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Deregulation — engine of monopolies.

The freight railroad industry in the U.S. is highly concentrated with a handful of full of firms dominating the market. With the passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 which deregulated the industry and sparked an era of mergers and acquisitions, the number of Class I railroads dramatically shrank from over 30 to just four. Contrary to the teachings of the free-market capitalism, U.S. Federal regulators and politicians seem to believe in the “four is few and six is many” phrase with respect to one of the main modes of freight transportation in the country.
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The railroad industry can be considered as a oligopoly and for many captive shippers it is actually a monopoly since they are serviced by only one railroad.For example, two-thirds of coal shipped by rail is captive to a single railroad. With over 90% of rail traffic shared among the four rail carriers and healthy competition mostly eliminated, railroads enjoy enormous pricing power.

The airline industry is likely to see another major consolidation. American Airlines, a wholly owned subsidiary of AMR Corporation, is looking for a suitable partner to merge with. In this regard, Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL), US Airways Group Inc. (LCC) and private equity firm TPG are mulling bids to acquire American Airlines.

Those damn lone wolves…

You’re probably used to seeing TSA’s signature blue uniforms at the airport, but now agents are hitting the interstates to fight terrorism with Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR).

“Where is a terrorist more apt to be found? Not these days on an airplane more likely on the interstate,” said Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner Bill Gibbons.
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It’s all meant to urge every driver to call authorities if they see something suspicious.

Where have I heard that see something/say something thing before?

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.

Woman Gropes TSA Agent’s Breast at Security Checkpoint: MyFoxPHOENIX.com

We hear a lot of complaints about security screeners groping airline passengers. But now, a Colorado woman is accused of putting her hands on a TSA agent at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. Court records show 61-year-old Yukari Mihamae grabbed the left breast of the female agent Thursday at the Terminal 4 checkpoint. Police say she squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands.

She was charged with a felony sexual assault.

TSA Cooks the Books on its operations.
The entire Homeland Security “scam” is an effort to create a secret police as far as I can tell.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a letter to Transportation Committee Chairman John L. Mica (R-FL) that confirms the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has used faulty data and withheld information when evaluating and comparing the costs of the all-federal screening model and an alternative federal-private screening program.

The Screening Partnership Program was established in the Aviation Transportation Security Act (ATSA) after September 11, 2001, to enable airport authorities to “opt-out” of all-federal screening and instead use private screening contractors under federal standards, supervision and oversight. Previously, TSA has misleadingly claimed that the cost of the privatized screening program is at least 17 percent higher than the cost of using screeners who are TSA employees.

“In essence, TSA cooked the books to try to eliminate the federal-private screening program,” Mica said. “GAO found that TSA ignored critical data relating to costs. In fact, according to TSA’s own revised cost study, the cost differential between the two screening models is closer to three percent, likely within the margin of error,” Mica said.

“And that still doesn’t account for various other ignored factors, including the cost taxpayers incur from TSA’s high attrition rate and the full cost of TSA’s bloated and unnecessary bureaucratic overhead. “I am investigating the full cost differential between the two screening models, and I believe the federal-private program model will prove to be less expensive and provide the best model for U.S. aviation security,” Mica said.

What about the toilet paper? Stuff a wad into someone’s mouth and they could suffocate! In other words, what on a plane can’t be turned into a weapon and should be banned?

Air Worthiness Directive 2011-04-09 (PDF). That’s the name of a new FAA rule that might kill you one day. It dictates that emergency oxygen masks should be removed from lavatories in every commercial plane in the United States.

The new rule was just made public by the FAA after keeping it secret for a long time in the name of “national security”. It was communicated to airlines previous to this date and it has already been enacted in 6,000 airplanes across the US commercial fleet as of Friday, March 4. But neither the government nor any of these airlines have notified passengers about these changes.

According to an official FAA note, it and “other federal agencies” (TSA anyone?) think oxygen generators in lavatories are a “security risk”. According to these agencies, terrorists may try to use this equipment to take airplanes down, turning the oxygen canisters into explosive devices.

Perhaps more problematic is the fact that, according to this report, the FAA has been trying to tip toe over this issue. The entry was absent from the FAA’s website because, according to them, “they wanted to make the changes before the wrong people realized a potential vulnerability.”

By taking out the generators, passengers who are in a lavatory during a rapid decompression event will not be able to use the oxygen masks. They will have to run out of the lavatory—in the middle of a confusing emergency situation—back to their seats.