?
But, the TSA also exists to deter, right?
It’s impossible to prove a negative but I’ll concede that the TSA may have deterred an attack.
But there has to be a cheaper and better way to deter these guys than what’s going on now.
Does Mica suggest we not adapt to tactics the terrorists attempt to use?
That will show them, right? We are ready to reformat the constitution after 9/11, but responding to them at a tactical level is just being a pushover. Oh, brother.
I would suggest that we NOT part with a single dollar until we see a working finished product. Most of the scanner systems in the last 10 years have been proved to be seriously flawed.
I bet that stuff cost a decent amount of coin.
#14, yea Mica’s reasoning isn’t that solid, but I like the result.
>> chris said, on September 15th, 2011 at 4:59 pm
>> Does Mica suggest we not adapt to tactics the terrorists attempt to use?
_Just_ being reactive is not good protection from terrorists. Those guys sit around doing nothing but thinking of a new or revised way to attack us.
Which begs another question — is it even possible to harden up America as a target?
If you have an evil mind (as apparently I do), you can walk around any city and easily notice endless vulnerabilities.
#16
“_Just_ being reactive is not good protection from terrorists.”
It does imply a certain level of protection. Everybody would prefer inspired creativity and foresight, but actually paying attention to an enemy is still a pretty good idea.
“Which begs another question — is it even possible to harden up America as a target?”
I think you’ve got to make some rational response. Can’t be too drastic or it will be ignored or have some other adverse consequence. A good discussion of this can be found on Steve Gibson’s “Security Now!” podcast #229 “Rational rejection of Security Advice.”
I bet you can condition people to be marginally more aware of their environment and that would be better protection than any collection of gee whiz gizmos.
We’d also be more effective if the security apparatus was depoliticized. A proper national understanding is possible, but only if the pols can refrain from using our fear as political Viagra.
The discussion of funding levels is totally appropriate though. I suspect that you get a lot of benefit on the initial security expenses, and then it plateaus and each marginal dollar is basically wasted. Where that exact point is varies based on technology and how squeamish we are.
I also suspect that a wider focus on security expenses would find a lot more wastage outside of TSA. That would be a very healthy thing for the electorate to consider. The shadowy stuff doesn’t make for good headlines, even though that is the vast majority of the expenditure.
Costs and benefits need to be considered. On a personal level there are lots of things that cannot be properly valued against money, but not at a policy level.
Greg Allen, you gotta stop smoking the weed.
You’re telling us that someone who is willing to blow up a plane, and kill himself, will be deterred by a )@$! with a TSA badge? Are you kidding me?
They aren’t deterred. Getting caught is nearly as effective as blowing up a plane because it brings publicity.
#10 – yeah, they’d be saying, “fuck that, I’m not eating some dude!”
The most important change from 9/11 happened during the attack: we no longer let you take over a plane thinking you just want hostages. As far as bombs go: how about acceptable losses? If you blew up one 737 a day you’d be just over the amount of annual auto deaths in the US. So why don’t we have to blow into a breathalyzer to start our cars or put our phones in a lock-box? It’s been an overreaction from day one.