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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.'"
...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?"
Yes, because getting your groped by a private security agency employee is much better than being groped by a government agency employee. It's like being glad that your shit sandwich now has a different kind of bread.
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.
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
If a private company gropes you, public opinion forces them to change or they go out of business from driving away airport travelers. If the government gropes you, they tell you "tough shit," which is what the TSA has been saying for the last 12 months.
It intrigues me that so many people still don't understand the huge disadvantages that come with government control, especially when they bitch so much about corporate monopolies. Governments don't have to compete for you as a customer because you're forced to use them, and you're required by law to fund their paychecks.
If there is only one provider of the service, it does not matter if it is government or a private company. If you must use them or not fly it will always be "tough shit".
What makes you think that the airport cares whether you feel comfortable or not? The private firm, too, can tell you to go fuck yourself. They don't work for you, they work for whoever hired them. Private screening might still have "guidelines" that they will be required to follow, and I don't expect them to be too different from what we have with the TSA.
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!
This argument would be more convincing if market competition in America actually worked the way free-market fundamentalists swear it works.
BTW, there's also a theory about how when the government gropes you, this is supposed to hurt their poll numbers and therefore their job security. You might even call it the central idea of representative democracy. Unfortunately that mechanism is just as broken as the "competition" one.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
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.
The private firm, too, can tell you to go fuck yourself.
B-b-but then you can go to the snazzy new competing airport across the street which was built with zero startup capital (and does not actually exist), and they'll give you a backrub and a blowjob and then pay YOU to fly with them and then the "go fuck yourself" airline will go out of business for lack of customers, because competition always leads to the best deal for the consumer!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
And why wouldn't the government feel it should regulate pollution?
"That would be difficult in a country where the government feels it has the right to interfere with the market at any time in any way for any reason. You can hardly blame the free market for screwups in a country where the government feels it has the right to control mercury and arsenic."
See how that sounds?
Only in the small number of markets where multiple large airports service a single population. Anywhere else, a local monopoly is identical to a government monopoly. Claiming there'd be competition is like claiming that you have competition in the electrical distribution market; sure you can switch providers, you just need to sell your house and move somewhere else.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
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!
Unfortunately, "Privatization" is typically used as a polite euphemism for getting the worst of both worlds. It is very rarely a synonym for "the state abandoning function X"; but rather for "The state hiring a contractor for function X" or (in the case of assets, rather than functions) "The state sweetheathearting off asset X"...
When somebody says "Privatize", you can usually expect that they are demanding that the public employees be fired; but that the function continue to be paid for by taxpayer money, and backed by whatever force of law it previously enjoyed, just now being wielded by the employees of whatever contractor scooped up the bid. At best, this is an improvement of degree(ie. if the prior employees were genuinely a mess and the new contractor is actually efficient at something other than landing contracts); but it is not an improvement of kind: it is still state agents, paid with public money, backed by force of law. The fact that they aren't those evil public-sector workers with their wicked unions and whatnot doesn't change that a bit.
Unless proven innocent by demonstrated presence of a spine and some affinity for actual freedom, anybody who wants to "privatize the TSA" should be treated in roughly the same way as those who have shepherded along the privatization of parts of the prison industry... Shockingly enough, when your "product" is incarceration, you turn all your vaunted-efficiency-of-the-private-sector toward moving more product... Should the TSA be sacked and replaced by SecuriDyne LLC, it is extremely unlikely that SecuriDyne will be any better an advocate for less, and less invasive, screening than the TSA is, why would they cut into their own market?
This argument would be more convincing if market competition in America actually worked the way free-market fundamentalists swear it works.
That would be difficult in a country where the government feels it has the right to interfere with the market at any time in any way for any reason. You can hardly blame the free market for screwups in a country where the government feels it has the right to control carbon dioxide.
What about slavery, child labour, false and misleading advertising, dangerous products, nuclear bombs, stolen property, child pornography, buying votes, emergency services, military, submarines, gambling, prostitution, extortion, blackmail, drugs, land rights and immigration!
The government is out of control!!! Someone save the free market please!
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Kind of like our choices for internet connectivity.
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.
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.
It could and should be and would be and likely will happen after a privatization assuming government doesn't interfere with a regulation. What kind of airline wouldn't jump at the chance to be the only grope-free way to travel? So you can bitch and moan about the free-market all you want, the only thing that could stop meaningful competition in airport security is the government.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Try breathing it and you might think differently.
If a private health insurance company fails to cover your health problems, public opinion forces them to change or they go out of business from failing to provide health insurance coverage. If the government fails to cover your health problem, they tell you "tough shit".
Hmm, if that ACTUALLY worked, we wouldn't have the mess that is the current state of health insurance. The reality is if a private health insurance company fails to cover your health problems, then either you are stuck paying for it yourself because switching to a new policy won't pay for a procedure that occurred before you were covered (in the case of finding out your insurance won't cover something after the fact of). If you find out that a procedure you need won't be covered by your insurance company before hand, then you're still screwed because you have a "pre-existing condition" and thus no one will give you a new policy that'll cover it. At least not something you're likely to be able to afford.
As for public opinion, in general most people just take whatever coverage their job gives them and hopes it covers whatever they need. Which means there's no free-market. Health insurance is too important and thus people take whatever they can get that gives them what they think they need as cheap as they can get it. They'll deride, complain, and campaign against an insurance company but the company won't go out of business because people still need to have health insurance, even if the company says "Tough shit".
The difference is a single-payer system that will always cover your health problem versus a profit based company that says "Tough Shit" because you cost them too much.
The environment is an externality for businesses. In other words, a form of market failure. It doesn't matter how free your markets are, they will never be able to handle environmental problems. This is why things like carbon credits are being tried - they attempt to make the externality internal.
About as brain dead as privatizing parking meters. It may bring more government revenue for a short time, but will end up costing more money in the long run, especially after, due to lack of maintenance so that short term profits can be maximized, it has to be bailed out by the government. In the meantime, fliers will pay more to fly with less safety.