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US House 'Creator' of TSA Wants To Kill It
U.S. Representative John Mica (R-Florida), the sponsor of the original House bill that helped create the TSA, has become an outspoken opponent of the agency. In a recent interview, "Mica said screeners should be privatized and the agency dismantled." Mica seems to agree with other TSA critics that the agency 'failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years.' Mica is the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman and receives classified briefings on TSA. Perhaps we should trust him more than most people on this topic.
In an older ABC news article (ignore the unrelated video) Mica describes how he deals with security checkpoints. "He won't go through a full body scanner at an airport because 'I don't want them circulating pictures of my beautiful body' all over. He said he opts for a pat-down, and just 'closes his eyes and imagines a beautiful female.'"
TSIA
...to replace it with privatized equivalents.
Not really better is it?
Just what we want, to pay more for less security.
USA is on MY no-fly list.
replace them with private entities with LESS oversight.... yeah.... I'll be damned if i go through a colonoscopy to board a plane.
The TSA is a bureaucratic monster that has grown to big to dismantle (or indeed, even control anymore). It's already starting to branch out into areas that are far beyond its mandate, all in the name of "security", of course. We'll always have that little bogeyman.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
These government officials always must be the first to get anything that they prescribe as treatment to other people done to themselves first.
You want to pass a TSA type act? For a year you should be the only one, to who these treatments are applied. You should be forced to these treatments on daily basis, and if after a year you think it's still a good idea, then maybe... you should still forget about it and think how to increase individual liberties instead of destroying them, and how to uphold and protect the Constitution, as you swore.
Also if you break the oath of protecting the Constitution, all of the ways in which you broke it should be applied to you on mandatory daily basis for 50 years.
You can't handle the truth.
Perhaps we should first ask, does Mica own stock or part of any private security firms?
This guy is spouting Republican talking points, saying the program is "creating too much bureaucracy" and "being wasteful government spending". Notice he doesn't actually care about the loss of privacy and rights. If he could contract a private company to strip search everyone and save money on the budget, he'd probably do it. Heck he might even be able to spin it off as "helping the job creators." Just because someone agrees with you an issue doesn't mean he agrees with you for the same reasons nor that you'd like the solutions he'd propose.
...he's doing himself a favor with the Tea Party by going after an unpopular agency (not to mention Federal workers).
Finding God in a Dog
If they did manage to stop something, you better believe they would be proclaiming victory every chance they had.
Hire only attractive female screeners, two drink minimum.
Turn this around into a profit center. As a bonus, flyers are less stressed. winning all around.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Instead of trusting the guy that originally worked to create the monstrocity, how about we trust the guy that fought against it originally? We had one outspoken guy in government saying we do not need to give up freedoms for temporary safety the day after 9/11..
Rep John Mica says 'I helped create it. It sucks. We should privatize it.'
Rep Ron Paul says 'I voted against it. It sucks. We should get rid of it.'
I believe the new cockpit doors did more to combat terrorism than all of the air marshalls and TSA screeners combined.. and the doors did not do much.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
OCP?
Fandroids hate facts.
They aren't at zero - they are negative. You have to count the false detections against them as well. Their mistakes have had lasting impacts on their poor victims.
Well if it's privatized, then maybe they'll do things more like Israel. I don't know much beyond anecdotes (on here) about their screening process, but I gather it's a simple and short Q&A where they profile you and search if needed.
About the only thing I can imagine worse than the TSA is Israeli-style interrogation to get on a plane.
All of these security theater acts fail for one simple reason: there are very, very, very few terrorists and almost everyone who will ever go through the security theater is not one. As a result, all it can do is annoy the 99.99999% of travellers who know they're not terrorists in the hope that perhaps it might one day manage to catch a real one... and because few terrorists are ever caught there's no real feedback to indicate whether any system actually works.
I often fly just so I can show off my heavenly body to the woman behind the scanner machine screen. I can tell by the way she looks at me that she is impressed.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
Isn't it interesting that the very people who were spending money like drunken sailors are suddenly in favor of "smaller government" and financial conservatism? And yet almost no one is calling them on it. An entire political party apparently had an epiphany and started claiming that Obama was outspending every President in history (while Bush Jr. - all by himself - increased the national debt by over $5 trillion according to the NY Times).
I keep wondering how firing a million government employees is going to help create jobs.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Knives will never work for hijacking again. Reinforced cockpit doors aside, no knife fighter on earth is badass enough to hold his own against 12-to-1 odds in an enclosed space filled with people who are rabidly desperate to kill him.
This is political hackery that boils down to the following:
#1) The job will be bid on via a no-bid contract to some firm that some senator is either friends with the owner or a part-owner thereof.
#2) All the current TSA employees will be fired.
#3) All the former TSA employees will be rehired by the private firm (such as Blackwater), at LOWER pay.
#4) Despite hiring everyone at lower pay, the contractor will bill the government double or more what it was costing the government to run the TSA by itself.
