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.
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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.
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.
it’s always risky to believe in a god
GregAllen:
IMO, only incrementally, and we’re already past the point of diminishing returns. Picking up on your concern, how hard is it to coordinate the firing of 12 gauge slugs into several transformers at key locations on the grid? With some simple research, the east coast blackout of 2002(?) could be replicated. Four people could probably black out the entire country for a week or longer.
Regardless, a point that was shot down by the Cheney-bots after 9/11 is that the USA can absorb some attacks without bringing down the entire house or turning the place into a massive green zone. Of course we pay attention and work to prevent attacks, but the idea that we can catch a smart and dedicated terrorist, or all of them as Cheney aspired, is asinine.
It’s time to quit with the shoes, and the liquids, and the damned pat-downs.
#12 – Now there is a plan I can get behind! Nuke them twice to be sure.
Like the Poster ! I’ve always called the TSA the “Tittie Squeezing Agency” !!! But they soon added GONAD GROPING to their LIST OF PERVISIONS !!! I don’t travel much any more !!!
Well, of course the TSA should be dismantled. Airlines should be in charge of the security of their plains. Potential passengers should be free to decide, based on a particular airline’s record, whether they wish to use them, or a rival carrier with a different combination of hassle/safety.
But, this being the United States of America, we have to have the government telling everyone what to do.
f’n commies!
Do they still allow smoking on airliners? And if not, do they take your cigs and lighters? Because one could construct a bomb from several of those, strapped together. Yet I’ll bet that until someone tries that, it’s not something they’ll “think of”? And not deprive passengers of the after-flight nicotine fix.
BTW, it’s rather interesting, ANC-Tv’s new fall series “Pan Am”, is set in the 1960s. They had to go that far back, before any real trouble began, like hijackings. To find an era of air travel to show the public. To make they forget all the crap they’ll have to put up with, if they go on a flight, today. Once again (and again) the entertainment industry coming to the rescue of a brother industry. There are probably some Tv executives on the boards of the air carriers too. And all this TSA stuff is what they hope to erase from the public’s mind, by creating a feel good drama, set decades before it all came about. That should get some of the gullible public, back to flying. Propaganda Tv. Don’t ya love it.
>> What?
>>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?
Deterred in the sense that terrorists could get detained before taking a plane down.
That’s worth something!
I guess I think it is an overreaction to call of the end of the TSA. A reasonable amount of security seems helpful.