#5) Owner and Senator become super-rich, and lobby hard to have their personal income taxes cut because they are Job-creators.
#6) Deficit explodes due to cost-over-runs and how much money is being pocketed by owner/senator. Meanwhile Congress votes to cut taxes on the rich to "reduce" the deficit.
Is there any part of this I haven't covered? It's pretty obvious, and they've done it to us a million times and we let them do it more. The Rich get richer and the middle class becomes poor.
Thanks government for fucking me in the ass again.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Traditional economic 'theory' assumes that people act as entirely rational selfish entities. Unfortunately that isn't how people actually work.
HAND.
Of course the armored door keeps out a knife attack, but that doesn't mean airport security is doing anything more useful than it was before it really went to hell.
That's rather the point: if we still had pre-9/11 airport security along with armored doors and passengers willing to beat any would-be terrorist to death, then the result of the last ten years would have been precisely the same because airport security hasn't stopped any of the actual attacks that were actually tried but passengers have.
"Failure to detect threats" does not necessarily mean the program is a total waste of money, because of the deterrent effect on terrorists who would be risking human assets to sneak by the airport checkpoints.
It is a reasonable premise to assume that a deterred terrorist does not simply give up, he looks for an easier target. Therefore the deterrent effect can be measured by counting non-airport cases of terrorism.
In the most favorable interpretation for the TSA would be to count every single non-airport terrorist as having been "deterred" by the TSA. I believe that makes 3 -- the DC sniper, the Fort Hood shooter and the Times Square bomber.
That's 2 nutjobs with just guns and 1 nutjob who couldn't even build a functional bomb with all the space of an SUV, much less a suitcase. At around $6+ billion a year to fund the TSA, that's $60 billion doilars spent to save probably a handful of lives, which ended up lost somewhere other than an airplane anyway.
Meanwhile how many lives would have been saved if that $60 billion had been spent on health programs? Hell, how many could have been saved with just $6 billion? I think it is entirely reasonable argument to say that the TSA is costing lives, hundreds, if not thousands of lives through misappropriate of resources.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"Mica seems to agree with other TSA critics that the agency 'failed to actually detect any threat in 10 years."
Not that I am a big fan of the TSA but one thing should be pointed out. Failure to detect a threat does not mean if was unsuccessful at finding a threat. There might not have been any credible threats to find. There is a problem in failing many tests of security and he should have pointed at that instead.
I'm really trying to remember the last time I thought a rent-a-cop was doing a better job than the local city police or deputy sheriff. Nope, hasn't happened yet. Do you folks not remember how screwed up this was before TSA was set up? It was horrid, which is why all these people supported setting up TSA in the first place.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
"By entering this metal detector, you have agreed to the EULA of this airport's security measures, including the clause that all disputes with this security checkpoint will be resolved through binding arbitration..."
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Prior to 9/11 airport security was private. Now yes, people did hijack the planes but then two things to remember:
1) Box cutters weren't something security was looking for.
2) The TSA has done no better, they miss shit all the time. Their record is awful.
Also a big benefit of private security is accountability. The TSA has done a wonderful job of creating a system where nobody is accountable and any complaint just gets stopped up in bureaucracy, and gets you placed on the no-fly list. Well in the case of private security, they are accountable to the airport authority. The AA cares what people think, and particularly cares what airlines think. So if security causes problems, the airport authority will yank their chain, or fire them.
Seriously, small business gets away w this all the time, even chain bars like hooters (more past than present). I've always wondered what kind of "men" sign up for TSA positions. I stop wondering because i quickly realize I DONT WANT TO KNOW.
Still... I somehow can't help feel like it's my natural right not to get groped, but if somebody's gotta do it, I agree with OP of the sub thread.
Read it using 'house' as a verb.
As in, the US is housing the creator of the TSA and wants to kill it. It referring to the creator, not the TSA.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
That sig has bothered me for a long time. It reveals such a blindness on the part of whoever first said it... the unchallenged assumption that government has to be more powerful than the individual.
Why is that? The Israelis seem to do it quite well and there would be nothing that would single right wing retards or even brilliant republicans out over the rest of the population.
Why is that?
Because doing security the Israeli way is very expensive, and it's mostly done behind-the-scenes. Thousands of ten-dollar-an-hour TSA drones are much cheaper, and provide the appearance of security.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule
"In January 1994, the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act of 1990 (FEPCA) introduced a "locality pay adjustment" component to the GS salary structure."
http://www.tsa.gov/join/careers/pay_scales.shtm
TSA agents are not on the GS pay plan, but they also get a locality adjustment
The math isn't perfect, but the principle is there
To refer to your specific example. NYC is +28.72%, Little Rock, as part of the "Rest of US" category, is +14.16%.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I somehow can't help feel like it's my natural right not to get groped
It may be; unfortunately, flying isn't.
"A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace."
49 U.S.C. Sec. 40103 (2)